Anyone who has been in the profession of teaching long enough to have students who are now well past their last degree will have had the experience of their pupils coming back to tell them how their time in school Read More …
Month: July 2009
A Tale of Two Annual Days
When children are given a platform along with a set of broad expectations, they can perform in ways that surprise and delight us, often dealing with what adults see as impediments and limitations with maturity and panache. We as teachers Read More …
Different Strokes
It’s dinned into our heads right from when we begin learning about teaching that each child is different, that we need to teach in a way that addresses the potential of the individual child. But somewhere along the line the Read More …
Take a Moment… or More
As we near the stress-point of the school calendar – examinations coming up, syllabi to be completed, “laggards” to be dealt with – we are more focused on just getting things done rather than on the manner in which we Read More …
Say it in Your Own Words
Remember why the good Lord made your eyes Let nothing evade your eyes Plagiarise, plagiarise, plagiarise! – Tom Lehrer, Harvard mathematician That rather tongue-in-cheek advice from a modern-day satirist-songster seems to have become the rule for many writers of the Read More …
New Points of View
Year-end reviews can be strange things. Depending on the specific point from which you decide to look back, or the particular path you decide to take on your wandering backward, you come up with a different sense of the year. Read More …
In the Spirit of Things
As many of us get ready for the half-yearly exams, we are also wondering with trepidation whether we will be able to instill a sense of seriousness in our wards, anxious about completing board syllabi, and possibly, recovering from a Read More …
Lessons to Learn
On a recent trek I came across an old fallen log covered with moss, ferns sprouting out of its various nooks and crannies, its hollow occupied by a variety of wildlife small, tiny and conceivably, microscopic. My more knowledgeable companion Read More …
Beyond Tokenism
Ho-hum. Another Teachers’ Day has come…and gone. In some schools, children perhaps dress up in adult clothes and pretend to take charge of classes for a day. In others, the children entertain their teachers with song, dance and drama. There Read More …
Just Do It!
Having attended a surfeit of meetings over the past few months, I am completely amazed at the confidence with which many people are able to articulate opinions that are–to put it kindly–not particularly original nor well thought out. Restatements of Read More …