Here’s a provocative thesis for you: grades are the devil. They’re evil. They’re evil because they’re oppressive and overvalued. And they’re dumb, not stupid-dumb (although, that’s kind of true), but rather mute-dumb. They don’t tell us anything. They don’t tell us what we need to know about what’s been taught or how, what’s been learned,Continue reading “Are Grades The Devil?”
Monthly Archives: March 2011
Difficult Work: It’s A Good Thing They Like Me
Teachers who say that it doesn’t matter whether or not students like them have something wrong with their brains. It seems to me that one of a teacher’s greatest tools, an ace in the hole, so to speak, or, conversely, his greatest deficit, is whether or not his students like, love, or hate him. Here’sContinue reading “Difficult Work: It’s A Good Thing They Like Me”
Difficult Work: Oh, Let Me Count The Ways
Teaching is bloody difficult work. And don’t let anyone give you that romantic drivel about the three months teachers have off every year as an argument that teachers have some kind of cushy existence. I’ve seen the sticker, and even though it contains a kernel of guilty truthiness for me, I philosophically abhor the message:Continue reading “Difficult Work: Oh, Let Me Count The Ways”
Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better
The following is the prologue for a work in progress about—you guessed it—teaching. It may become a real book some day, I hope, or, at the very least, a series of related blog entries. Prologue Imagine, it’s August, and I am in the last few days, minutes, and moments of what we call in theContinue reading “Try Again, Fail Again, Fail Better”
michael jarmer 