Today's Reads, Views, and Links

I bought the book How To Deliver A TED Talk: Secrets of the World's Most Inspiring Presentations at Barnes and Noble yesterday.  If we lived in Fargo, I'd be a regular there.  Yes, I couldn't gotten the book for half the price at Amazon, but the atmosphere of Barnes and Noble was unmatched. If I would have had more time, I'd have sat down and order a light roast with a shot of espresso from the Starbucks inside.

Now that's a great way to spend an afternoon!

The book, by the way, is going to be awesome.  I really wanted to buy it when I was down at TIES, but I went with the excellent Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook! by Gary Vaynerchuk.

I'm going to use the tips in here for my Honor's Banquet speech this spring as well as in designing my summer tech classes at the NWSC and my class next year.

Speaking of TED Talks, has it really been 8 years since this iconic TED Talk debuted? This was my introduction to TED Talks. And what an introduction it was!

Like all great professional development, whenever I see this I'm amazed that I was able to think, live, and teach without it.




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Here is an interesting read on a topic near and dear to my heart: Student Engagement.

Of the 26 keys to engage students, for my money, here is the most important. This is the thing I work hardest on in trying to engage my students.

Outside: To really engage students, we must bring and allow some of the their outside into the classroom. Every student we teach has something in their lives that they do well AND love. If we can identity the engaging and creative ways they do their work outside of school and find ways to bring that into the classroom, students may start to see that school is not such a bad place after all. There are many sites on which students can learn directly from experts and professionals.

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We had a department meeting last week where we looked at a rubric we - as a department - could use in selected textbooks since our curriculum cycle is up and it's time to get new textbooks.

Textbook.  Gulp.

I know.

My take on textbooks, since probably my fourth year of teaching, which was when I stopped solely using them as my curriculum, is that they are (a necessary) evil.

Full confession time here: my first year teaching I used my textbook almost religiously.  I can close my eyes and see the blue cover of the sophomore level Elements of Literature (replete with the full text of Julius Caesar and A Separate Peace).

It had some stories that I loved, "The Cold Equations," "The Bride Comes to Yellowsky," "The Pit and the Pendulum," "Two Kinds," and "With All Flags Flying."

It also contained a sample from Le morte d'arthur.  It was at this moment in the year that I tried to supplement what was going on in my curriculum.  I bought a copy of Excalibur and showed it in class. Now I still did a shameful job with this, giving a number of worksheets with and lecturing about it rather than doing anything really engaging with it.

But the students seemed to enjoy it, and, best of all, they really got into it.

That was a bit of a turning point for me.  Now I supplement my curriculum quite liberally.  This is not perfect. I sometimes (maybe often) end up stepping on the toes of someone else's curriculum.  But I try to avoid this as much as possible.

I just know that a generic textbook can never meet the individual needs to the 28 kids in my class.  So I need to supplement.

Plus, outside of education, where do textbooks thrive?

If I weren't a teacher, I'd never even consult one of the damned things.

I think Seth Godin has the right take on textbooks.




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Well, some good news finally. There is no new doomsday prophecy on the horizon.  At least until we invent one.

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I love this one.  If a student would have done this in a class of mine, I'd seriously consider giving him or her an A.

If they would have added the phrase . . . "nor does this really teach us anything," they'd have earned an A for sure!

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George Courus is one of my favorite bloggers. This post reminds us of the 3 Things That Should Never Change in Schools.

Here is another great post from Courus.  And it's a question every teach should be able to answer with either one of these two phrases: "Hell yes!" or "Damn straight!"

And he includes this wonderful bit of video shot by a teacher subjected to some horrifying professional development. If our students video taped us in class, would this type of 'learning' be going on?  Good lord, I hope not!




And Courus asks a great question: the internet is abuzz with negative comments about this type of professional development.  Yet, if you replaced these teachers with students, would the same outcry occur?

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Finally, I love this one: What It Means to be a Leader, 11 Tips.

These are my favorites -

1. People are waiting for you to make the tough decisions. If you're the leader, look around the room at your team. Yes, they are looking at you and waiting with bated breath to hear what your decision is. They might hem and haw, but in their deepest hearts they want you to make those tough decisions. We all learn by watching, and they are watching you to see how you do it.

1. Your job is to do the right thing, with love. There is a place for love in the life of a leader. In fact, that place is everywhere and with everything and everybody. No matter what you do, it's always better done with love. But still, remember #4, and don't think that doing things with love means needing to feel loved in return. You still need to do the right thing, just in the right way.

1. Get out of your comfort zone, and do new things and encourage your teams to do so, too, because that's where creative ideas, strategic intelligence, and innovation come from. Travel. Learn. Talk to people. Go food shopping. (I always call shopping "market research," since while you're there you see firsthand what people are doing and how they're responding to things.) If you do the same things over and over again, you're going to get either the same results or slightly worse results over time. The only way to get new ideas is to do new things.