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…
The Games of Children
There’s an opinion piece in the New York Times today called “To Focus on Hamas Is to Miss the Point.” In it, Basma Ghalayini discusses growing up in Gaza, where experiences or near misses with violence are not a novel experience, but instead are a fundamental part of living in what is effectively an open-air…
Animal Consciousness & Suffering
How often do you really make an effort to put ourselves in someone’s shoes, and try to see things as they see them? And how often do you do that for animals? I suspect the answer to the first question for most people is sometimes, and that that is rarely for the latter. I’ve long…