Kaulbach's Modern World

I never realized how different formal education can be from reality.  I am constantly aware of the many examples around me of genius that evolved from an original idea. Genius wasn't the original idea, it was the process.   Educators work within tight schedules and boundaries.  I have had to sit in doctor's offices, dentist offices, shoe stores, hair salons but never have I had to wait for a class to begin on time.  We are tied to schedules therefore we tie student performance to deadlines.  Seldom does a student edit or redo an assignment on their own.  Students hand work in on time and receive it back with highlighted corrections.  Seldom are these assignments handed back with the expectation that every student will redo them better, with more depth. On our 2,500 mile journey west this summer, we spent day 2  in Independence Hall in Philadelphia. I haven't been there since 1977 and now I was there with my daughter at that same age of seven. She...

In the high school classroom I do not intentionally receive feedback from students as often as I could.  I will poll students for their opinions on news events, or on studies comparing communism and capitalism but I have not consistently collected and published student opinions on the texts we read, the lessons I present or the units that we study.  There is something to be said about giving students the power to evaluate and publish their findings. As I journeyed west to New Mexico, my husband and I sought shelter from temperatures above 110 in public libraries.

The teacher is not solely responsible for what students need to know in school or how they will come to know what we deem to be important.  We are all in an exciting age of collaborative learning in which technology can play an important role.  One of my favorite new resources as an educator is Ted-Ed.

At the core of early literacy is the idea that literacy is repeatedly played with, revisited, it can be offered in many forms, and there are few misinterpretations. I believe that more secondary educators could return to the creative practices of literacy in order to promote higher order thinking as well as less failure instead of the systems we have long relied upon.

I have spent my summer researching the administration of reading programs.   It is important to know as a parent and a teacher how children learn to read, it is connected to everything we can learn or aspire to.   Reading does not happen by magic but once it does happen, it is magical.   Everyone requires different amounts of time and experience   but there are six key components that are routine in making this happen.   Intentional review of these skills can ground us when we reach different forms of literacy, different expectations for knowledge at any age.    It is imagery, film, video, song, poetry, fiction, non fiction, manuals, maps, audio prose, etc.   Adults may experience the same struggles with media literacy, online gaming for example, that a high school student experiences reading a professional peer reviewed journal for an Advanced Placement course.   On this blog is a page with the 6 skills and their usefulness to high school...

It is summertime which means that I have the freedom from my daily teaching routine to catch up on home chores, read, eat or play for however long I want or until my seven year old daughter takes over and tells me what to do.  Since June we have read at least a dozen stories together. My husband and I have helped her learn to bike, to ride horses and to swim without a life jacket.  We are learning without any constraints on time and without any goals except overcoming her fears of taking risks.  Intentional Learning is a theme that my summer research in literacy has exposed.  Parents, community members, teachers all spend a great amount of time trying to do or learn something well.  We go through stages of risk taking, exploration and then revisions for proficiency. Parenting has taught me that I have very little control of predicted outcomes.  Children respond to language, routines and opportunities differently.  This is what makes education ...

For the past ten years I have been making an annualpilgrimage west to New Mexico to visit my favorite person in the world.   My grandmother, abuela as they say in the west, was everything to me.   She gave me the space to find my own identityand she taught me to love books.   It wasthrough the world of books, music, the theater and film that we escaped.   We travelled all over the world withoutleaving her home.   Through these literaryexperiences I was allowed my own interpretations right or wrong. I was allowedto explore both appropriate and possibly inappropriate stories.   I revisited plays and films many times; Ienjoyed many well-worn copies of books.   My grandmother made her exodus from the eastcoast long before I made mine. I only followed her footsteps and keep a tetherto my securities here at home.   Icurrently live less than forty miles from my childhood home and have lived mylife in New England among many well intentioned but powerfu...