If you’re reading this in the Boston area, you probably know about the Boston Globe’s problem with home deliveries this month. As soon as they switched delivery companies just before the beginning of the year, massive problems ensued — principally a complete… Read More ›
Weston
PD
Yesterday was a professional development day in Weston. The entire K–12 faculty met together for a long lecture on special ed law, two workshops (I picked Google Classroom and 3-D Printing among a lot of choices), and a film about… Read More ›
Teaching and learning are our priorities…aren’t they?
Surely our top priorities in a school must be teaching and learning…right? We know that a lot of things get in the way of those priorities, but still they’re the essence of what school is all about. At some point,… Read More ›
MOOCs
Two headlines from different publications: No Rich Child Left Behind, and Enriching the Rich: Why MOOCs are not improving education Weston High faculty creates online courses for the world Are these headlines saying the same thing in different words? Not really…. Read More ›
This Book is Overdue
“This book is overdue,” I observed as I handed the book to the librarian in order to check it out. It had been on the Hold shelf, as I had requested it earlier, so it still had the request slip… Read More ›
Congratulations to the Math Team!
Congratulations to the Weston High School Math Team for their fine performance at this afternoon’s Massachusetts Math League meet! After trekking to the wilds of Acton, the team garnered a total of 111 points. Senior Akiva Gordon was in top place,… Read More ›
No comment.
One of my students has this sticker on the cover of his laptop: No comment.
Overparenting
Take a minute to listen to Stanford’s Dean of Freshmen, Julie Lythcott-Haims: Incoming students are brilliant and accomplished and virtually flawless, on paper. But with each year, more of them seem incapable of taking care of themselves. At the same time, parents… Read More ›
On the Razzle
Tom Stoppard’s On the Razzle was this fall’s production of the Weston High School Theatre Company. Wikipedia’s one-sentence characterization is as good as any: Stoppard’s farce consists of two hours of slapstick shenanigans, mistaken identities, misdirected orders, malapropisms, double entendres, and romantic… Read More ›
MoS FT
Today we took 200 high-school freshmen on a full-day combined geometry-and-physics field trip to the Museum of Science. It was fun, educational, and…exhausting. Sometimes it was like herding cats. Fortunately we had a dozen adults, so no one individual was responsible… Read More ›
Einstein’s Dreams
What a mystifying play! Yesterday I went to see Einstein’s Dreams at the Central Square Theater, and I wish I brought Dr. Korsunsky along so that he could have explained the physics to me. A year of honors physics in high school was… Read More ›
“All students are expected to attend detention.”
Announcement I just noticed on the school’s closed-circuit TV: “All students are expected to attend detention.” Hmmm….
Extreme photojournalism
Famed New York Times/freelance photojournalist Lynsey Addario gave an intense presentation to students and faculty of Weston High School yesterday afternoon. “Intense” is definitely the word. Never before have I heard eight hundred high-school students sit so quietly and attentively for… Read More ›
How do you organize a binder?
Let’s suppose you have to keep a physical notebook (or binder) for a course you’re taking (or teaching, for that matter). Most people seem to prefer using tabs to give themselves the illusion of organization (oops — that shows my… Read More ›
JEB @PA
They tell us that students should get to know their teachers. So, every year I show my classes excerpts from Kevin Rafferty’s movie, Regular Guys. This is partly so that my students can get a better picture of my own high-school experience and partly… Read More ›
Why crypto in high school?
So I was out to dinner this evening with some old friends — no, not “old” friends in that sense, but “old friends” if you know what I mean — and one of them was surprised that cryptography is effectively… Read More ›
Why he stopped doing interviews for Yale
Ben Orlin hits the nail on the head in his brief essay titled “Why I’ve Stopped Doing Interviews for Yale.” The whole admissions process for highly selective colleges has become an unpredictable mess, as many of my recent high-school students will tell… Read More ›
“You’re not actually bad at math.”
This picture sits atop an interesting article in Slate magazine, titled “You’re not actually bad at math” and subtitled “A new way to think about how to reason.” Although I call the article “interesting,” it’s ultimately disappointing. It raises several… Read More ›
Standards of mathematical practice: A portfolio
Check out Tina Cardone’s post about standards of mathematical practice. Her suggestions relate closely to my post of August 30, where I discussed the attributes of a good mathematician and how we’re planning to measure them in Weston. There’s a… Read More ›
Why?
What is the key question? Not to sound like Abbott and Costello, but actually “why” is the key question. A year ago, my boss’s boss, Pam Bator — new in that role at the time — started a blog called“Why?” Note… Read More ›
Learning Strategies 