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 […]
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 […]
Using the social brain in schools
Thought this was interesting, via Annie Murphy Paul “Think about how amazing the brain is, and then consider that a huge portion of that amazing brain focuses on making us social. Yet, for a large part of our day, whether we are at work or at school, this extraordinary social machinery in our heads is […]
Climbing Leave
This letter to the Times, dated 9th September 2013, seemed like a lovely analogy for many children’s experience of school. Sir, In January 1943 the Italian mountaineeer Felice Bernuzzi and two companies escaped from the Allied PoW camp at Nanyski, Kenya, and made a valiant attempt to reach the summit of Mount Kenya, which was...
Intelligence has nothing to do with speed
Love this, from Laurent Schwartz‘s ‘A Mathematician Grappling with his Century’ [via Jo Boaler] “I was always deeply uncertain about my own intellectual capacity; I thought I was unintelligent. And it is true that I was, and still am, rather slow. I need time to seize things because I always need to understand them fully....
Steve Jobs on Teamwork and Rocks
Lovely metaphor for teamwork and difference from Steve Jobs (thanks to Sonja for spotting this) “When I was a young kid there was a widowed man who lived up the street. He was in his eighties. He’s a little scary looking. And I got to know him a little bit. I think he may have […]
Alfred, Lord Tennyson’s lesser-known poem “Skyfall”
… or Ulysses as he called it. It little profits that an idle king, By this still hearth, among these barren crags, Matched with an agèd wife, I mete and dole Unequal laws unto a savage race, That hoard, and sleep, and feed, and know not me. I cannot rest from travel: I will drink […]
The Wisdom of Scottish Weddings
It’s great having friends you admire. And one of the many things I admire about my mate Matthew is that he always wants to test things out for himself. Here’s an excerpt from a recent mail: “at my cousin Al’s wedding on Saturday, one of the guests organized a sweepstake – guess the combined length […]