Today's Reads, Views, and Links

This is too good.  If the Bard had penned Star Wars!  While Star Wars may have interesting connections to Hamlet, it's a stretch to say Star Wars was inspired by it (not so for The Lion King, though).  Still what would Star Wars be like if Shakespeare had his hand in penning the classic?
 

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This is exactly what I hope our new 1:1 environment at LHS will result in for our kids - Unlocking the Potential of Millennials to Change Our World.

And to anyone who wants to continue on as business as usual (as in lecture and notes and crossword puzzles and questions at the end of the chapter), let me ask you this, how well is that working for your students?  

We know it's working well of us as teachers since it's easy and what we've always done.  But given the figure that our principal always reminds us of (something like 11/44 on times our students have been above the state average in terms of test scores), it doesn't seem like business as usual is working at all - for all of our departments.

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Speaking of ushering in a new environment at our school, here is something I've come to love doing in class, making infographs.

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And while teens don't know everything (or even enough) about technology, compared to other age groups (including some teachers), they know far more.

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Here is an interesting read from a retiring principal that reappeared in the Washington Post.

I found this paragraph interesting

What has changed is that it is harder for us to be nice to kids.  With elevated standards and increased testing, we find ourselves with less leeway with which we can help a child navigate.  With ‘zero tolerance’ laws and other Draconian rules, the mistakes some children make can no longer be forgiven.  The rapid-fire social media culture means that if we ever err on the side of mercy or charity, it will quickly be seized upon by those who are just looking for us to make a mistake.  And the emphasis on punishing schools for things like dropouts makes it that much harder to enroll a student whose residence is just a bit suspect.

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 Now if we could just get our students to act this orderly . . . and graceful!