Philosophy Without A Home

Recently @ courosa tweeted this blog post The Interview Question you Should Ask . The question is "What do you do with your spare time?" The answer should be, according to the article, pretty much the same thing I do at work. Thus you are putting in twice as much time as the next guy and will be that much better. It is sort of the same idea as Malcom Gladwell discovered in his book "Outliers: The Story of Success" I haven't read it yet, but it seems to be making the rounds in my particular echo chamber and I have picked up on the basic idea. (or what everyone says is the basic idea) That is that to become an expert at something you need 10,000 hours of practice. Or the difference between someone who is accepted to a school like Juliard and someone not accepted is that the first put in 10,000 hours of practice (about 8 hrs a day for 10 years) while the second wasn't as dedicated. While I will conced the point that, "practice does make perfect",

Contact: Brendan Murphy 3819 Lincolnshire Dr McHenry IL 60051 815-669-4477 http://purplepeople.pbwiki.com/McHenry-pinkslipparty dendari@gmail.com Twitter #pinkslipparty coming to McHenry What is it: A #pinkslipparty is an informal networking opportunity for anyone who has lost a job, is in danger or losing a job, knows someone who lost a job, or would like to help someone who has lost a job. Where is it: Usually held at a conference room, public house, church basement, or any space that is free or donated. As of this moment the location is still TBD. See http://purplepeople.pbwiki.com/McHenry-pinkslipparty for updates on where, or donate a space. When: The current #pinkslipparty in McHenry is scheduled for March 6th 2009 at 6:00PM. Why: With record unemployment numbers we all wish to do everything we can to help our neighbors and community. How can I help: Jobs are not found in the classified ads they are found when one person connects with another person. Come, meet, mingle, and netwo

I wonder about the education we give out children these days. I know some of the top schools in our country graduate students who are as good or better than any student in the world. Even some of our worst schools do a better job then they really have a right to considering the circumstances. The problem is there are far too many students who are graduating without a quality grasp of the knowledge and skills they will need to be successful in life, or at least at a job. Professor X writes a provocative essay about just that. Some more interesting quotes I've read recently. ...but that the college degree has been substituted by employers for the high school diploma, which now signifies no skills or knowledge at all. Diane Ravitch Education week Ordinary citizens need to be in a position to make judgments about institutions they can see, feel, and “taste.” Deborah Meier Education Week No Child Left Behind, the biggest social engineering project of our time, put 50 million school c

I am hoping to start a leadership training program this summer, if I am accepted. Moving on to administration has always been a desire. I had the opportunity after my second year of teaching, but I thought I needed more experience as a teacher. After seven years of teaching in two schools and three grades I think I'm ready to begin learning. In preparation of a possible interview request I thought I would reflect a bit about the principals I've known. In my seven years of teaching I've had 4 different principals. (I've also had 6 superintendents, but that is a different story.) I'm not willing to say any of them were out and out bad, but I will say they all had their own way of doing things. Let's just say I think one difference between principals is that good principals hire good people then get out of the way, while fair principals just get out of the way. I would then assume that bad principals get in the way, but I haven't had to deal with that. I was ho

Universities have never been known to be very forgiving when it comes to tuition payment. If you don't pay you don't get the grades, with out grades you can't register for the next semester or receive your diploma. Perhaps that needs to change, or at least take a hiatus for a year or two . Then again maybe not as some of the smaller underfunded private universities are finding it just as difficult to keep the doors open as many businesses. Harvard or Yale could probably go a few years without taking in any tuition, but then again...

There are just some gadgets I would love to have. Some may exist some may not I haven't seen most of these things, but I'm sure many could be found for enough money. Let's start with the Kindle, or the Sony reader or one of several similar electronic book readers. They are great, that is if you want to spend $300 for a library in your pocket. Did I mention you have to buy the books separately? The problem is what I really want to do is to be able to highlight sections of the book and write notes in the margin. At the moment I do this by copying what I read into open office and use that to highlight and comment. Total cost zero dollars, but I am chained to my computer, which at the moment is a desktop. Of course that leads me to the second gadget. (if you want to call it that) I don't want to be chained to a desktop computer, but I'm not happy with a laptop either. (I need two screens) I've thought about a netbook or a powerful cell phone, but they don't have

The old model of school (the one that still seems to be the most popular and the most familiar) is based upon the idea that the teacher is the authority and delivers knowledge to the students. While this works relatively well in most cases I don't think it is the best model. Most “progressive” educators would rather schools are more student centric. Allowing students to drive their own education. I don't really want to go into that at the moment. Let's get into the connection between our current economic crisis and our current school system. At the moment even though the reform education moment start with John Dewey around 100 years ago most classrooms are still based on students sitting quietly and taking instruction from the teacher. Even here where I live in one of the “better” school districts we can see e vidence that the students are taught at a very early age to be quiet and listen to the teacher. If students are in a situation where they are ex