Recently, I wrote that perhaps our wisest approach to distance learning for the remainder of the 2019-2020 school year is enrichment only. My earnest and amicable argument here is that if we try a continuation approach to distance learning, we’ll end up with fewer engaged students now and larger gaps when we return than if […]
The Good News, the Bad News, and the Start of A Solution for Keeping Distance Learning Simple
It looks like a lot of us are going to be distance teaching for a while. I’ve been thinking and reading and reflecting on what this means and how we’d be wisest to approach it. Before I begin, let me be transparent: I’ve been paralyzed at the keyboard on this topic — far more so, […]
It Turns Out that Knowledge Really Is Power: So, What’s In Your Portfolio?
There are lots of differences between South Korea and the United States, but the most important one today is probably this: the South Koreans have tested the majority of their (much smaller) population for coronavirus, and this knowledge enables them to enact precise public health measures aimed at containment. Meanwhile, the United States has tested […]
Maslow Was Right: What His Theory Can Teach Us about Moving Ahead
It’s possible that right now isn’t the best time to obsess about providing a continuous stream of curricular objectives for our students. That time will come, but it’s probably not now. We’re all familiar with A. H. Maslow’s theoretical hierarchy of needs: physiological, safety, love, self-esteem, self-actualization, and, in his later writings, self-transcendence [1]. While […]
What We Control
In the early 1940s, a thoughtful man in his thirties was experiencing the torment of a Nazi concentration camp. A particular moment in his trial keeps coming to my mind of late. He was marching to a work site that was far away from his camp. Physically, he recalls, the pain was ceaseless. “Almost in […]