Author: svb802

I’ve written about being absent from school before. The traditionalists would like you to believe that being absent from school is somehow being absent from learning. Not true. All the post-pandemic learning loss being measured today is based on how much classroom time a student has missed. It doesn’t consider the learning that could have…

I’ve written a lot about AI and specifically ChatGPT over the past few months. Yesterday, Washington Post reporter Pranshu Verma focused on AI and ChatGPT at the higher education level. Verma writes, “Soon after ChatGPT was released in November, Darren Keast noticed students in his college English composition class turning in essays that read as…

It’s Friday and here is your News Roundup. The Number of Students in Special Education Has Doubled in the Past 45 Years (EducationWeek) EducationWeek online published a story late last month that reported, “The number of students in special education in the United States has doubled over the past four decades, creating a rising share…

It’s perplexing to me why we can’t let kids learn, and receive recognition for that learning, when young learners are away from places called school. When we ran out personalized learning lab school in the Houston Museum District, we told our young learners and their families that “Houston, Texas was our classroom!” I read last…

I took a graduate course titled “Models of Teaching.” The class was all about exposing us to different models of classroom instruction – direct, group, and inquiry-based to name a few. It’s time to get rid of courses like “Models of Teaching.” In fact, evidence might be telling us it’s time to get rid of…

Who the hell is Mike Miles? Mike Miles is the new superintendent for the Houston Independent School District. The State of Texas assigned Miles to Houston’s public school district after winning a court case that said a “takeover” of Houston’s public schools was acceptable. A new school board was also appointed by the Texas Education…

I’m back from a week’s vacation. I spent some of that time in West Virginia celebrating our son’s medical school launch. Let’s be clear about one thing. Parental involvement in a child’s learning does not mean that a small, self-interested group of parents get to decide what is right for young learners who aren’t their…

Summertime Thursdays are usually reserved for “A Little About a Lot.” But today, I wanted to share Washington Post columnist Eugene Robinson’s piece printed earlier this week: “Florida’s decision to teach in schools that slavery in this country was of “personal benefit” to some enslaved people is obscene revisionism. It is like teaching that though…

If you’ve read this column more than a handful of times, you’ll know that I think our present public school system is pathetically dysfunctional, so much so that the system itself needs to be replaced with a public learning system focused on learning plans for every kid, learning coaches instead of teachers, and small groups…