Reflections on Teaching

Burning Bright
Fantastic historical novel about William Blake
fantastically rendered, you can almost
smell the sewage.
Tracy Chevalier
Chevalier, Tracy

Brisingr (Inheritance, Book 3)
The latest installment in this series, and the
strongest novel. I almost sense the writer
maturing as his character has.
Christopher Paolini
Paolini, Christopher

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Book 7)
A really great finish to a fantastic series.
My favorite part was [...]

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Here is my list of favorite blogs and blog posts for 2008:
I love eduwonkette she’s a girl, she’s a geek, she’s funny, and she gets me thinking. Here is the post that most influenced my blogging this year. It’s a little kernel in a post on the book Bobo’s in Paradise by David Brooks about [...]

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It’s not too often that I find something that lets me revisit two very different posts, but here it is…
I listened to a fascinating This American Life: Ruining it for the rest of us which had a great segment (number one) on what happened in San Diego when there was an outbreak of measles that [...]

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Ah, I dropped a year from my anniversary on this post sigh…that would be 22 years of wedded bliss. Good thing the spouse found it amusing.

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addthis_title = ‘WOW%2C+that+is+embarrassing%26%238230%3B’;
addthis_pub = ”;

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for 25 years of interesting conversations…
for 21 years of marriage, the caring, the laughter…
for 51 years of bringing a smile to the faces of friends and family…
for your birthday wish that came true for both of us 11 years ago…
for 7 years of being cancer-free…
and, for the years ahead, whatever they may bring, I know [...]

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One of the reasons that some folks would like teachers to be judged by tests is because they feel other methods (teacher observation, etc.) are too subjective. This recently got a re-run in a “best of” post from Killian Betlach, and it brings up some issues I’ve had with “accountability” in teaching.
“You get up on [...]

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That about describes a lot of the administrative response (and my reaction to it) this year. First we were “failing” then, we were “met AYP goals”, then we didn’t. First we had money for computers, then we didn’t and now we do again. Strange as it may seem, the two are related. Funds were freed [...]

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Click on pic for more images
The family and I took a trip to San Francisco to meet up with the husband’s family this weekend, so that dominated our schedule. The first part of the trip was to the Dickens Christmas Faire, a local institution that Terry and his sister have attended for years, but I [...]

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