Give that student a gold star

Teachers routinely use rewards and punishments in class to guide students to desired behaviors and even to recognize high scores in an assessment. Schools and teachers should stop. The basic premise is simple. If a student receives something desirable for an action, s/he will do it more and if that something is undesirable, s/he will do it less. The problem is the other things which happen.

This old chestnut

I was catching up with my friend Joe the other day and he told me of a problem they had in their school last year. Parents had been very energized, with petitions, storming meetings, trying to involve media and state politicians, and taking a great deal of time and energy from administrators and teachers. The reason? The school was reviewing its sex education program.

School bars dad from kid's camp

This is a tough one from my "What is a school to do?" series. A loving father, which is good, wants to be involved in his son's school. which is good, and wants to volunteer at one of his son's school activities, a camp, which is good. However, Dad is in a gang.

Not an easy question to answer

I spoke to a former colleague today. I haven't seen him for months because of lockdown, so much of the conversation was "what happened to x?" and "what is y doing?". However, he floored me with a question about a teaching acquaintance of his, and as to whether he should act or not.

Return to school

The topic of students, teachers and other staff going back to school in these days of COVID-19 is front and center in the educational and parenting worlds. Yet there is a third party to these decisions who is neither. The decision-makers in this case are the politicians.

Board games

I came across an NPR story about a religious community who had no children in their local public school district and yet they took over that district's board. This reminded me of the trojan horse incident in England where another religious community took over that school's board. In both cases, this was democratic and lawful.  Neither was appropriate.

Do vouchers reduce spending on public education?

US National Education Secretary Betsy de Vos makes no secret of her desire to fund private education with public funds, and the recent COVID budget and stimulus bills are providing this opportunity. While fighting this, opponents inevitably raise school vouchers and education tax credits and paint them with the same brush.

To be or to become

It's the old nature v nurture argument again. Are you "born this way" or are you shaped by circumstance or even self-made?

Screentime, lockdown and COVID

Recent events have forced children to spend more time in front of a screen and the first results or studies should be coming out soon. I have a suspicion as to one of the things we will learn.

Why do teachers teach?

I saw an interesting study a few years ago about the average educational level of teachers 50 years ago compared to today. It was higher then.

How young is too young?

Education based on birthdays is just bizarre and I suggest is anti-child. Children should learn, do activities, join classes based on their appropriateness and not on some calendar square.

Apologies for the silence

You may notice a gap in time between my last post and this, and you may even be asking yourself, "why?".