Tag: education
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Owning Your Story
I recently asked middle school students, “If you were writing your own life story, how likely is it that you would be the main character?” I told the students that I thought it should be 100 percent likely. Some students disagreed. “It can’t always be about you,” one student said. During another session, a student…
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The surprising Power of Unbiased Observation
At a March 14th event at the Invitation Bookshop, in Gig Harbor, I shared my inspiration for The Uncommon AP Club. The attendees and my conversation reminded me of this essay that I wrote almost two decades ago, titled, “50 Things”: “It’s Grab Bag Poetry day,” I announced to my sophomore English students. My announcement was…
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Tracking in Schools Inevitable
Origins of my Educator’s Edge: When I was a sophomore at a Department of Defense high school in Germany, I struggled with geometry. My brain hadn’t fully developed to make abstraction and spatial reasoning easy. Plus, I’d had a lousy experience with an algebra teacher who’d repeatedly made fun of my name. Let’s just say,…
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Words: push-ups for our brains, lift-ups for our thoughts
Before I turned eighteen, before I’d read any books about thoughts shaping our beliefs, and before neuroscientists explored the brain’s complex network with magnetic resonance imagining (MRI)–commercially produced in 1980. Before all of this, I silently recited, “I love math” every day as I walked to my math class at a local community college. Every…
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Students choose cheers not jeers
“You suck!” Stomp, stomp. “You suck!” Stomp, stomp. I was seated in front of a group of young people that were joining in this chant set to music blared over the loudspeaker. A chant obviously sanctioned by the sports organization. I thought to myself, “No wonder my job as an administrator supervising sports and spectators…
Fedore Writer 