Blogs on Integrated Studies

This is the second post in a three-part entry. Read part one and part three.

How do you respond in your classroom to a societal, medical, or environmental concern? Here's the next step in planning how to use such a problem as a springboard for a class project.

I recently attended the Juice Conference here in Maine on the effort to power up the state's creative economy. The discussions focused on how craftspeople -- potters, weavers, dancers, musicians, metalworkers, woodworkers, and their ilk -- contribute to the bottom line. As I listened, it occurred to me that the conversation -- and the definition of "creative economy" -- needed to be far deeper, far more foundational than that. We must be more creative in how we think about creativity.

As a longtime educator and a classroom English teacher for twenty-seven years, I've seen all kinds of student "bad behavior."

You always hear people talk about innovation and education and getting kids interested in thinking differently, in thinking about ways to innovate. I am always on the hunt for new ways to facilitate this kind of learning through creativity and problem solving in what I call "hard" play.