Eleven years ago, Edutopia.com published a blog post titled “Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices.  If you’d like to access it, visit this link:  https://www.edutopia.org/blog/brain-breaks-focused-attention-practices-lori-desautels Think about the schedule when you and I were in school.  Students always had a break – and still do today! It’s called, “changing classes.” After 45 minutes…

While April 1st is most commonly known as April Fools Day, this used to be New Year’s Day way back in the day.  When the calendar was changed to celebrate the new year on January 1st, people who wished others a Happy New Year on April 1 were called April Fools. So today, rather than…

With all the controversies surrounding education today, we seem to be having trouble finding where to place blame. Certainly teachers are an easy scapegoat, since if children aren’t achieving properly, then there must be something wrong with what they’re doing (or not doing). Administrators also get their share of the blame, since their salaries are…

It seems that everyone is experiencing a shortage today. In our culture of abundance, we focus on what we don’t have. Recently, young parents were lamenting a shortage of a particular type of formula for their babies.  Soon, there will come to light a shortage of albuterol for children with asthma. Ironically, there seems to…

The modern public school in this nation was created to establish an informed electorate, so they could vote for qualified individuals to lead the nation. You can be the judge as to whether that goal has been achieved. Today’s post-modern education borrowed leadership models from the military so that students would be prepared to serve…

As public school leaders, administrators, staff and teachers continue to grapple with improving the achievement levels of students, preparing them to be able to succeed in an uncertain future, perhaps we should look to the past to be able to move forward, and revisit how learning was delivered in an earlier time.  Rather than simply…

While having a common set of educational constructs to set a “minimal” benchmark for educational achievement sounds like a good idea, the real issue surfaces when you dive into what that really means. Are we aiming for the minimum, rather than encouraging students to achieve to their maximum potential? School administrators and teachers will say,…

Since this site contains a series of articles titled “Continuous Improvement ≠ Transformative Innovation,” here’s an example. This isn’t your typical music appreciation class. It’s an example of instructional excellence.  

In the January 26, 2017 edition of our local newspaper, a story appeared titled, “Chancellor says state-owned university system ‘unsustainable,’ orders sweeping review” (http://triblive.com/local/westmoreland/11835303-74/state-system-brogan).  Interestingly, the same finding was reported in the Fall of 2015, as the Commonwealth’s budget was not approved until December of that year, causing funding to be withheld from public school…

There’s lots of talk on the Internet, in the news media, and throughout those antiquated communication forms of magazines and newspapers about the Millennials, and how they’re unlike any generation that’s come before them. Actually, they’re a lot like the Great Generation…that wave of children of immigrants that were born between 1926 and 1946 and…