Learning to Teach for Social Justice, ed. Linda Darling-Hammond, Jennifer French, and Silvia Paloma Garcia-Lopez, is a book that was given to me as a gift, in more ways than one, at the end of STEP. We each got one. It's a collection of essays by STEP student-teachers (from years before me!) I've re...

Many parents today think that if they keep a clean house, bring home a good income and keep their children clean and clothed they are doing a good job. Nothing could be further from the truth. Lots of  parents come home from work stressed and exhausted with no time or energy to spend with their chi...

There are some times in class where a student does something so utterly hilarious that I have to step outside the classroom to laugh. The last class I had today was one of those times. We were doing an exercise worksheet with "I'm interested in ____________." and "I want to be a __________." on them...

I said this at buymeaclue 's earlier: I was off LJ for about a week when it originally broke out, I think. And frankly, although I'm reading selectively, I can't keep up with everything rydra_wong links unless I drop everything else I'm doing, and some of the "everything else" includes stuff that ke...

Thanks to the kick-ass work of Kathy Gill, the first ever presentation camp in Seattle is scheduled to run all day Saturday April 4th at the University of Washington. $10 gets you in for the whole day if you register by March 31 -  Registration and details here. PresentationCamp is an ad-hoc gather...

From an email to Jong: The teaching appt with Jaime last night went extremely well.  I expected some argument, which is the usual fare, but with him he was confident enough to receive what I had to tell him without flinching (he being a Pentacostal) and I can tell he is a warrior (former gang b...

On Learning Curves, I read a lament about calculus students having a hard time putting their skills into practice on some basic word problems. This line stood out: They can do the calculus. The algebra slays them. Of late, our CS faculty have been discussing a programming corollary. Students have pa...

The longer I’m in this profession of lecturing and writing, the more i worry about becoming one of those guru asshole types.  You know who I’m talking about. People who talk as if they’re always right, never wrong and lecture to people as if they are morons and are too stupid to d...

A few weeks ago Ze Frank had an interesting post about the challenges of short term consulting. If the client and I do a good job on defining goals of the consultation before I visit, the answer is yes - a consultant can absolutely be of use in 8 hours, or even less.  Sometimes an hour is enough - ...

Times change very quickly and you have to grow up early. Ch-ch-ch-changes changing places, so I must be moving on. My heart is heavy as I turn my back and leave.-- Iron Maiden, David Bowie, Yes, Supertramp and Iron MaidenAs you may have noticed, my output has been a bit thin lately. Running a Thunde...