larnin

In-state vs. out-of-state.

May 13, 2012

An anonymous reader e-mails: “I was accepted into an out of state university and decided to go there this fall. But now I’m having second thoughts. Should I stay in Florida instead? Why did you decide to pick Clemson instead of staying in state?” This question is eerily similar to one posed by a former [...]

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Responses to questions about education.

April 8, 2012

“Future Parent and possibly Teacher…15 years from now” e-mailed a series of questions. Here are some brief responses: “Where do you see us standing in terms of education quality 15 years from now?” It’ll be better at some schools, worse at others, and roughly the same at still others. There will still be the traditional [...]

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QFT.

March 31, 2012

I have a new favorite quote about teaching. It comes from Glenn Reynolds of blogging and law-professoring fame: It is not compassionate to allow your students to learn less than they should. –Instapundit.com, March 25, 2011. There may be some quibbling over the precise meaning of “should,” especially given the practice of shoving kids into [...]

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True story.

February 9, 2012

Yesterday I was invited to be one of several judges at a middle school history fair. It turned out to be eight times more enjoyable than I expected, partly on the strength of the turkey sandwich they fed me, but mostly due to the quality of the presentations and my impression that the kiddies truly [...]

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‘

January 31, 2012

A friend of mine recently lamented that too many people don’t know the difference between “it’s” and “its.” He wrote what he hoped would be a simple mnemonic device that would help writers use the terms properly. I would like to think that this would help folks make the distinction, but I know better. Therefore [...]

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χ².

November 15, 2011

A tongue-in-cheek article by A. Barton Hinkle claims that “Now We Know Why Children Are Getting Dumber.” In essence, it’s because the volume of knowledge keeps expanding. There’s always more literature out there to be pored over, there’s always more scientific innovation and discovery to help explain the natural world, and there’s always more history [...]

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Protected: The wrong button.

September 27, 2011

There is no excerpt because this is a protected post.

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Heinz.

July 25, 2011

Whilst going through some files and folders yesterday, I found some paperwork from my student teaching internship and was reminded of a story. Clemson didn’t call it an internship, they called it a “practicum,” which I suppose is a more accurate term, but I call it an internship because otherwise most folks don’t know what [...]

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To Mrs. Coburn.

June 14, 2011

Many many moons ago I was nearly killed in an industrial accident (not the gamma radiation kind, but the impalement-on-the-axle-of-a-large-machine kind) and thereupon decided it was time to go into an arguably safer profession: teaching. I enrolled in education courses for the next year, did a semester’s internship after that, and then began searching for [...]

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Vote The Fifth.

May 20, 2011

For the “free response” part of their AP exams, students are given green booklets that contain the questions and pink booklets in which to write their answers. They can scribble whatever they wish in either book, but the pink ones get sent off to be scored while the green ones end up in my file [...]

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Out of the park.

January 14, 2011

Yesterday the principal told me that I made it through to the next round of the district-level Teacher of the Year competition. That means we’re down to about 15 or 20 semifinalists out of 160 nominees. I was honored and thrilled, or at least as thrilled as I can get. So I asked what was [...]

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