In a 2008 talk called “Rethinking ‘Liberal Arts’”, Russell Berman, a professor at Stanford University, had this to say about grades & units: “The grading system is just the dead weight of the past that has zero meaning anymore except to make lives difficult and bitter. I’m not sure if it’s as broken as the…
“Men and women confronting change are never fully prepared for the demands of the moment, but they are strengthened to meet uncertainty if they can claim a history of improvisation and a habit of reflection.” (Mary Catherine Bateson, Peripheral Visions: Learning Along the Way, 1994, p. 6)
This image is from an exhibit of cards titled France in the Year 2000, at The Public Domain Review website. The artwork in this exhibit represents visions of what life would be like in 2000 from the vantage of the turn of the 20th Century (specifically 1899-1910). Is the machine grinding the books an early…
“Education is the ability to listen to almost anything without losing your temper or your self-confidence.”
“For the correct analogy for the mind is not a vessel that needs filling, but wood that needs igniting…” “On Listening” (trans. Robin Waterfield), 1992.
Interview with Robert Stacey, new Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences at the University of Washington (my alma mater). Last question, he’s asked what are the essential traits of a successful dean. His answer, I think, describes not only deans but all successful educators—especially teachers: believe passionately in the importance of your institution…
Yesterday I learned that the Basic Skills Committee at Fresno City College (where I teach) will be paying for my tuition at the Leading from the Middle Academy—an initiative of the RP Group (i.e., Research & Planning Group for California Community Colleges). I’m pleased I was offered this chance to attend the Academy & learn…
Meditations on education borrowed from Owen Chadwick’s book Newman (which is a brief biographical sketch of John Henry Newman): What a university (and, by extension, I’ll translate that to mean a college) is not: A college is not a research institute. The primary purpose of a school is education. Advancing one’s subject matter is fine…
“An education isn’t how much you have committed to memory, or even how much you know. It’s being able to differentiate between what you do know and what you don’t.”
Rebecca Cox opens her book, College Fear Factor: How Students and Professors Misunderstand One Another (Harvard Univ. Press, 2009), by explaining that a certain image of college, illustrated in films like Legally Blond & Good Will Hunting, dominates people’s perceptions of what it’s like to go to college (1). Furthermore, that image is also traced…
Was looking through my read copy of Shooting Polaris: A Personal Survey in the American West by John Hales (Columbia: Univ. of Missouri Press, 2005) & came across a couple of passages I had marked. Near the end of this engaging book Hales, looking at a photograph from his travels in the Colorado Plateau, reflects…
Somewhere along the way—I don’t remember where or when but it was during the past couple of years—I heard or read someone explain that many teachers become teachers because they enjoy learning. That’s certainly true with me: I enjoyed being a student & I especially enjoyed many of my undergraduate & graduate courses in college.…
The quintessential example—in fact, the utterly stereotypical example—of mechanical learning is touching a hot stove: we learn not to touch a hot stove by touching a hot stove & realizing how much we don’t like touching it. I hate that example. Learning not to touch a hot stove doesn’t even compare to the complex living…
An effort to “rebrand” teaching as an activity of connecting the dots. The purpose is to displace the old, tired (or, in their words: “borderline infantilizing”) tropes & icons that represent teachers & teaching (what one person called “apple crapple”): ABCs, 123s, chalkboards, pencils, apples, one-room school houses, etc. Do a Google image search of…
Aquí is a short (& certainly incomplete) list of resources on teacherpreneurship that shaped my thinking for my Flex Day presentation notes & Prezi. Tina Barseghian, “What the Heck is a ‘Teacherpreneur’?” Mind/Shift, 11 April 2011, http://mindshift.kqed.org/2011/04/what-the-heck-is-a-teacherpreneur/ Barnett Berry & the TeacherSolutions 2030 Team, “The Coming Age of the Teacherpreneur,” Education Week, 6 October 2010,…
reuleaux triangle 