Blog Posts – Page 4

Arriving at the Pool: Part 1 of Diving Into Inquiry

Towards the end of the school year in June, I posted on Twitter asking for suggestions on a good summer read with a particular focus on project design, inquiry, or student agency. One suggestion that stood out to me, in particular, was a book titled Dive Into Inquiry by Trevor McKenzie. I asked a colleague I trusted about the book and he said he hadn’t read it but he’s heard good things. He also suggested I follow Trevor on Twitter as he is a good follow and posts a lot of interesting things about education, inquiry, and teaching in general. So I asked my principal for the $20 for the book, got approved, and put in my order.

Professional Development Versus Arrested Development

I participated in a Twitter chat the other night that focused on professional development in school. I have always found this idea of PD to be an interesting beast. When I first got into education I thought, wow this is great! My school is going to pay me to go learn something and then I will come back to school and share it with all my colleagues they will be amazed at all the new things I’ve learned and we can all advance our teaching hand and hand into a golden rainbow of the future.

Mathematical Storytelling

I participated in a webinar this afternoon led by mathematics educator Sunil Singh titled “Using Math History and Storytelling to Invite Equity Into Our Classrooms.” I have thought a lot about how I could incorporate storytelling into my teaching since I started in mathematics education seven years ago. My struggle has been to find a comfortable entry point.

What is educational intrapreneurship?

I look at our job as teachers as being one of designing learning experiences for our students. And I have often thought of this process of designing these learning experiences as involving heavy amounts of risk-taking and innovation. So one day as I was reading something or the other about entrepreneurial thinking I came across the term “intrapreneurship”. I came to learn that this was a term that was created by Gifford Pinchot III. He defined it the following way: “Those who take hands-on responsibility for creating innovation of any kind, within a business.”