Category: Teaching & Education
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Public Shame in Education: Some Cultures Use It
This article about a teacher being terminated for supposedly “bullying” a bully made me think about an amusing incident when I was living in Vietnam. I know nothing about the situation in the article, so I cannot comment whether the school administrators were right or not. However, the contrast in the educational philosophies between the United States…
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The Best Way to Learn a Language: Follow YOUR Goals
The methodologies of language learning are as various and self-inflated as political opinions on Capitol Hill. Every language guru thinks her method is the best, the truest, the most sure-fire way to conquer a new language in 30 days, or six months, or one year. I’d like to make this declaration: all language methodologies are…
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Let Kids be Kids. Let College be College.
I’m an educator. I want kids to succeed in this world. I want them to work hard, learn difficult concepts and idealistically walk into the world like they can make a difference. I want them to be productive for themselves and in return for society as a whole. I want them to be cutting edge…
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Is this an opinionated question? (An example from Truman & the A-bomb)
As a teacher, sometimes I’m asked this question about the questions I ask my students: “Is this an opinionated question?” “Yes it is,” I reply. “So you can’t mark it off, right? It’s just an opinion.” “Oh no, you can most definitely get it wrong.” “But how can an opinion be wrong?” “Perhaps an opinion…
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“If we could only do the arts everyday and forget about things like science.”
I had a delightfully long drama rehearsal with two young actors this afternoon. We put in a good hour and a half on a nine minute sketch we are working on. As we finished, one of the actors commented how she has to go home and wade through a 13 page biology study guide for…
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Respecting the Creative Works of Others
A group of my students was given two tasks. First, how do people use digital media without giving the creator proper credit or compensation. The ways were many: streaming video from non-paying sights, grabbing photos off the web for a project, buying pirated DVDs (a huge market right in the open here in Malaysia), downloading…
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Getting what we earn. Nothing more.
Each new school year I am confronted with a new crop of students who tend to think they deserve what they have not earned. Now don’t get me wrong, I have incredibly motivated students who do earn a lot. But it’s never enough. And here is, invariably, where the situation arises. After I return a…
Author Mark W Sasse 