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Tiny Turtles Tell Tales
A friend of mine who used to be a student called me from college the other day. He asked me to look at his astronomy homework. I thought it was perfect, and he told me he called because he didn’t do it. In fact, none of his classmates were doing any of their homework. They were using Artificial Intelligence (AI).He felt conflicted about it. In high school, he and I had long conversations about why students cheat, and he really needed to talk to an adult about this. I was honored, I said, and I wasn’t all that worried, in terms of the future of education. I told him that…
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Explore and Expand
Ordinary creativity is extraordinarily important– Dr. James Catterall Devote your child’s summer to creativity. Yesterday, a news story I was watching in my living room showed the town less than a mile from my spot on the couch, and it looked like New Orleans during Hurricane Katrina. Half houses and half cars poking up from a flat and endless expanse of mud brown. A motionless lake as far as the drone could photograph, sitting there waiting. They said it might be a year or more before residents could return. Right after Hurricane Katrina, I was teaching AP Environmental Science, and we spent time looking at how architects and civil engineers…
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Do Smartphones Help or Hinder Students in the Classroom?
Smartphones are facing scrutiny in classrooms from K-12 to college. Some teachers prohibit cell phones inside the classroom because their alerts, text messages, and social media updates are a distraction to the students. Other teachers allow them because students need easy access to information, assignments and calendars. Are smartphones interfering with academic productivity and learning? While students are clicking on messages and checking out images of their friends, these interactions on their smartphones often trigger anxiety, and FoMo (fear of missing out) when they see that their friends are engaged in exciting activities while they’re stuck in a classroom or their bedrooms. Although the students may physically be in the…
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Caramel, Beige and Pink
Race is a mirage but one that humanity has organized itself around in very real ways. – Ibram X. Kendi My son asked me the other day about our different skin colors. He’s six, and something that might have been affecting him for several years is suddenly something he can put into words: “What color am I Mama?” “You have absolutely beautiful, caramel-colored skin,” I said. “What color are you?” he asked. I thought for a moment. “Pink and spotty,” I said. I’m an aging surfer, and this was the most accurate description I could come up with. I wondered if I had been correct in how this conversation went.…
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The Excavators on the Playground
I spent three years involved in writing and defending the California Preschool Foundations. State-sponsored preschool is a marvelous concept, and there were hundreds of well-intentioned people who needed to have a say in what the curriculum ought to be. The meetings required microphones and convention centers to accommodate everyone who knew about preschool. I was proud of the results, and very happy that all preschoolers in my state would have strong art, science, physical education and SEL (social-emotional learning). Years later, specialists in our county were making a learning plan for my preschool daughter with special needs. They pulled out the books I helped write to decide what her goals…
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Teach Peace
Teach Peace By Lisa Catterall One exercise we had to do was to use a long list of “invisible privileges” to rate ourselves and our own privilege. It was painful on an empathetic level, and for me, as a woman, and as a person who identifies as bisexual, on a very direct level as well. Many of the privileges on the list are ones that I didn’t have due to one or both of those statuses in my own life. Imagine there’s no countries, it isn’t hard to do… nothing to kill or die for –John Lennon At the beginning of this year, our administration announced that the school would…
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School Begins
Rocks By Lisa Catterall Today, I finally remembered the rocks. Then I looked at my classroom and the way I had suddenly made my messy creative space neat as a pin, and I reflected on how I’d never stressed neatness so much with my students as I had in these first few days. This world’s anguish is no different from the love we insist on holding back.-Aberjhani Getting my classroom ready It’s almost there; the posters are up and supplies organized, but there is one thing I haven’t done yet. Do you know what it is? I haven’t placed a basket of fist-sized rocks in the front by where I…
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A Glimpse Through the Keyhole
A Glimpse Through the Keyhole Fake News, Free Press and Education By Lisa Catterall …the only path to lasting global peace will be education, of the unbiased sort that provides a scaffolding for the soul, a habit of critical thought, a passion for truth, and the humility to keep on learning for a lifetime. With guns you can kill terrorists. With education you can kill terrorism.– Malala Yousafzai Yesterday a friend of mine showed me an image of a train station in Poland that had baby strollers lined up across the station platform. The strollers were loaded with bottles, blankets, diapers, and supplies. Mothers in the town in Poland knew…
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Teacher’s Desk
Roots and Wings By Lisa Catterall Children make your life important. — Erma Bombeck I’m staring at a dresser covered with dirty glasses. They have rings of dried and yellowed milk, encrusted smoothie droplets, and they are sitting on top of a stack of plates, some with pizza crusts hanging out. All that goes through my mind this time is a meme my best friend sent me. It said “If you don’t like their messy room, wait until their room is empty…” My best friend has always been one academic year ahead of me in the parenting game, from the time our kids met at age nine months (mine) and…
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The World is Knocking
The World is Knocking By Lisa Catterall He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.– Friedrich Nietzsche This week I had the pleasure of teaching in a true N95 mask for the first time. Due to the current escapades of our favorite evil little spike protein, my school thoughtfully gave the teachers each a precious, high-grade mask. I feel cared for and protected, and I also feel as if an anvil is smashing my face all day long.The mask muffles my voice. Many years ago, I got laryngitis but wasn’t ill, and I came to school and taught in silence. It worked oddly well; I can…
