How do we know what we know and what we don’t know? Can we put our knowledge in context? Can we connect it to other things we know? Can we express how our knowledge influences or alters our worldview? How do our views and ideas change and develop? How do we determine when our ideas…
Category: Reflections
On a Pale Blue Dot
Many people profess to be aware of their smallness in the scheme of existence, but when it comes down it – on a day-to-day basis – people, myself included, get caught up in the details, passions, and conflicts of their everyday lives. In doing so, they embody what Carl Sagan, imagining looking down from space…
Student Views on Grades and Grading
Anyone who has spent time in the classroom has probably given a lot of thought to what a grade represents and anguished over the grading process. Yesterday I wrote about failing in the remote learning context, and briefly discussed grades and grading as part of that. Today I figured I’d go a little deeper into…
Failing Remote Learning
Despite my best efforts to the contrary, I have 22 students in danger of failing the second term. I suspect most of them will make a last-minute push over the next couple of weeks to end the term and move at least into “D” territory, but this is the greatest number of students I’ve ever…
Research in Remote
As student enthusiasm began to wane for full-class lessons towards the end of the academic year, I pivoted in all my classes to end-of-year research projects in the remote context. Although independent (or small group) research and analysis isn’t always the best way to keep students engaged remotely, it presents opportunities for students to follow…
Power and Dams
Dams generate power by altering the natural environment and the natural flow of water, creating structures to generate power. The state generates power by altering ‘natural’ relations of people, creating structures to generate power. Of course, the state is also responsible for creating dams. I wish I could claim this thoughtful parallelism as my own,…
Writing for 10 days
One idea I’ve been working around as I complete 10 days of writing 700+ words a day of [roughly edited but intended to be legible] ideas is that writing isn’t actually that hard, but generating novel, interesting or worthwhile ideas is a big part of the challenge. Journaling for myself is focused more on debriefing…
Climate Change and Social Studies
A couple of years ago at the start of the academic year, I utilized climate change as a case study to understanding how power functions, as well as how political issues look different at different levels of analysis (community, local, national, regional, international, global). It turned out to be one of the most energizing starts…
Teaching about Africa
I don’t know how to teach about Africa, and yet it must be done. That might be a surprising admission for someone who lived on the continent for three years, who has studied, wrote about, and talked about Botswana, the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Liberia, Somalia, South Africa, and Tanzania in some depth, and seriously considered…
Motivation and Remote Learning
More than ever before, especially as we approach the end of a largely remote school year, I’ve heard from students, “I just don’t have any motivation, Mr. R.” I’ve found that motivation and enthusiasm for learning are contagious. When a few students get excited about a topic or idea in an in-person classroom setting, other…