Just finished The Plot to Save Socrates, by Paul Levinson, an intriguing but ultimately unsatisfying science-fiction novel. In many ways it’s in the classic time-travel genre, with the usual issues about preventing paradox and taking future knowledge back to an… Read More ›
Month: March 2006
Who has time to read blogs?
“Who has time to read blogs?” asked one of my colleagues. She went on to guess that blogs can’t have very many readers, since no one has time to read them. “Actually,” I replied, “some blogs have large numbers of… Read More ›
A student speaks out on MCAS
Michael Bendetson [real name used by permission] is a sophomore in my Algebra II class. Today he emerged from the first of many MCAS sessions with the observation that MCAS is supposed to promote education, and yet his math class… Read More ›
Homework: punishment or reward?
More than 400 students at Weston High School are participating in the Relay for Life, a fund-raiser for the American Cancer Society. Everyone is justifiably enthusiastic about this, since it’s a community effort supporting an excellent cause. But that’s not… Read More ›
Birkenstocks
According to movie director Jason Reitman: Nothing says “I want to tell you how to live your life” more than Birkenstocks.
Campaign for the education of the whole child
Schools must ensure every child has access to a rich array of subjects, including social studies, world languages, science, art, music, physical education, and recess, as well as reading and math… [T]he state must provide adequate resources to ensure that… Read More ›
Getting help from tutors and parents
“Everyone in Weston has a math tutor,” says my neighbor in Dorchester. “Kids in Weston do well in math because they all get help from their parents. And they all take math courses outside of school.” Of course this is… Read More ›
Toast
Just finished reading Nigel Slater’s memoir, Toast. Don’t bother.
Two kinds of skepticism
As I mentioned in my post of March 11, some interesting issues were raised on the unfortunate March 10 episode of Numb3rs. There was no explicit mention of the dispute between two kinds of skepticism, but that was actually the… Read More ›
Taking the mission seriously
Earlier this year I tried to figure out whether I had a common mission in all the math classes that I teach. Here’s what I eventually came up with: To empower all students to represent the world quantitatively and to… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 