It’s about teaching again. We used to deduct 5% each day an assignment was late, and after one week, it gets a big fat zero. Typically I’d get almost all the assignments on the due date, and a few stragglers by the end of the week. Now we can’t deduct
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A Puff of Absurdity: It Doesn’t Matter
It doesn’t matter why they’re dressed as a tiger, have they got my leg? Just one more thing about educational reform. Well, for the weekend at least. It relates to the video above because we’ve spent years talking about why we need to make these changes, why these new ideas
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: AER and Educational Reform: Makin’ It Work
From Free Info Society Whenever people start talking about A.E.R., I hear the letters being “sung” by Johnny Rotten. Somehow it seems to help. So we’re getting to a point that it might all be feasible. Change is always hard, but I feel like I’m over the hump. There are still
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Just Legalize it Already
I spent a lovely extended weekend in Awenda and fell in love with Penetanguishene through a scenic bike ride. The sun filtered through the trees on either side of the road, with the blue, blue lake peeking through – gorgeous! But it was marred by my chosen beach read: Chris Hedges’
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Categorization of Behaviours and Abilities
People are always looking for the single magic bullet that will change everything. There is no single magic bullet. – Temple Grandin Some people are quite upset about the recent change to the DSM that removes Aspergers as a separate category from Autism. Now kids formally diagnosed as having Aspergers
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On a Four-Hour Workday
Stephen Elliott-Buckley echoes Bertrand Russell‘s idea of the 4-hour workday. Russell in brief: Above all, there will be happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia. The work exacted will be enough to make leisure delightful, but not enough to produce exhaustion. Since men [and women]
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Educating the Differently-Abled
“Everybody is a genius. But if you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid.” – widely attributed to Albert Einstein but likely in error I love writing essays. Sometimes organizing my thoughts on paper is the only
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Animal Testing: What’s wrong with education this time?
Okay it’s really about our kids. But this post was inspired, in part, by this cartoon gaining swift popularity: There’s a burgeoning rebellion against the way we teach. I’m all for rebellion, but we have to figure out if we really want to overhaul the entire system or just tweak
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Silence During Tragedy
I went to a history conference, and one of the PhDs at the front was talking about the common occurrence of silence during tragedy. And, while those around me discussed WWII, and the Iran-Iraq war, and internment of the Japanese in Canada, I started thinking more about how uncomfortable people are
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Boredom
I’m not talking about the “nausea of ennui” discussed from Seneca (“many who judge life to be not bitter, but superfluous”) to Sartre, that total lack of interest in anything that makes it difficult for some to get out of bed in the morning, but of that feeling that overcomes
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Seniority Does Not Always Equal Merit
The title is from a line in an essay published in Friday’s Globe and Mail: “I’m a First-Year Teacher Who Will Automatically be Fired at the End of the School Year.” The author of this unwieldly title laments the reality that, as a new teacher, s/he’ll be first out the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Teacher Accountability
One criticism that Cooper and friends say is part of the problem with education is a lack of teacher accountability. I actually agree with this one. But how do we assess teacher ability? And, maybe a bigger problem, what do we do if we find some teachers below par? This post was
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Deducting Late Marks
I was going to list the pros and cons of taking late marks off assignments, but I had my students blog about it, and they hit on pretty much any points I could think of. So I’ll let their words speak here – in a bit. But first some back-story:
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Misplaced Admiration
Damian Cooper’s out to reform education, and our board has come up with yet another a new assessment document as a response. The article of the day that he co-wrote with Ken O’Connor and Nanci Wakeman, is “Redefining Fair.” The article suggests that there are four challenges to improving assessment
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Hate Crimes and Sexual Orientation
I was reviewing for a test on theories of discrimination and hate crimes in Canada with grade 12 students, and one review question was, “When was sexual orientation added to the list of identifiable groups in the hate propaganda legislation in Canada?” And the answers I got started in the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Following Your Dreams or Living an Illusion?
Ken Robinson, Sir, you are killing me! I know you probably didn’t mean for people to interpret your words in a warped way. Nobody does. But that’s what happens when you use several rare examples as if they are the norm and send people off to change the world. Some of
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Regulation 274, Education Act of Ontario
I was just about to start a petition at Change.org about this, but, thanks to Angie Potts, there’s one already there. After, I’m guessing, about 5 day, it’s got 415 signatures. Please take two seconds to click on the link and sign it. I wrote a letter to Liz Sandals,
Continue readingthe reeves report: Finding work a struggle for new teachers in Toronto
Flickr image by spDuchamp. *** Note: this piece was originally published with OpenFile Toronto on Feb. 10, 2012, but is no longer available online since their website shut down. *** When Deirdre Dimitroff started teachers college at the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education in September 2011, she knew the
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: On Education, Stress, and Success
I’m starting another run at the Futures Forum Project: three subjects over two periods with one teacher (two team-teaching this year) that emphasizes an intentional digital footprint as we write for an authentic audience including students from classes in the 14 other participating schools. Whew! There’s no way I can
Continue readingA Puff of Absurdity: Thanks for the Contract, Laurel!
In a cab ride yesterday, I happened to catch Laurel Broten on the radio explaining how necessary it was to first deny teachers’ right to negotiate, then impose a contract, and then repeal bill 115 to make the teachers happy again, all to help decrease the insane provincial deficit. What
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