The Benefits of Taking Students Outside to Inspire Writing
By Stephen Hurley
9/15/09
The following quote is one of the first things my eighth-grade students see when they walk into their classroom in September:
Let's Bring More Students to the Awards Table
By Stephen Hurley
8/17/09A few weeks ago, I found myself sitting on the stage at our school's eighth-grade graduation ceremony. I was reflecting on the two years I have had with these students, and how we set out together to do something different with our time in this place we call school.
Inspiring Students to Engage and Invest in School
By Stephen Hurley
5/23/09As our two-year arts@newman pilot program comes to a close (read more about it), we are entering the process of evaluating and reporting on our efforts, posing questions for future growth, and reflecting on the incredible journey we have undertaken.
Re-Creating Teaching Spaces
By Stephen Hurley
2/5/09I discovered something rather important this week: I'm in the wrong job! That's right -- for the past 25 years, I have lived under the false assumption that being a teacher was the ideal career for me.
Redefining Literacy: When the Arts and Core Curriculum Collide
By Stephen Hurley
12/16/08Perhaps it's the result of having just turned fifty. It may be owing to the fact that I am a fairly new dad. Whatever the reason, the textual world our young people occupy today seems to be much more complex and more highly constructed than when I was entering my own teenage years.
I'm certainly not the first to observe that the term literacy has new meaning for our students -- a meaning that calls both educators and parents to carefully consider all the places where our children need help "reading and writing the world."
Deeply Connected, Part Two: Preparing for the Journey
By Stephen Hurley
9/25/08This is the second part of a two-part entry. Read part one.
The school year doesn't officially begin for another twelve hours, but already, a couple of things about our plan to introduce students to an interdisciplinary program have made themselves quite clear.
Deeply Connected, Part One: Interdisciplinary Teaching in the arts@newman Program
By Stephen Hurley
9/18/08"The highly structured school with its fixed timetable, isolated subject areas, centralized curriculum, and authoritarian nature is giving way to a new order that places less stress on mechanical rote learning and greater importance on the discovery and exploration of concepts and impressions."
Telling Our Stories: Students Recount Personal Tales
By Stephen Hurley
8/4/08The theme for this first year of our arts@newman program could best be expressed with the statement "We live storied lives." Throughout the year, we have been exploring how the arts can help us both understand our stories more deeply and express those stories to others.
Teaching in the Key of Jocelyn: Challenging One-Size-Fits-All Education
By Stephen Hurley
4/10/08Like many of you, I grew up with a one-size-fits-all approach to school. I remember clearly the few teachers that allowed me to explore things on my own terms -- and, interestingly enough, these were the school experiences that had the greatest impact on me.
All We Are: The Truth about Stories
By Stephen Hurley
3/7/08"The truth about stories is, that's all we are." The words of Canadian writer Thomas King have been rattling around in my brain since I first heard them nearly two years ago. Most of us have grown up with some tradition of storytelling in our families, whether it was a nightly ritual when we went to bed or in conversations around the kitchen table after a Sunday meal.
