Category: Education
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Can we make our schools safer?
I sat in recently on a conversation about school safety that was sparked by the school shooting in Connecticut. Administrators, principals, and parents sat around a table talking about security and what it means to them. The most striking aspect of the conversation was how personally each one of these people who work in our…
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First, do no harm
Last weekend I went to an educational conference held by the California Association for the Gifted. The conference is for educators, psychologists, and parents of gifted children. It’s heavily weighted toward public school teachers, but in general there’s something for everyone in the field. One morning I sat down with my wonderful publishers, Jim Webb…
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Science and inquiry
Each year, as soon as our county adds its science fair dates, I get them on the calendar and block out the weekend so I’m sure we don’t schedule anything over it. Since my son became eligible, I started blocking out those dates as well. For the last two years, he and I went to…
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Stress and learning
I am sort of a “learning research junkie”—I’ll read pretty much anything about all the new research into how our brains learn—and don’t learn. When I was working on my book, my publisher sent me pretty much any book that they thought might be of interest to my audience. I read all of them. I…
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Facebook thinks I speak Spanish, and other musings about modern life
Hola… For months now I have been getting e-mails from Facebook, recommending I add as friends people I have never met. People whose first language is Spanish. People who don’t even live in the same country as me. OK, I speak passable caveman Spanish. I can read and understand, but when I go to speak,…