Genius Freak

This year, more than any other in my teaching career, I am swimming in newness. New teacher evaluation systems based on new frameworks outlining what it means to be an effective teacher.  New requirements for establishing specific objectives for student growth.  New expectations for rigor in the standards driving instruction.  That’s a lot of newness to process: terminology to learn, skills to develop, assignments to complete.  Even for an old-timer like me, with a pretty broad foundation to attach new knowledge to, at times this year it has seemed like the number of things I am being asked to master exceeds the amount of time I have in a day to do it.   Lately, I have realized that with all of this stuff coming at me this this year, I am in the same situation that my students are in throughout their school lives.  With new learning coming at me from several directions, I have been forced into the role of the novice where the newness is concerned, as o...

My students are writing papers this week.  Not the pick-a-side type of persuasive essay they have written so many of, allegedly in training for the multitude of standardized assessments we impose upon them throughout their school lives.  They are writing fairly complex synthesis and analysis essays, apropos for students soon to be venturing into college classrooms where the pick-a-side essay is a long-forgotten acquaintance.   In preparation, we were reviewing some of the Common Core Standards relevant to our endeavor.  I posted this on the board. Big (Learning) Goals (copied from the Common Core): Write arguments to support claims in an analysis of substantive texts, using valid reasoning and sufficient evidence. Produce clear and coherent writing in which the development, organization, and style are appropriate to task, purpose, and audience. Develop and strengthen writing as needed by planning, revising, editing, rewriting, or trying a new appr...

Nuts and flowers.  Raw materials of sustenance, growth, and beauty.   And for Henry D. Thoreau, an apt analog for the naturally haphazard thought processes of the unfettered human brain.   Thoreau wrote in his journal on February 6, 1841 -- long before modern insights into brain science and metacognition: Nature strews her nuts and flowers broadcast, and never collects them into heaps.  A man does not tell us all he has thought about truth or beauty at a sitting, but, from his last thought on the subject, wanders through a varied scenery of upland, meadow, and woodland to his next.  Sometimes a single and casual thought rises naturally and inevitably with a queenly majesty and escort, like the stars in the east. (16) No doubt we have all experienced that free flow of thought from one idea to the next, often at our moments of greatest insight and creativity.  I suspect that even the most linear and concrete thinkers among us don’t generally think ...