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Empowering Youth
Empowering Youth and Addressing Bullying From Bystander to Upstander By Jessica Zovar In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends. – Martin Luther King, Jr. I remember walking the halls as a timid sixth grader, hearing unkind words directed toward others echoing off the walls, and fearful that standing up for myself or others against hurtful words could have major implications. Let’s be honest; middle school is not always the friendliest of landscapes. Often the dreamy-eyed wonder of childhood is waning, identities are on shaky ground and youth yearn for belonging and acceptance from their peers. As a licensed marriage and…
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Technology Engineering and Art
The Educational Needs of This Generation Technology, Engineering and Art By Lisa Catterall Art is a universal human language. Direct connections exist between how much art students learn and their success in all academic subjects and as members of communities. Our schools will improve if they deliver quality arts education to all students. The students deserve nothing less. – James S. Catterall My office just became host to a tray of smiling, blinking robotic bees happily keeping me company as I prepare for my classes. I met my first graders today and their teacher introduced me as their “makers teacher,” and I said, “Oh no, these bees are going to…
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Leap of Faith
A Leap of Faith By Lisa Catterall To all parents and caregivers starting the school year with special needs kids and waiting with hope, fear, faith, and some worry that it just can’t possibly work out, I feel you. “Some of the most wonderful people are the ones that don’t fit into boxes.”–Tori Amos Forever burned into my memory is the image I saw this week, of my daughter holding the hand of another little girl and her teacher, walking away from me through the open gates of her new school. I just turned around and started sobbing. My entire family and extended family were there, and all of them,…
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Back in Person
Back to In-Person by lisa catteral There is no power for change greater than a community discovering what it cares about.– Margaret Wheatley This summer, I’ve been teaching in a program where I feel compelled to state up front, every day, at the beginning of class, with great passion, my honoring and inclusion of BIPOC and LBGTQIA+ students. I say it a little differently every time so that it doesn’t become too redundant, but I am simply relentless about stating it clearly, daily, every single time. It’s become an ingrained part of my teaching practice. There are so many ways in which a culture or society insists on change in…
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Joy Blossoms
A Place for Joy to Blossom By Lisa Catterall I wonder why, when parents choose schools for their kids, they don’t ask students at the school whether they experience happiness in class every day? “The joy in learning is as indispensable in study as breathing is in running.” – Simone Weil Anything that enters a human brain through the senses passes through a simple triage process. Standing at the triage station is the amygdala, and it has three modes: “Danger – run away!” is one; “Happy happy joy joy!” is another; and the third is simply “neutral.” When the amygdala senses danger, every other brain function funnels energy into running…
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Teaching During COVID
Teaching and Learning in the Time of COVID-19 By Patricia Lucas, Spanish teacher at Gateway School As a teacher of over forty years, I felt I had “seen it all” — every educational trend, methodology, pedagogy, and innovation. This most recent challenge sent this “maestra”, a World Language middle school teacher at Gateway School, into a near free fall. The educational challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic have caught all educational constituents off guard scrambling for the best ways to move forward. My students’ varying responses to Distance Learning have brought me new insights, unexpected innovation, flexibility and challenges. It is my belief that the most critical need for all students is…
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Carry Forward
The greatest treasure is appreciating coming together and gathering. Truly being grateful for it
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In-School Learning
Children are Parched for In-School Learning By Lisa Catterall I’ve learned that terror doesn’t happen because some group of people somewhere like Pakistan or Afghanistan simply decide to hate us. It happens because children aren’t being offered a bright enough future that they have a reason to choose life over death. – Greg Mortensen, 2009 My feet were dry and dusty. The heat was almost unbearable, and the smell of untreated sewage rolled along the dirt parking lot in clouds. The wall around the school in West Africa was the same dun brown as the dried out earth around it, with sharp metal spikes on top and a chain link…
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Rebirth
Rebirth By Lisa Catterall Every particle in the universe was once contained in an infinitesimal speck…a theoretical point in the void with no measurement. It must have been very heavy. After an explosion, the particles of the current universe moved rapidly outwards, gathering into tiny molecules then forming and reforming into more organized forms. In the smallest split second, the tiniest moment of this timeline, life on Earth existed and evolved and became the now, 2020. Some say it is the worst number yet. A complete disaster. A slowly filling “bingo card” of horrific and chaotic events. Yes, and… If you are a human being, like me, for whom the…
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Outdoor Learning
Why Outdoor Learning? Mount Madonna School Prepares for a Fall 2020 Return to Campus By Ann Goewert, Ph.D. There is something magical about learning outdoors, and Mount Madonna School’s (MMS) 375 acres of land includes groves of coastal redwoods and live oaks, mountain meadows, chaparral, and ponds. The ecological tapestry of biomes, rich with diverse life forms, provides an unmatched outdoor laboratory for our educators to engage students in a broad variety of learning experiences and opportunities, from the art of crafting stories to scientific inquiry and experimentation. Immersing students in nature and outdoor learning develops the whole student. Outdoor learning fuels the mind and ignites all of the senses.…
