Earlier this week I was asked to present to the staff of Porirua College, a secondary school outside of Wellington. I’ve spoken to and worked with teachers in many different contexts but the thought of standing in front of a room of teachers from a different culture, who teach in a school that mainly serves […]Read Post ›
Today I had the pleasure of visiting Island Bay School, an inquiry-based school in a suburb of Wellington, NZ. Thank you Ximena and Amy for hosting me so warmly! A typical school day at Island Bay provides clear models of engaged learning. Doing school in this context means that students were active and involved, spread out in different […]Read Post ›
Thanks to the Fulbright Distinguished Award for Teachers my family has relocated to Wellington, New Zealand for the next four months. This is a surreal time to be out of the US. At the same time that daily developments in the States mock the idea of democratic process and #Resistance continues to grow, I have […]Read Post ›
[Cross-posted on Edutopia] Learning changes dramatically when students have opportunities to produce work that matters to them. We know this from our own lives but don’t always do a good job of honoring it in schools. It’s easy for me to recall times when I dragged my feet completing a task, or rushed through a […]Read Post ›
Once again my students and I are deep in the process of investigating and creating. During class they are either with me or in different parts of our school or city, interviewing, researching, and drafting. I wrote before about my personal challenge of letting go in order to let this type of learning happen. In January […]Read Post ›
