Today's Reads, Views, and Links

My Wish for This Year's Kindergartners

I am afraid my kindergarten years (yes, I had two.  I was held back) were much like this.  I don't believe I have a single positive memory from either.

I do recall one teacher (from my second year of kindergarten) teaching us to tie our shoes.  I wore cowboy boots (most likely to avoid learning how to tie shoes).  And, by the way, that was the last time I've worn cowboy boots too!

The teacher reminded me again and again to wear normal shoes so I could learn how to tie them.  I never did.

Exasperated one day, she kicked off her own brown shoe and stuck my head into it and told me that she was sick and tired of me wearing boots and that I was going to learn how to tie her shoe.

Well, her shoe smelled so horrible (that is probably my most vivid memory from all of elementary school), that somehow I actually tied it!

Let's hope the author isn't accurate when she states

Almost 90 years have passed since my father entered kindergarten. The world has changed in every way but this one. It seems the purpose of the children's gardenremains teaching children how to operate within the confines of the public school system: Sit down, use an indoor voice, raise your hand, do the work quickly and correctly, and get ready for first grade.


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Perhaps if this were made more of a part of curriculum in our schools, we wouldn't have such horrible experiences with school in general.

This is very interesting -

But what if students could explore an important life lesson about how to identify and replicate happiness as they’re doing school work? That’s the premise behind New Tech Network’s Global Happiness Project. The driving question behind the project is this: What elements contribute to a happy and healthy society? More than 240 teachers across in 43 states and 11 countries are taking up that challenge.

Later in the article, the author focuses on one of my new passions: the growth mindset.

If the shoe tying incident from kindergarten was my worst memory from school, then when just about every class period in 9th grade English was the highlight.

And why?

I was happy.  I wasn't just happy because of the subjects, having my friends in class, or the material.  Instead, as I reflect on it, I think I was most happy because it was the first time I was fully engaged in a class.  I knew I was learning something.  Better yet, I was learning something that I realized I was actually good at.  Better still, not only was I good at something (reading, writing, and discussing literature) but I also had a passion for it.  In other words, I saw the growth mindset in action: yes, I had talent as a writer (all those years of devouring Stephen King novels and reading Metal Edge and Hit Parader cover to cover gave me a great vocabulary), but I also realized the harder I worked on my talent, the more talented I became.

We need far more of that in schools than teaching kids how to color inside the lines.

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Two very interesting reads about another subject I've become passionate about: education in Finland.

A Day in the Life of an American Teacher in Finland

Why I Left America to Teach in Finland

I think there's a lot we can learn from Finland, such as how we educate, train, and value teachers.  But there is no way we simply can replicate what they do here.  They are tiny and pretty homogenous.  America?  Not so.

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Struggling to engage your students?

Here is an article on another topic I've become passionate about: millennials.  This one is called 5 Strategies For Engaging Students With Video.

Here are the five strategies -

1. Merge compelling video into compelling content

I have a knack for this.  I'm forever downloading or bookmarking commercials and intriguing clips from Youtube to use in class.

One of my favorite examples of this is a Keynote I created that illustrates the ten different ways writers can start essays.  For each way, I include several video examples.  You can hear a pin drop in the class when this is going.  Well, except for the laughter or tears, depending on the video.

2. Capture sessions and share them immediately

I have started to do this more, though not necessarily through video as opposed to pictures.  But with my iPhone and iPad, there is no excuse for not doing more of this.


3. Make it easy for instructors to create and share video

I have a knack for this too.  Just check out this, which I created awhile ago




  4. Optimize content for playback

Luckily, nearly every student has a smart phone that allows for them to quickly record video.  And the library has several digital cameras to do the same.  Then it's quite simple to upload the video to Youtube, Dropbox, or even Google Docs to have the footage.  Then it's simple to import it to iMove to edit it.

5. Empower students to become content creators

This is the best thing I've stumbled into in the past decade.  My students do this in every class: in Lit and Lang 9R it's creating their own blogs with iMove trailers; in College Comp it's their responses to The Element and The Dip; in College Comp 2, it's their Sticky-Note Book Report, their responses to The Dumbest Generation, their Steal Like an Artist lessons.

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A lot of what I've been reading, such as Cal Newport's So Good They Can't Ignore You, questions the career advice of 'do what you love.'

This article argues that there might actually be something to doing what you love for a career.

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Some great advice from one of my all time favorites, Seth Godin, on dealing with drama in the workplace: It's Only High School if You Let it be.

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A very interesting read: Ex Yale Professor: For a Good Education, Avoid the Ivy League.

The more I read this, the more I see at the heart of this, the danger of students getting trapped in the fixed mindset.  If students have the growth mindset, they won't see competition as toxic.  They won't see their intelligence and talents as fixed.  It they're fixed, then they can't grow.  All they can do is erode.  No wonder they are stressed and depressed.

Look beneath the façade of seamless well-adjustment, and what you often find are toxic levels of fear, anxiety, and depression, of emptiness and aimlessness and isolation. A large-scale survey of college freshmen recently found that self-reports of emotional well-being have fallen to their lowest level in the study’s 25-year history.

But college - elite or otherwise - doesn't have to be that way.

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The End of 'Genius.'  

This is right in tune with the work of Steven Johnson, especially in his innovation trilogy of The Ghost Map, The Invention of Air, and Where Good Ideas Come From.

But the lone genius is a myth that has outlived its usefulness. Fortunately, a more truthful model is emerging: the creative network, as with the crowd-sourced Wikipedia or the writer’s room at “The Daily Show” or — the real heart of creativity — the intimate exchange of the creative pair, such as John Lennon and Paul McCartney and myriad other examples with which we’ve yet to fully reckon.

So how can we allow students to work in creative teams in schools?  That's the question.

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An interesting take on the messages that we're sending our students (and our own children) about their digital footprints.

Yes, our digital footprints are likely permanent.

However, does that mean we should teach our kids (or should we do this ourselves) to be inauthentic about who we are on line?

Whatever happened to being proud of who we really are?

Most of my friends confess to me, "Man, I'm so glad we grew up without digital media."  The implication is that we all did very stupid stuff that we are very glad didn't get documented permanently.

But the key point is - didn't we turn out all right?  Okay, maybe not all of us, but most of us.

What is wrong with accepting that the young - just like we did when we were their ages - make mistakes and do stupid things, such as taking pictures of themselves drunk or performing practical jokes.  Just because we can see their stupidity forever, is that a just cause for companies to never higher them?

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The Seven A's of Successful High Schools

Which ones are the essential ones for your school?

I'd vote for these as the most vital -

Academics, Activities, Acts of Service, and the Arts.

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This is amazing.  It's science's limited attempt to put our place in the universe in context.  I could spend all day learning from this.

Now this is what more education should be like.  Not a dry, one dimensional text book.

Give kids this.  Let them get lost.  Ask them what they learned. Let them make connections.  Then, ultimately, let them make their own creations like this in which they put their worlds in context like this.

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And finally, I love 2cellos, especially their version of AC/DC's "Thunderstruck."




Now, though we have this guy -