Category Archives: Good ideas and discussion

We just finished our spring break. Now I actually feel terrible about the break. For the entire last week, I did not go anywhere. I switched off to do something else unrelated to my course teaching, i.e., several loose projects, … Continue reading →

If I could change anything in today’s education system, I’d reshape the focus of the essential basic skills. It’s a very complicated issue to address. Anyway, I’ll try to share my two cents. I have noticed that plenty of time … Continue reading →

Bloom’s Taxonomy has been around for decades and revised to better address instructional practice. There are six orders for the original Taxonomy: knowledge, comprehension, application, analysis, synthesis, and application. Many students of mine regarded it as a piece that they … Continue reading →

Say you are coming in for an interview as a teacher candidate. I, as the hiring principal, would need to know a few things about assessment. I would want you to answer a few questions as follows: Why should teachers … Continue reading →

I used to have good memory power. I always believed it’s simply an effort to exercise one’s memory power. As long as you try, your memory power will be strong. Of course, repetition in drill and practice may constitute the … Continue reading →

Religion is prohibited in public education. I am not either for or against religions in public arenas. However, there are a few incidences that I am not quite sure how to reason to make sense. On the American money bills, … Continue reading →

How can you get your students hooked to learning, even from the very beginning? Here are a few good hook examples: New Jersey Devils: The teacher started the lesson in a totally dark room. Then there came a weird noise … Continue reading →

I had many “good” teachers who offered good advice and provided a nurturing environment for students to learn. However, I was impacted by a few different kinds of teachers, who were not too nurturing as those “good” teachers They challenged … Continue reading →

We had two presentations on school reforms: The first presentation is about the closing school models: close/ turnaround/ restart/ transformation. The models are highlighted in a YouTube video: “It Can Be Done: Turning Around America’s Lowest Achieving Schools (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vTiAPwpmLl0) In … Continue reading →

Plenty of decisions are made in education everyday. Some of them are reasonable while others are hard to understand. Oftentimes we are wondering how they came to decisions in education. Here are some examples we have heard: Closing a program … Continue reading →