Category Archives: Creativity

Classroom: learning environment or management area?

Posted on March 7, 2018 by draulston

The article linked here has a number of points to make that I think are worth discussing: https://georgecouros.ca/blog/archives/8112. I have discomfited people for years by maintaining that the role of a teacher is not “to teach” but to set up … Continue reading →

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Assess the Essence

Posted on May 25, 2017 by draulston

(and a second session from the 5.25 inservice) With the move to get rid of “traditional exams” or “final tests,” there has been an exodus to “projects,” which term seems to mean many different things to many different people.  Final … Continue reading →

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How math theorems really get discovered–maybe

Posted on April 25, 2017 by draulston

This specific post is in response to a query about a derivation of what’s commonly known as Green’s Theorem that I had my MVC class work through, but the general ideas are applicable to a very wide range of ideas/theorems/developments … Continue reading →

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Self-reliance

Posted on April 19, 2017 by draulston

After having listened to 10th and 11th graders running for student council for next year, I am struck by two things.  The first is that as a whole, they tend to be more creative without being offensive than they used … Continue reading →

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Teaching 2015 (review)

Posted on August 22, 2016 by draulston

Below is a set of notes to myself at the start of the last school year.  The start of this year seems an appropriate time to review them. This document is an attempt to put together some things I know … Continue reading →

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Thinking mathematically

Posted on June 6, 2016 by draulston

In an email exchange involving several former students (now at college) and a colleague, I said, This discussion reminds me that one of the great challenges as a math teacher is to combine the necessary (at least in our current curriculum) skill-set … Continue reading →

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Asking Questions redux (part deux)

Posted on January 19, 2016 by draulston

Having talked about today’s class in the previous post, I thought I’d write about what I’m going to do tomorrow as follow-up. I’ll start with a two-question survey sometimes used in large college lecture courses (that I’ve occasionally used in … Continue reading →

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Asking Questions redux

Posted on January 19, 2016 by draulston

On an in-class prompt for a senior English class, one of the choices last week was “What is the most striking stylistic aspect of Calvino’s novel If on a winter’s night a traveler… and what is its effect on you as … Continue reading →

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“learning to learn”

Posted on October 29, 2015 by draulston

A number of us, and I think the School as a whole, say that one of our major goals is to “have students learn how to learn.”  IF such is the case, then it occurred to me a number of … Continue reading →

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“Looking up” and “learning”

Posted on May 18, 2015 by draulston

There’s a lot of talk around (mostly by consultants and bloggers, but still…) about the “looking up” vs “learning” approach to teaching.  It seems to me there are three basic approaches to this question (albeit a large number of shadings … Continue reading →

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