To start the conversation around neurobiology, brain structures, and their roles, years ago1 I developed a scenario wherein students had to think-through an hypothetical impending brain surgery and the preoperative neurological evaluation commonly …
- the classic
Education
Psychology
Technology
EdTech
Preoperative Neurological Evaluation, in the classroom
Technology
EdTech
Sticking with Evernote
After experimenting with both Obsidian and DEVONthink for a month (as discussed here), I’ve decided to stick with Evernote.
It isn’t perfect. I don’t like the bloat in the application, and I don’t use it as my to-do list or calendar. But it does a …
Psychology
Political Advocacy analysis, Fall 2027
As I have been doing for the past few years, students in my four psychology courses (two sections of Social-Cognitive Psychology and two sections of Behavioral Neuroscience) completed the “political advocacy” assignment, wherein they …
Education
Report
The Mattering Gap, a report
The Walton Family Foundation and the good folks at Gallup have partnered for a series of reports on the current state of Education in America. The latest is “Teaching for Tomorrow: The Mattering Gap Among K-12 Educators.”
Page 4 has the …
Hello, world!*
Reposted from SFMTA’s MUNI Instagram.
Rethinking my PKM: Moving beyond Evernote
TL;DR: After more than a decade with Evernote, I’m evaluating a move because my archive has grown to about 42 GB across 6,311 files, and I want better long-term control over the underlying data. The two …
Kind Notes
I primarily teach 12th graders; somewhere else on campus, they were given the opportunity to write a short note, and several chose to write to me. These are exceedingly kind, and I make note of them here only so that in darker days, I can …
It’s behind a paywall obviously but I have a chapter in a recently published book:
Castro, E.E. (2026). Generative AI, Psychotherapy, and Secondary Education. In I. Katzarska-Miller, M. Jackson, and M. Fortner (Eds.) Integrating Generative AI in …
Watching the Crew-kids practice was thoroughly impressive! The precision movements required reminded of the micro-movements of golf, paired with the coordination of synchronized swimming or cheer, paired with the strength of rugby. Really, it was …
I was asked by some students to “come watch” their practice at Lake Merced. I thought I’d just be on the dock, watching them go by, but noooooo. Coach invited me into her launch, and I rode alongside as the two Varsity 8 boats warmed-up.
A student in Social-Cognitive Psychology last semester (Fall 2025) wrote to their federal elected representatives about the inaccurate claims that Tylenol caused Autism Spectrum Disorder. The student came to my room this week to show me the attached …
Fall 2025 PEERS Goal Analysis
November Goal
On November 4, 2025, I submitted the following:
I will evaluate the effectiveness of transitioning from in-class, timed, weekly quizzes to at-home checks-for-understanding by conducting correlation analysis …
Psychology
Political Advocacy, Fall 2025
I, again, asked students to choose a political issue that was important to them, think of how it intersects with their study of psychology, research this issue, and write a letter to their elected representatives, …
6* Social-Cognitive Psychology lesson on observational learning from September 3, 2025.
Began with a review worksheet on classical and operant conditioning, which had been the previous meeting’s topic; this in-class check-for-understanding allowed …
I’m not sure why it took this long, but rather than gesticulating wildly with my arms, I went to our IT department and asked for three-feet of discarded electrical cabling. From that, I removed the insulation from 12". This will now serve as a …
Instructional practices versus time-available
Years ago “full-time” meant four classes for faculty where I teach now. Then that was changed to five classes. Since starting at the school in 1998, our median class size has also increased. This year, …
Tumblr vs Wordpress
Since school let-out at the beginning of June, I’ve been debating as a summer project: moving this blog from Tumblr to Wordpress. Years ago, when I started this blog, I chose Tumblr because it allowed me to use my domain name with …
GWSF side-quests 2025
When summer hits and I’m no longer teaching, my brain rebels at its idleness, and so I often make up little tasks for myself. For example, one year, I decided to walk from our condo to every branch of the San Francisco Public …
From PeerWise to a Self-Check
Since the Fall of 2019, I have been having students use PeerWise for their reading quizzes. They had a two-part assignment to complete at PeerWise for each chapter they read. First, they created original multiple-choice …
Atomic Habits assignment, the first year
The Genesis of an Idea
When we – Yosup Joo and I – designed the Introduction to Behavioral Neuroscience course, we wanted it to be more than just memorizing vocabulary… which is what the AP Psychology course …
Research Participation Requirement
“Research Participation Requirements” are common in undergrad psychology courses – because the graduate students need participants for their studies. The requirement to participate in research is far less common in …
With my one section of Introduction to Ethnic Studies this semester, I recently reimagined my approach to student writing assignments in response to the growing presence of AI tools like ChatGPT. Frankly, there is no writing prompt that we can …
It’s always nice to see students write about their psychology classes in the school newspaper.