Philosophy Without A Home

The other day I saw the following on twitter. Having had the same thought on occasion as a teacher I responded with: Being in a playful mood I included this at almost the exact same time Rob replied. At least I hit enter before the 12 second Tweetdeck refresh rate showed the following comment from Rob. (I probably would have responded in similar fashion, judging from this earlier blog post ): I returned this logical thought: Which was obviously familiar: Now I do have some definite thoughts on homework. I know there are some who think homework is, if not useless than at the least it's importance is overblown. Such as this report by Dr. Marzano and this book The End of Homework: How Homework Disrupts Families, Overburdens Children, and Limits Learning by Etta Kralovac and The Case Against Homework by Bennet and Kalish. I am in total agreement that homework given out as busy work is a waste of time. However, homework that promotes learning shoul

I was up late the other night with a cranky 18 month old. He actually gets up way too often at around 3 in the morning. During this free time I usually catch up on my Daily Show , but sometimes I get to watch the news. I don't much care for the TV news, if anything I might watch my local station, WGN , and not just because my cousin is a producer. At 3 AM though the news is limited to 24 hour networks. So I decided to switch between MSNBC and FOX . I figured if I watch the two most slanted newscasts I might find some sort of middle ground. It didn't work. MSNBC had some Democratic congresswoman. She and the anchor spent the entire time I watched wondering if Kirsten Gillibrand were in the pocket of the NRA and speculating on what other secret right wing ties she might have. I guess they didn't realize that there used to be a time when it was ok for politicians to differ a bit from the strict party line. Photo found on flickr creative commons search http://www.flickr.com/pho

Describe the skills or attributes you believe are necessary to be an outstanding teacher. An outstanding teaching is one who is knows the material he is teaching, knows how the material works in the real world, knows the skills that are necessary to learn the material, knows how the material fits into the next stage of learning, knows the most likely problems students will have, is ready to deal with those problems. An outstanding teacher is predictable. Each unit will work along the same outline; each lesson will follow a basic outline. Students will know the objectives of each lesson and the objective will be reinforced throughout the lesson. Students will know that what they do in class and for homework will have a point. An outstanding teacher will build knowledge. Students will start with the familiar and stretch towards the new. Students will build knowledge based on their own understanding first then connect their innate understanding to the formal skills they are learning. An o

I am currently searching for a job. The first piece of advice when looking for a job is to make it your full time occupation. That means spending a lot of time on job search sites, Monster and Career Builder, but also McHenry and Lake County ROE sites, as well as going to a lot of school sites. I like the McHenry ROE because all schools list openings on the site, one click to get to the application, and the same application can be used for all. If you haven't applied for a teaching position lately you may not realize how much work it can be just to fill out an application. The average school requires two essays to be included with the application. Not bad really as it gives the school a bit more to look at than a basic resume. How different can teaching resumes be really? I have a college degree, I have or am expecting a certification. I use differentiation and a bunch of other buzz words on a regular basis. Now think about it from the applicants point of view. I'm looking for

Chris Lehmann didn’t want to write a post. I didn’t either, but I wrote a comment . I just need to clarify perhaps. The idea of standards has been popping up a lot lately. I guess with the appointment of a new secretary of Education and the promise of putting more money into schools, everyone wants to restart the conversation of how to find some accountability with teachers. My original comment. David Warlick wrote a blog a few days ago. A quote from the blog "You operate these devices natively, by approaching it with a certain frame of mind, not by method. There is absolutely no harm in this." This I think might be the problem with the philosophy of standards and many so called "reforms" that seem to be popular these days. The focus is on the method or process while many 21 Century schools focus more on concept, or owning knowledge. As Dan Meyer says in his blog New teachers teach procedure better than concept. Procedure is important — you'll never hear me s

I started this blog a while ago in the hopes of getting some writing done for a book that has been in my head for almost 20 years. Years ago when I was a young man and thought I knew everything pearls of wisdom, as my dad would call them, would pop into my head. I thought I would start writing them down and publish a book. I was hitchhiking around Europe at the time hence Philosophy With Out A Home was born. I find with age my memory has gone so I don’t remember many of the pearls of wisdom. The book may never get written, on the other hand I might just switch my focus from telling people how smart I am to something people might just want to read. The most difficult part about writing for me, like most people, is the discipline necessary to writing. I’ve never been able to keep the habit of sitting and writing everyday. That is until I started blogging in my previous job. There I wrote and posted a blog article almost everyday for months. I’ve slacked since the holiday

Laid off today. Here is a web page with my resume http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dfr6vdp_37dx25b8cp email dendari at gmail if you have any leads or advice. Thanks Brendan