My daughter’s school is having a Read-a-Thon called the Knights Crusade for Literacy. That’s one of those activities where people pledge either a one-time amount or a per book amount and the person being sponsored reads during the given time. This particular Read-a-Thon, because it’s in lower grades, allows for chapters in a chapter book, newspaper articles, comic books, small books, and other similar things to count as one book.

The money for this Read-a-Thon will be going to [...]

Is change always good and necessary? Why or why not?

The answer to this question depends on the context of the change. If we’re speaking of education, which I’m assuming we are, it also depends on the change itself. Not all changes are good. Not all changes are bad.

For example [...]

I took a memorization course because of the grocery store I worked at when I was much younger. It taught how to memorize lists of items by creating images of the numbers and attaching them to images of the items within the list. You can memorize a list of 10 things with the information I’m providing.

The way it works is [...]

Some of my favorite quotes can be used to describe the “perfect” teacher.

“The mind is a terrible thing to close.” – Saphrym

Yeah. I said that one. It’s a play on the old slogan of the mind is a terrible thing to waste. But it means that we should always keep an open mind. And that goes double or even triple for teachers.

“If you capture kids’ hearts, you have their heads. If you don’t capture their hearts, you have no business messing with their heads.” – Menville Flippen

Teaching is not [...]

1. Quality administration and staff – It irritates me tremendously to see teachers and administrators that don’t want to be at school. Teaching is one of those jobs where if you don’t love it, you really need to stop. Lack of love for the job translates into the classroom. Students can sense a lack of enthusiasm from the teachers. The teachers that students love are always the teachers that love their jobs. That’s a fact. I also do not agree with passing over prospective teachers just because they don’t add enough points for NCLB. Teachers need to be chosen based on their qualities and not their quantities (of certificates). If a teacher wants to be a teacher, they can always learn more about teaching. Experience and PD will take care of that. But if the teacher [...]