Middle and High School … from a Montessori Point of View
David Brooks argues that grades discourage students from following their passions (they have to spread their attention to keep up their GPA). And grit is easier to have if you’re following your passion. Suppose you were designing a school to help students find their own clear end — as clear as that one. Say you … Continue reading “Grit versus Passion”
There are some things in this world that we are willing to trade, things that we can put a dollar value on, but there are other things — call them sacred things — values and beliefs that just don’t register on any monetary scale. New research (summarized by Keim, 2012) emphasizes this intuitive understanding, by … Continue reading “Different Types of Values”
There was a neat little conference today, organized by LEGO’s Education division. I’ve been trying to figure out a way to include robotics in my math and science classes, but since I haven’t had the time to delve into it, I was wondering if the LEGO Robotics sets would be an easy way to get … Continue reading “Considering LEGO Robotics”
When students are able to recognize mistakes and analyze them, they will learn faster and deeper. Jonah Lehrer summarizes a new study that shows that people learn faster when they spend the effort to learn from their mistakes. When people notice that they’ve made an error, they have an instinctive negative reaction. Then we have … Continue reading “Learning to Learn from Your Mistakes”
Some key performance-character strengths: zest, grit, self-control, social intelligence, gratitude, optimism and curiosity. — Tough (2011): What if the Secret to Success Is Failure? in The New York Times’ Education Issue Paul Tough’s thought provoking article is a great overview of some of the recent research on character, and discusses a few attempts to instill … Continue reading “The Ingredients of “Character””
Bamboo can grow as fast as 1 meter per day. Alexander Vittouris, a student at Monash University, used this fact to shape the stem into the frame for this human-powered vehicle that he calls the Ajiro. The idea is to create a more sustainable means of production. Derived from the field of arborsculpture [my link], … Continue reading “Growing a Vehicle: Sustainable Production”
Sarah Ellison’s excellent article in Vanity Fair about the collaboration between the Guardian newspaper and Wikileaks in publication of leaked documents, has got me thinking about how teaching needs to adapt to the internet age. The most interesting theme in Ellison’s article is the contrast between old and new media: Julian Assange’s web-based Wikileaks and … Continue reading “Montessori in the internet age”
I recently discovered Ranier Maria Rilke’s “Self-Portrait 1906” in Edward Hirsch’s collection Poet’s Choice (which I picked up on sale at Barnes and Noble last week). The author’s integrity in this poem is quite striking. Hirsch has a very loose translation (from the German) by Robert Lowell that is very different from the more literal … Continue reading “Self-portrait in poetry”