At times, I think my Announcements for my classes take on the tone of a blog post. My online students do not have the luxury of the 5-10 minutes I spend each class period harping on attitude, perseverance, discipline, and poor defense and shot-blocking in mid-major NCAA basketball conferences. I have to make up for…
Few things raise my hackles more than irrational or illogical behavior. And, in this collection I also include my own behavior. Take for example the recent news of a student, Timothy Arnold, a University of Central Florida student, who developed an application. His application, UCouldFinish, helped students find courses with open seats. Armed with this…
I can’t stand cheating, academic dishonesty, and plagiarism. People who spend more time trying to figure out how to subvert an exam, cheat, plagiarize, or pay someone else to do their homework. Fail. Simply fail on your own merit. Contemplate what led to your failing grade and change your behavior. Not everyone can, should, or…
I write because I think. My thoughts need a form. I give them a form through the laborious machinations of word selection, ordering, and penning them on some hard- or soft copy media, following generations old rules. My favorite author of all-time is Ray Bradbury. His prose is poetry. The meter, tone, tenor and lyrical…
I grapple with the paradox of my post title daily. Think about those words. The Uneducated do not create or implement educational policy at any level. Degreed people do. “No Child Left Behind” was not developed by non-degreed folks, yet inarguably NCLB has been the worst “education reform” since President Reagan declared ketchup a vegetable.…
Cheating bothers me. As a child, I did not cheat. I was too afraid. Afraid of what teachers would think, afraid of upsetting my parents. Even more so, I knew cheating was wrong. Simple as that. Succeed or fail on my own effort. My grandparents were solid, ethical and moral people, my grandparents as the…
I have been really challenged lately trying to put into words a teaching philosophy I have been struggling to promote. A good friend of mine helped me put this philosophy into words, which has helped me put them to paper. Teacher evaluations are mostly bullshit. I say that because the evaluations I have seen do…
Without ever having taken an education class, I suspect the over-arching theme of all education course is the training of a person to help him/her learn techniques they can use to help a child become “self-actualized” – to become all they can be. I had an interesting conversation with my neighbor yesterday. As many of…
Update: The following essay was written October 2011. On March 30th, 2013, the Atlanta Public Schools Superintendent and 34 other school officials were charged with running a “corrupt organization” (yes, just like the Mafia). The 35 individuals have been indicted for falsifying standardized test scores. (WashingtonPost) Let me begin by stating I am not going…
Constant Geography 