A New Dynamic
I recently had the opportunity to meet with Annie Millar, Director of Curriculum and Instruction for the Healdsburg Unified School District, to discuss, among other things, how the new Common Core State Standards are affecting the way she goes about her work. She said that the big change for students is what she called “Habits of the Mind.” It’s the universality of how we think as humans. It’s subtle; it’s design-based thinking…the same thinking engineers use to solve problems. Educators are now being asked to solve problems in a similar way....
read moreDon’t just Play the Game
The twelve kids, ages 11-14, settled into their chairs looking at the opening screen of a computer game called Minecraft. Logan, 14, and Luther, 11 had already open the game and were clicking around. Logan started changing falling rotten Zombie flesh to diamonds (sounds logical) and Luther couldn’t break a block, but he could blow it up and light dirt on fire. During this past school year I had the opportunity to attend a couple of after school sessions of Coding Camp for Kids: Minecraft Mods at Sonoma County Library. The free sessions were...
read morePiner High School Gem
A few weeks ago I attended the Piner Highs School open house for their new high tech science building. The $3.6 million dollar structure, officially known as the Science Position Astronomy Research Quest Center, or SPARQ, was built to house the schools STEM (science, technology, engineering and Math) classes and contains an astronomical telescope, GIS and GPS technology, climate and meteorological instruments and a multi-axis planetarium. Named by the Piner High Astronomy Science Club, the center uses astronomy in relationship to lessons...
School Discipline and the Common Core
Dr. David Sortino’s article in the Santa Rosa, Ca. Press Democrat (Zero tolerance or restorative justice?) got me thinking how the suspension of Reilly Austin, Amanda Quon and several of their classmates from Sebastopol’s Hillcrest Middle School (Sonoma County parents fight back after alcohol sip leads to students’ 22-day suspension), relates to the new Common Core State Standards (CCSS). As creators of K-12 curriculum we use the standards as guides to develop progressive programs and their related supplements. We also use other...
read morePutting our Students First
It’s so sad. In a recent article by David Brooks (“When the Circus Descends” Press Democrat 4/20/2014) he talks about how elements from the right and left are attacking the Common Core Standards even as thousands of teachers are embracing the standards as a way to give our children a 21st century education. What is it with these people who refuse to put our students and our country’s interest ahead of their own? I guess it’s pretty easy to understand the right’s point of view. They really don’t care about anything but their own ideology which...
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