I am pleased to share a letter from one of my school’s excellent math teachers. Jennifer is a highly successful twenty-year educator and is one of the more conscientious and passionate teachers I have known. She is also the teacher I referred to in my recent post “To Slay A VAMpire,” when I wrote: “I recently saw […]

By [email protected] November 23, 2014 Uncategorized 15 Comments If you are a frequent reader of my blog, you know I am not a big fan of high stakes testing. Okay, that is an absurd understatement. I have a intense disdain for high stakes testing. As Diane says, it is educational malpractice. Many of us believe this […]

By [email protected] November 18, 2014 Uncategorized 4 Comments I am going out on a limb to say I am likely the first education blogger to ever use the term zwischenzug (schwee-chen-zoog) in a post. The German word zwischenzug (intermediate move) is a chess tactic in which a player, instead of playing the expected move (commonly a […]

By [email protected] November 16, 2014 JMS Staff only, Uncategorized 11 Comments According to Wikipedia, the modern-day repository of all earthly knowledge, a vampire is defined as “a mythical being who subsists by feeding on the life essence (generally in the form of blood) of living creatures.” Some vampires can allegedly shape shift, and lure their unsuspecting […]

I enjoy reading the thoughts and opinions of fellow blogger Jason James. His posts (HERE) are rationally and thoughtfully articulated and infused with a high level of passion and personal conviction.  I truly appreciate Jason’s straight-shooting, no-nonsense, “get to the heart of the matter” approach. From my meetings with Jason on several occasions, I can also attest to […]

I gather that most of us are looking forward to the end of this particularly long and tumultuous election season. This is especially true for the highly contested offices for Governor and State Superintendent for Public Instruction. While the past few years have provided lots of fodder for education bloggers in our state, it has […]

By [email protected] October 16, 2014 Uncategorized 5 Comments After a four-month review of the Oklahoma Priority Academic Student Skills (PASS) for reading and math, the Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education today voted unanimously to certify the standards as college and career ready. Many thanks to the Oklahoma Secondary School Board Association for live-tweeting this morning’s […]

By [email protected] October 13, 2014 Uncategorized 7 Comments In my previous post, “Playing TLEopoly,” I discussed some of the silliness surrounding the current implementation of the Oklahoma Teacher and Leader Effectiveness system. The theory of action behind the TLE model of supervision and evaluation is that the process will improve teacher effectiveness, which in turn will boost […]