The Discipline of Teaching
More dogears from Smith Real discipline, I would argue, is not always a matter of driving yourself on; real discipline is also knowing when to stop. This goes for all people in all jobs. Certainly, as a teacher you need to pace yourself, to sense when you’re losing your perspective, to recover as you go […]
Mischief on the Moral High Ground
Thoroughly enjoying Jonathan Smith’s “The Learning Game“. This anecdote is from his childhood. His Uncle Bert, a haemophiliac, always stayed with them. “Every Christmas Day for many years we all gathered in his room for our dinner. After dinner, in my early childhood, we always played cards. I looked forward to...
An Open Letter From One Patient To Another
[A friend asked me for advice for her brother, who’d been recently diagnosed. So I opened a bottle of wine.] Dear W, I’m so sorry to hear the news – good luck with the operation. A has asked me to write to you with some advice. I’m not a big fan of giving advice, I’m […]
Why 21st Century Education is half-baked
Perhaps it’s the bias of the medium, but spend much time online among teachery types and you come across a whole host of slightly hackneyed tropes. There is the “Shift Happens” video, Sir Ken Robinson, the “guide on the side vs sage on the stage” mantra, factory-model schooling is bunk, and long,...
People vs Ideas
Ed Catmull might be my new hero. “Which is more valuable, good ideas or good people? No matter whether I was talking to retired business executives or students, to high school principals or artists, when I asked for a show of hands, the audiences would be split 50–50. (Statisticians will tell you that when you […]
Reasonable Doubt
I like this story to explain reasonable doubt. (From Sam Leith’s wonderful “You talkin to me?“) “A man is in the dock, accused of murdering his wife. Although the body was never recovered, all the evidence points to the defendant: his car boot was filled with baling twine, bloodstained hammers, torn items of his...
Explaining the fourth dimension to children
This often comes up in class when we’re talking about volume and area and Dr Who fans are always especially keen to know. My effort to explain the dimensions is to try to link it to English as follows: One dimensional characters are just a line, a name or a signature. You don’t get much […]
Couple of School Projects
There are a couple of mini-projects I thought I’d share. FPS Zoo The first is the FPS Zoo. Most of our Year 6 have finished exams so this is an experiment to tie in various cross-curricular themes in (hopefully) a fun way. The idea is to make a zoo full of made-up animals. Science will […]
Very impressed
A student at my school called Mia has made a great website to show off her photography – please drop by and leave a comment! She’s spent two years coming to Coding Club and worked away teaching herself javascript and more. And she’s 10. Am seriously impressed!
Packaged Opinion
There is simply too much to think about. It is hopeless — too many kinds of special preparation are required. In electronics, in economics, in social analysis, in history, in psychology, in international politics, most of us are, given the oceanic proliferating complexity of things, paralyzed by the very suggestion that we assume...