My rule of 90 is an axiom I believe will be true forever: 90% of the problems are caused by 10% of the people. This continues to be true in my building as I found out today. I will attend my first department head retreat tomorrow, and on the agenda is whether or not we should keep having finals week. Apparently, a few teachers told kids not to ...

At a meeting in June my principal discussed the efforts of our school in narrowing the achievement gap (such a cliched term nowadays). Specifically, the gains of the lower end students were highlighted. An obvious upward trend could be seen. But, the high achievers basically showed no change. I mentioned at the meeting that this should [...]

I thought I’d post some updates on the goings on I’ve discussed previously. When my class created bulletin boards about the 1920s for The Great Gatsby, things did not go exactly as planned. Being literal-minded students, almost everyone basically created the exact same research piece–exactly as I had written up the assignment. A ...