So, I’m not exactly sure what I’m going to do for tomorrow’s Introduction to Psychology classes. It’s been *years* since I’ve felt this sense of dread for the next day’s class.
I’m covering the two Intro classes (as well as two AP Psych classes) for …
With the new block schedule this year, students have a Resource Period: one period wherein they do not have a class. One of my Seniors in AP Psychology has her Resource Period during a time when I teach another section of the same class; as such, …
Don’t impose on me what you know, I want to explore the unknown And be the source of my own discoveries. Let the known be my liberation, not my slavery. The world of your truth can be my limitation; Your wisdom my negation. Don’t instruct me; let’s …
I live in a state of constantly feeling that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.
When the school year began, it was our first year with a block schedule (which necessitated that all of my lesson plans be revamped for the longer class-periods and …
At this morning’s liturgy, Fr Fran Stiegeler, SJ, spoke about a valuable life lesson he learned while an Army Ranger, and it reminded me of one of my more memorable and positive experiences as a student at SI.
Fr Stiegeler’s story was about a …
I received the following email (edited for the sake of anonymity):
My son, X, whom you also taught at SI, recently finished at the Y and joined the workforce at Z in San Francisco. I would like to mark this milestone in his life in a fashion that …
Day 3 went much closer to plan. The thing that’s so surprising about that is that guests had dropped by from Jesuit Portland and St Aloysius in Sydney. Class went according to plan in front of guests!? That never happens!
The Plan:
The agenda for today was:
Okay, so “chapter” is perhaps too generous a word for it … but it’s our plan, really!
Yosup and I are slowly going to write our own book for Psychology. But rather than be a traditional textbook, the plan is for it to be written for actual students, …
Friday, I returned from serving as the Retreat Director of our 108th Kairos retreat; it’s a job that I’ve done for maybe 6 years now, and every time is different and every time is special. Directing requires a ton of work for more than a month …
…writing has always seemed to me a fight against loss, an instinct for replay; a resistance to the attrition of memory. To translate lived experience into a pattern of words that preserves its vitality without fixing it in literary embalming fluid; …
The cup was a gift in 2004 from two students, thanking me for being the guest speaker at one of their club’s events. It has served me well over the past 8-years, serving not only coffee and tea, but water throughout the day. Not a school day has …
In the past, when our classes were 50-minutes in length, we would have full-period Unit tests for AP Psych. To mirror the question-to-minute ratio of the AP test, we’d have 70+ multiple-choice questions; with our new, 80-minute class periods, we …
This past week has been thrilling. For the first time in YEARS, I had difficulty sleeping on Sunday night, in advance of the first real class. That Monday was my first experience teaching in a Block, an 80-minute class period. I really stressed over …
Each year, we are expected to select an area of our teaching that we wish to focus on improving; this year, with the introduction of a Block schedule (80-60-60) and student iPads, I’ve opted to focus on Class Management.
On Friday, the first day of …
I wouldn’t say that we show a lot of TED Talks to our AP Psych students, but (a) Yosup and I do watch a lot of them for ourselves, and (b) we do show some to students.
Jon Ronson, who is a documentary filmaker and author, wrote The Psychopath Test: A …
It’s one of the traditions at my school to call the beginning of a new academic year, the “New Year.” Folks will walk around the halls, greeting each other, “Happy New Year!” in August, when school resumes after summer vacation.
Along those lines, …
Related to my previous post on evaluations done by my fellow faculty members of me as Educational Technologist, here is my annual performance review by my supervisor, the Assistant Principal of Academics:
I thanked her for her …
On my last trip in to campus, I found in my faculty room mailbox the AP Subject Score Roster for Psychology. The aggregated results from my two class periods are below:
5: 26 students
4: 20 students
3: 7 students
2: 3 students
1: 2 students
That’s an 88% …
At the end of this academic year, my fifth in the position as Educational Technologist, I was included in the Administrative Evaluations wherein teaching faculty respond to a dozen or so questions about various members of the school administration. …
I was at a dinner party this week, hosted by a former debater and student of mine, who is now a writer here in the City. In the Fall, he’ll be heading off to Ohio for his Masters in Fine Arts, and as part of his program, he’ll teach some …
I will not allow yesterday’s success to lull me into today’s complacency, for this is the great foundation of failure.
Science is not about certainty. Science is about finding the most reliable way of thinking, at the present level of knowledge.
While this may at first appear to be about one student’s appreciation, it’s really about my appreciation for students — and the privilege of teaching them. First, the card:
It reads:
Thank you so much for an amazing year. I learned so much that …
