At first I thought it was a teacher thing. I would ask how someone was doing and they would say, “I’m really busy.” This was often followed by a description of how little sleep they had gotten and how much grading they had done. Teachers weren’t whining. It wasn’t a “poor me” attitude. It was more of a sense of pride. As teachers, we often wear “busy” like a badge of honor, advertising to the world how out of control our careers have become.
You and a coworker step into an elevator. As you descend in the tiny metal box, the silence between you grows awkward. Suddenly your coworker blurts out, “Such a shame that we’re stuck in the office on a beautiful day like this!” You mumble, “It sure is.” As an introvert, you despise making small talk; it feels like your brain was literally…
Kids, and adults, can certainly learn stuff from watching videos of the type Green produces (and I have). But those topics exist in isolation. And connecting them into something actually useful is a far more difficult process. One that requires teachers. Source: Video Will Not Fix Education – Assorted Stuff Skills in isolation is never a…
Economists expect that millions of American jobs are going to be replaced by automation in the coming decades. But where will those job losses take place? Which areas will be hardest hit? Much of the focus regarding automation has been on the Rust Belt. There, many workers have been replaced by machines, and the number…
In 1999, an English solicitor named Sally Clark went on trial for the murder of her two infant sons. She claimed both succumbed to sudden infant death syndrome. An expert witness for the prosecution, Sir Roy Meadow, argued that the odds of SIDS claiming two children from such an affluent family were 1 in 73…
He didn’t know it, but this student was asking for his teacher to be more of a warm demander — a key strategy for creating equity in the classroom. Warm demanders are teachers who, in the words of author Lisa Delpit, “expect a great deal of their students, convince them of their own brilliance, and…
“And don’t ever imitate anybody,” Hemingway cautioned in his advice to aspiring writers. But in this particular sentiment, the otherwise insightful Nobel laureate seems to have been blind to his own admonition against the dangers of ego, for only the ego can blind an artist to the recognition that all creative work begins with imitation…
