If John Green can come back to this ball pit hell site maybe I can too.

Place Based Education

I’m currently working on a research project with my sophomores that is rooted in place based education. The idea behind PBE is that students have the ability to use local, community resources in order to make standard educational objectives.

My students did a fairly traditional research paper in the past as a springboard from reading a historical narrative set in World War I about the fall of the Romanov dynasty. This year to make it PBE, I took students to the local military museum. After touring the museum, they are choosing an object to research, and then they will tell the “story” of that object, and create a website to showcase the object.

What are your experiences with PBE? Any tips for helping students make engaging Google Sites?

This place has to be better than mastodon.

Is the Twitter nonsense about to drive me back to this place? Who knows.

Where is the ball pit?

Happy New Year’s Eve, Chums.

You better eat all of the black-eyed peas, cabbage, and avoid doing laundry tomorrow or so help me you’re going to curse all of us. AGAIN. 

Donald Trump wants to be an authoritarian and people are just letting it happen.

Those people are the ones who slept through their English teachers’ lessons on “Night” and “1984.”

Does your school have a dedicated teacher lounge?

I’m talking a space where teachers can rest, relax and recharge.  Not where the copy machine is.  Not where dead technology is stored. A common space where teachers from different corners of the building can come together to eat, socialize, meet, or even plan? 

“career readiness” is killing the humanities, pass it on.

"My Chromebook isn't charged," is the new "I don't have a pencil."

I don’t know, kid, maybe it would just be better if you did the reading.

Unpopular opinion:

Indiana did a disservice by raising the dropout rate to 18.

Now, homeschool is a loophole, and people are clutching pearls at how many kids are signing out to homeschool ... realizing there is no oversight for homeschool in Indiana. It’s been this way for YEARS.

I mean, what are we supposed to do with a 17-year-old with five credits, a poor attendance record, and no work ethic? I’m genuinely asking. There is no way for this kid to get a diploma. (This is a hypothetical kid, but variations of them are in every high school.)

I don’t want to be that jaded teacher who gets on in years, complaining about the kids. I’m complaining about the system. If they don’t want to work in the system, a system that I will defend for having 10x the choices and supports it did even 14 years ago, then let. them. leave.

I love how I can leave Tumblr for months at a time, Put a joke on Twitter that gets barely any traction. Put the same joke up here, and still pound out 100 likes.

How did i ever quit you?