Joshua Block The other day, as part of our colonialism unit in World History, I asked my students to write about which they believe is more powerful, violence or non-violence. My intention was to start us all thinking about strategies for social change before we read Gandhi’s essay “My Faith in Nonviolence.” This was followed up over […]Read Post ›
The warm weather makes me look forward to the amazing annual collaboration that my classes have with the Leah Stein Dance Company. This video is a collection of student performances from 2009. This was the first year of our collaboration. Despite an incredibly rainy day, student performances were stunning. Overall this collaboration, and the student […]Read Post ›
Pamela Paul has an opinion piece in today’s NYTimes about educational technology. She writes about “game-based learning” and characterizes “an underlying fear” that children won’t learn if it is not “superfun.” Her final thought is that students should play games (that is use technology,) “in their free time.. [O]nce they’re in the classroom they can challenge themselves. […]Read Post ›
Students created art representing their own double consciousnesses after we studied W.E.B. DuBois’s ideas.
Diane Ravitch posted the question “Do we need public schools?” and a response from Carol Burris earlier this month. The public schools that I attended as a youth were a (mostly) homogenous representation of the suburbs where I grew up. As I am closing in on my twelfth year of teaching in public schools I […]Read Post ›
Mr J Block 