Thinking About Education

I cannot teach anybody anything, I can only make them think. ~Socrates

First Do No Harm: The Damage of Low Expectations

I had a student once, let’s call her Leah.  She was a transfer during the first few weeks of school. We were alerted that she had some “problems.” I always begin the year with a study of word stems, and expect students to learn certain common roots, prefixes, and suffixes because then they have a base for understanding thousands of words. They memorize 10 or 15 at a time—a list like this one:.. Read More

This Calls for an Investigation…or Does It?

  Principals are trained in all kinds of legal matters including how to conduct investigations. I left one such training asking about how this would be applicable or appropriate for elementary schoolchildren. I didn’t get an answer. But I guess if we are going to conduct investigations, we should know how to do it well. And, as I think about it, students can get into serious fist-fights and that sort of thing, requiring.. Read More

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