Because my attention was drawn more to politics in 2017… for some reason… I ended up reading fewer books than in the previous year:
Because I taught an Introduction to Ethnic Studies course this year for the first time, roughly 20% of my reading was …
During the writing of this book, my high school psychology teacher died of cardiac arrest. Dr. Stephen Phelps wasn’t just my a teacher I had for a semester in high school, when I returned as a staff member to the school, he was the one who gave me …
Below are the grade distributions for the first iteration of the Social-Cognitive Psychology course that I teach.
First, the regular course’s Final Exam:
And the Honors course’s Final Exam:
The two tests were slightly different in so far as the …
In the February 16, 2016 letter to the Principal by the Tenure Board, the first recommendation under Spritual Formation was “to engage in a critical reading of Fr. William Barry’s book, Finding God in All, and that Eric discuss the reading with an …
Though the Final Exam is in three days, I have finished teaching the first round of Ethnic Studies, a one-semester required course for all freshmen.
As part of the wrap-up day, where I offered a 5-minute review of the major topics and learning tasks …
This weekend, at the annual conference of the National Council for the Social Studies, Chuck Schallhorn and I presented on blended-learning. Though we do it differently, the fundamental idea is the same: students have a significant amount of work to …
Exhausted and proud.
This is my favorite photo of K143, the September Kairos retreat that I directed this year; it shows one of the student leaders during the …
I really like the book and all the practical, wide ranging examples. It suggests that big schools like yours or mine have to have the efficiencies of the factory model, but the flexibility of your ideas. Nearly all of these great courses rely on …
One downside to leading a four-day and three-night retreat for seniors is coming back to all the correcting that’s piled up; it certainly reduces the …
For the past four weeks, I have been running down my batteries. That’s when I started preparing eight seniors to lead 50 of their classmates on a retreat, and that’s when I started teaching two brand new courses, each of which requires every lesson …
With the new Social-Cognitive Psychology course and the new classroom furniture, I’ll regularly be polling my students with the same set of questions throughout the semester. Below are the first set of results from one month into class.
In all of the …
Thanks to our graphic designer, we now have printed classroom layout posters for each of the general learning activities that we do. (The physical size of …
After getting the new furniture installed, Yosup and I thought about how we would actually move things around for the kinds of learning activities that we’d envisioned. In the process of that discussion, we drew some layouts on the chalkboard.
Below …
With the new desks, new whiteboard wall, and new rolling whiteboards, I have been able to more easily design active learning experiences for students in Social-Cognitive Psychology.
The assignment, from the first real lesson in the course, on the …
The following are the full books that I’ve read in preparation for teaching Introduction to Ethnic Studies this semester; not listed are the articles and smaller pieces.
I worked on my Social-Cognitive Psych course description yesterday and settled on two changes from (all) previous years.
First, I’m going to require that students have – and use – a composition notebook. They’ll take their homework reading notes in …
Not that the status quo is bad… but there’s probably a way to improve how I do things in the classroom.
It was a nice surprise receiving the email from my principal:
Yosup and Eric,
Just reviewing AP scores and your numbers continue to be awesome. With 168 …
On Tuesday, March 28, the Social Science department chair observed my AP Psychology class. It was the first day of AP Review, preparing them for the exam in the beginning of May.
Dr Justin Christensen’s “write-up” of his observation is below.
It’s not to hear me lecture; I could flip that. It’s not to watch a video; they can do that on their own, elsewhere. It’s not to engage in sustained silent reading; that too can be done by students at anytime, anywhere. It’s not for students to take …
From one of my favorite Creative Mornings talks, this is Mike Monteiro. All too often teachers are expected to work beyond the scope of their contract “for …
According to Runkeeper, I ran 687.4 miles in 2016. My premium subscription ran out in October and I did not want to renew, and so I have no pretty graphs to show. But, I’ve got something even better: pictures from those runs
In 2017, I’ll be …
When asked to describe myself (not by people but by online services, for the purposes of a profile), I usually default to: “teacher, reader, and runner.” 2016 …
If you listen to podcasts at all, I highly recommend subscribing to Freakonomics by Stephen J Dubner. I learn something new about the world or myself from each episode. For example, even though “Bad Medicine, Part 1: The story of 98.6” is about the …
