TeacherJay's EduBlog » Quick Thoughts

Strange Currencies

teacherjay — Fri, 08 Jan 2010 20:13:48 +0000

I was passing through the Gen. Mitchell airport in Milwaukee the other day and had some time to kill. I noticed a sign for a museum and decided I should check it out. Very small, but still interesting and maybe a good way to occupy young children for a little while. Many exhibits seemed just a [...]

A New World?

teacherjay — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 15:57:43 +0000

In relation to yesterday’s honor of Christopher Columbus and his “discovery” of “A New World”, I began thinking of the millions of people that were already living there. While they new it existed, their world changed with the arrival of Europeans as well. However, our history books don’t always teach us that. The video below may [...]

School (District) Size

teacherjay — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 21:08:40 +0000

Although conventional wisdom tells us that small schools and small districts are the best way to go, that may no always be the case. Last week, the Open Education blog posted an article on the school district consolidation taking place in Maine. I ahve experience with large and small school districts beign measured by student population [...]

Active Learning

teacherjay — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 03:13:44 +0000

I came across this video on Edutopia and just had to post it. The video, Student Body: Classroom Exercise Makes Learning Lively demonstrates “four techniques for mental clarity” that can easily be taught to students. Take a look:

We are seeing more and more schools cut recess and physical education from their curricula. Such a shame [...]

Can They Show Us How?

teacherjay — Mon, 06 Apr 2009 13:00:00 +0000

If you look at any playground you can see children of all sizes, shapes, colors and religions laughing and playing together. They don’t seem to create distinctions to keep themselves apart, but often look first for what makes them similar. Playmates may begin to notice each other’s differences, but it tends to be a source of [...]

Cash for Grades

teacherjay — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 14:29:36 +0000

I have reported on this concept before and thus do not wish to take too much space for it here, but to post the link to a NY Times article that is rehashing the issue, yet again.

Perhaps the best line from the article comes in the second paragraph, “many economists and businesspeople disagree [with psychologists], [...]

DNA in High School

teacherjay — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 01:18:50 +0000

I had long pictured working with DNA to be some abstract and complicated process that took place in far off labs by very experienced scientists. Working with undergraduate students at Brooklyn College, though, they would tell me about their work with DNA and it seemed so common to them.

The other day I found the following video [...]

Navajo Online

teacherjay — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 13:34:31 +0000

Yesterday, Edutopia published an article on students who now have the opportunity to learn the Navajo language via the internet. The story of a high-schooler looking for a scholarship and wanting to return to her familial roots frames the news of a course offering by The American Academy—an online high school accredited by NAAS.

When looking [...]

Why is School so Fake?

teacherjay — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 16:22:36 +0000

I just found this post on the Elementary Educator, where the author discusses the way that school curricula have become “sanitized” to not offend anyone by giving children the information to make their own informed opinions that could possibly in contrast to their parents. As a result, we may be creating a generation of students [...]

Disabled Question

teacherjay — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 03:16:23 +0000

Not long ago, while filling out online forms for graduate schools, I was asked the following question: “Are you disabeld?” That’s not a typo on my part. This was a major university, that shall remain nameless, which apparently did not have a proofreader for what I saw as a poorly worded and somewhat inappropriate question [...]