My father passed this on to me, (thanks dad). I love that the venue was a valedictorian speech, by someone who graduated at the top of her class. This is probably one of the best arguments I’ve heard against standardized testing and perhaps against standardizing education for the masses for that matter. It starts with […]
Tag: datruss
First Day of School 2010 – a Google Search Story
I had some fun this morning creating a Google Search Story. The tag line (description) for this video is, “If you are just looking for activity worksheets, then you are missing the point!” I took advantage of my own high search-ability to do a little self-promotion in the search results, but the link that shows […]
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Parents as partners
I firmly believe that “It takes a community to raise a child” and so without cooperation and communication between a school and their parent community, ‘we’ cannot fully support our children and their learning. That said, I often wonder about how we can more meaningfully engage parents in a way that they want to be […]
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One last time
Here is a little slide show of me in one of my ‘roles of a principal‘: Ball-retriever. Before I got into administration, my good friend Dave Sands always used to say, “Being an elementary school principal is like being a rock star in a boy-band“… I got the first taste of that two weeks into […]
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Leadership in the digital age
This was sent to me by a good friend and mentor, (and a leader in his district). It refers to news about my school moving to a BYO Laptop program. The humour in it is that he lives in Canada and I’m in China… beyond that it speaks volumes about how important school level leadership […]
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Photosynthesis and Learning: a learning metaphor
A few weeks back I was in a Grade 9 class that was working on Lit Circles. The conversation progressed to the teacher asking, “So why do we do lit circles?” The first student to answer said, “To get an ‘A’.” I know the student well enough that I was able to interject and say, […]
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Math can be beautiful!
It can also be oversimplified and boring and taught very poorly. A boy rides his bicycle for 30 minutes and he travels 7.5 kilometers. How far can he travel in 3 hours? If you do the (simple) math, with the three basic pieces of information given- an oversimplified strategy many math books employ, you’ll see […]
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Shifting Attitudes
Have you made the Shift? Are you an agent of change? Where do you fit? This is Part III of a 3 part series. When I started this series I had an outline that I only vaguely ended up following, but I knew from the start that what I wanted to say was too much […]
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Choose Your Battle
Choose your position: Are you a gatekeeper, policemen, guard… or teacher? All these jobs are necessary, but which one belongs in schools? Choose your battle: Filters that also filter learning -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Banning POD’s -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Teaching without technology -or- High expectations about appropriate use? Make no mistake, having […]
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A Culture of Caring
At our school we have a little rhyme that we say to remember three big ideas that make a school a great place to be. The saying is simply: Care, Share, Dare. So what does this mean to us? To Care – In a school we need to care first for ourselves, our well-being and […]
