The Rookery

Last night I had the same nervous dreams that I have every year — although this year's charming version included a class trip to an under-regulated, poorly maintained amusement park.  And this morning before heading down to the plaza I had to take the same deep breath that I take…

When I taught down where the Cranes are now, some teacher long before me had installed a long shelf over the chalk board.  It began to collect the flotsam and jetsam of our learning — things too cool to throw away or even send home.  They were souvenirs of our…

On one of our last days in New Hampshire I took a hike with my two nieces (ages 8 and 5), my son Hal (age 6) and Hazel (age 2).  We headed off to "The Rookery," which is a beaver pond about a mile and a half from my mother-in-law's…

Summer is a time to recharge batteries and find new inspiration.  I hope your family is able to relax and recharge.  I read this article (The Trouble With Online Education) recently and felt that it had surprising parallels to our work at Prairie Creek.  It's about on-line education and is…

It's very hard to say goodbye.   We really are like a family when we come to the end of two years together — we've learned together, laughed together, gotten exasperated with each other,  worked really hard, and even shed a tear or two.  It's one of the greatest joys…

My first year teaching, my colleagues shook their heads in disbelief.  I decided to run Village straight through to the last day of school.  All of them had plunked their kids in front of videos for the last weeks of school so that they could pack (we had to be…

As I participated in conferences today, I was struck by the impressive work the children were doing.  I don't mean that in the most obvious sense.  Yes, it's fun to watch the students open their bulging blue books and flip through it to find what they wish to share, passing by…

The text I use for the play scripts. About a week ago, a group of fifth graders asked if we could read a Shakespeare play as a reading group.  I had copies of an abridged but faithful version of Taming of the Shrew so we sat down to read, each…

We took a break from testing on Tuesday afternoon to do some testing of our own.  Our final challenge for our rocketry theme was to land a rocket on a platform (I embellished with a story of horible, fatal lava surrounding a plateau on the center of which was the…

Our trip to Riverbend was wonderful and left the Herons wishing we had a lot more time to explore.  We took readings on the temperature, dissolved oxygen levels, pH and turbidity of the water in the Straight River and then compared our data to those collected by the Robins at…