lunchbyteblog

Just about every morning at Discovery High School I am in the hallway greeting students as they enter the building. Usually I refer to the day of the week and loudly proclaim something like "people of earth, I see you," or "people of the Discovery tribe, good morning!" I feel like it's important to let students know that we are happy that they are here. And I think that for some of them it helps to wake them up. I was thinking about this this morning because lately I have been considering the idea of community and what makes a strong community. As some people may know, I am currently in the middle of a campaign for city council. One of the things that people often ask me is "why did you decide to run?" It's a good question and it's one that I ask myself as well. "Why did I decide to run?" There are varying reasons that I will get into later and that might be better served in a different forum but for me the underlying idea is that ...

I've said in the past that I might use this blog for things other than technology or teaching. So here we go. One from the archives: a moment in march                                                   03/07/04       dabbed colors blur on the edge of vision and what cost is our sight worth? forgive me for the moment surrendering to the melancholy to fatigue, to often grim realities etched in stone for history.   this night is hopeful maybe because of lessons learned- sometimes it’s in the breathing, still others, when it abruptly stops...   do we perceive ourselves as those few lines in newsprint? or is this, “the stuff of life” greater than that?   are my dreams stil...

How often do you have to blog to be considered a blogger? If I haven't blogged in over a year am I still a blogger? Was I ever a blogger? A few friends have been after me to start writing again so I thought maybe we would take this old blog out for a ride. Knock the dirt off of the tires. See what happens. Today I want to talk about old habits. You know, they die hard. Just like our affinity for using the same old tools and the same old worksheets and the same old jokes. As humans we tend to gravitate toward the tried and true. But is it all so tried and true anymore? Just because something worked for students five years ago doesn't mean it's going to work today. Or maybe it will. I don't know. The point here is that we shouldn't be scared to try new things. New ways of delivering info, new ways of imparting knowledge. Just try it. You might like it. -Sam I am

Once of the things that I was trying to accomplish with my last post was to put forth the idea that, often, learning takes place outside the walls of the traditional classroom. In fact, I would argue that in the history of the world a very small percentage of learning has taken place inside a classroom.  Real knowledge comes from real experience and one of the things that we are horrible at manufacturing in schools is reality.  Most of the time, the things that students are supposed to be doing and learning have little obvious connection with the reality of the world outside the confines of the school.  Our reaction to this is the push for PBL. PBL seeks to make learning relevant.  Projects aren't treated as isolated bits of knowledge for students to learn. The projects should be integrated within the framework of the curriculum and should include as many real world experiences as possible. The audience should be bigger than the teacher and the project should includ...

Wow. It's been almost a year since I last posted on this site. Seems like school begins to happen and I lose track of time and space. Every year it happens and then I turn around and I have gone months and months without posting. I won't vow to change that this year. I've been around the block long enough to know all the cliches that go with resolutions and vows. I won't beat a... oh, never mind. I do have something on my mind though. It's been bugging me for a few days and being that I do have a soap box of sorts, I think I'll stand on it for a minute. Last Friday, our school took the whole school on a field trip to the park. Yep, the entire school. To the park. And? It was awesome. Easily the best day of the year so far. Why the park? Why the entire school? What did we hope to accomplish? Let me try and explain. Our school is what is known as a redesigned high school in NC. The General Assembly of NC refers to us as a Cooperative and Innovative high ...

This morning I found this article in my reader: http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2012/10/why-kids-should-grade-teachers/309088/3/?single_page=true I agree with the article.  I have publicly espoused this view for many years.  I said as much more than 20 years ago, almost 25 now, when I interviewed for the NC Teaching Fellows Scholarship as a young and naive high school senior.  If you want to know what's happening in a classroom, ask the students.  They know. Students are captive audiences day in and day out.  They know the inner workings of a school or a classroom intimately.  We should ask for, and value, their feedback. We haven't quite hit on a good way to evaluate teachers.  States want to use test scores to say how effective teachers are.  This is a cheap way to evaluate teachers which is why state legislatures often like this method.  However, a test score will never show how a teacher changes a student's life.  A...

I had this brief moment of reflection just a bit ago.  I was thinking about the things that I had asked my students to do today and I realized that most of the things they were doing couldn't have been done in school even just a few years ago.  Things are changing quickly and I hope I am able to stay on top of the wave of educational technological changes. As I write this, it's 10:20 in the morning and I'm in the middle of my freshman level World History class.  There are students who are finishing yesterday's assignment: a video from PBS where Bill Moyers interviews Salman Rushdie.  These students are thinking about radical religious views and how fringe elements in religions change the public perception of those religions.  This follows up a #PBL project that we just finished where I asked students how religion causes people to hate. Other students have finished the video and are working through 2 assignments on the Sas Curriculum Pathways site.  They a...