All the coffee.
All the coffee.
Active August Day 3 aka that was “fun” aka my lower back and legs are feeling it aka gotta keep moving aka “just” need to sort my diet now.
Joined Lyra at her exercise class today. Very different to what I do normally. A little humbling but always good to try new things!
Trialing YouTube Premium Lite for a month, so shall see how it goes. Thanks to @rpmik for the suggestion!
We’re enjoying Dexter Resurrection. Enjoying the cast, the music and the main storyline.
Does have pay for YouTube Premium? It seems worth it to not have ads…
I found the thing i ‘lost’. It was in the place I’d put it.
In this case, the Switch was in the cupboard out of reach of the kids.
Any honest assessment of the science is going to recognize that there are things we understand pretty darn well and things that we sort of know. But there are things that are uncertain and there are things we just have no idea about whatsoever. (Nate Silver, The Signal and the Noise, 2012, p. 409).
Ah, if only federal and state policymakers, researchers, and reform-minded educators would see the “science” of school reform in K-12 and higher education in similar terms. I put “science” in quote marks because there is no reliable, much less valid, theory of school reform that can predict events or improvements in schools and classrooms.
Still, for K-12 children and youth there are “things we understand pretty darn well.”
*We understand that socioeconomic status of children’s families has a major influence on students’ academic achievement.
*We understand that a knowledgeable and skilled teacher is the most important in-school factor in student learning.
*We understand the wide variability in student interests, abilities, and motivation.
*We understand that children and youth develop at different speeds as they move through the age-graded school.
It’s funny because the longer I teacher, the less confident I feel about my impact. Despite all the new practises, reforms and ideas I am expected to follow in my day to day life.
Teaching feels so simple - to help someone learn. Yet, in the day to day it’s this constant maelstrom.
In most primary schools, many pupils don’t become fluent readers simply because they do precious little reading in the classroom.
Never enough time… Always too many things to do. The Most Common Reason Why Children Don’t Become Fluent Readers… And What We Can Do About It – Primary Colour
Going from driving on the left in a manual (🇲🇺）to the right in an automatic (🇨🇳） was fun today. Kept trying to press the clutch and change gear. Also, the indicators being on the other side meant we had the windscreen wipers on a couple of times too.
Day 1 of Active August aka I ate and drank too much on holiday aka oh no, my school clothes don’t fit aka this time I mean fit!
A couple of the sea from today, one looking back at the beach and another from a late afternoon stroll.
Reading on the beach.
Not a cloud in the sky… damnit!
✅ Apple Music now shows me listening habits for individual months. Which is cool.
❎ I have to open my browser to see it and can’t do it in the app. Which is not cool.
View from our boat today.
Did not expect this in 2025! Bloc Party: Tiny Desk Concert - YouTube
I need to not stay in that space where teaching takes up most of me. Because that doesn’t fill me in the ways I need to be filled, in order to go all in.
❤️
Is there an engagement crisis?
Aside from attendance issues, this is the bit that always interests me
Let’s get our definitions straight. Engagement might mean behavioural engagement: turning up, doing what’s asked, looking the part. Or emotional engagement: feeling interested, enjoying the activity, liking your teacher. Or cognitive engagement: the holy grail, which involves sustained effort, grappling with complexity, and sticking with tasks that stretch the mind.
The trouble is, we often collapse these meanings into one another. A student who looks busy is assumed to be learning. A smiling child is read as motivated. But as Dylan Wiliam reminds us, “Anyone can think up interesting and engaging activities that will occupy students in classrooms, but unfortunately such activities do not always, or even often, result in valued learning for students.”1
Are they even learning anything?! How can I tell?
James Acaster Reacts to Bo Burnham’s ‘Inside’ - YouTube
Everyone’s been trying to do content about lockdown. Everyone’s failed. He’s just nailed it. Let’s all quit. What the fuck is the point? Um, and yeah, and I I there that was I I I definitely don’t feel like that now, but I don’t remember when I stopped feeling like it. It was quite a while.
It’s not a competition but how often does it feel like one? I feel like this as a teacher, sometimes, fine, all the time. This thing that this other teacher has done is so good, I didn’t do that. Therefore, I should just quite. I’m clearly not good enough.
When Bring Me The Horizon release a lofi album. I liked it.
At the beginning of Able’s epiphany, he verbalizes the problem:
…and care and care and care and care. — You have to! They need you! — as if this caring was a sort of payment, virtue as its own reward, and not, in fact a type of fee, or toll, taxing me and drawing me down.
Is the cost of caring too much? Why should Able (or any teacher) care when educators are constantly lambasted for complaining too much, not doing enough for students, and showing ingratitude? Teachers should push that boulder uphill, keep our mouths shut, and be happy. If teachers don’t like it, they should quit and get a real job.
Holidaying in a place where using cash is normal. At home, I scan a QR code and I’m done. Here, I have to count out the money. Feels more expensive.
Similarly, here it is normal for you to give the cashier more to make it up to an easier amount to give change for. So much maths, that I don’t typically do!
Reserved seats on the flight. Two sets of two seats next to each other.Then after I’d done that. I realised it says a and c. I teach 5 year olds so I m let those are not consecutive letters. But apparently they are consecutive seats.
