One of my earliest posts back in the day was about the movie 300 and how teaching, in some ways, wasn’t so different from the Spartans throwing themselves into impossible odds at Thermopylae. It was probably a bit overdramatic, but for years it was one of my favorites – even if it clearly didn’t resonate with others as strongly as it did with me.

A decade later, the basic sentiment remains, but the specific analogy no longer feels as true. I was a bit younger then, and far less tired. I was in a teaching situation where there were more small victories – maybe we were losing the war, but there were individual moments of “look at us changing the world one life at a time.” Or so it seemed

Continue reading “The Pew! Pew! Guys” →

In this world of AI and rampant copying, teachers are leaning even more heavily on projects of various sorts – often with a creative spin in hopes students might find the work at least slightly engaging. Maybe they’ll even appeal to different “learning styles,” if that’s even still a thing. If nothing else, we hope it makes it slightly more difficult to cheat or take other shortcuts.

It is perhaps not surprising then, that the only thing students hate more than reading, writing, book work, crosswords, lectures, presentations, videos, labs, activities, or quizzes are projects (or anything else teachers come up with in any form, ever). In order to help these poor abused teens to effectively fight back against an obviously oppressive and unfair system that not only wants them to DO WORK but potentially LEARN SOMETHING while doing it, here’s an easy guide for students faced with the dreaded “classroom project.”

Continue reading “Student Guide to Classroom Projects” →

In the early 1800s, around the time Andrew Jackson was running for president and the first generation born and raised in an independent United States was beginning to wonder whether or not the same Enlightenment ideals which had transformed their political expectations might be applied to improve society as well, a young man named Sam Patch became the nation’s first celebrity daredevil. His “act” was fairly straightforward – he chose some very high places and then jumped from them into the water below.

It was by all accounts quite impressive, especially after he acquired a pet bear who joined him (albeit unwillingly) in these leaps.

Continue reading “Sam Patch, Annie Londonderry, and Harry Houdini” →