This post belongs to an occasional series on teacher professional development. Previous posts include The Reflective Teacher as Reflective Learner and Teacher Professional Development in the UK: North & South. If philosophy is the quest for wisdom then every teacher who respects the import of their vocation needs to be a philosopher as well as a teacher. The two […]
Continue reading →The makar has been an exalted component of Scottish literature and culture for more than 600 years. The makars were the makers of poems, the ancient poets and bards of Scotland. It is a term still in use here today. Skilled poets, we know, do not simply write poetry: they build and shape and rebuild and reshape poems, carefully constructing every syllable, […]
Continue reading →The world has already moved beyond the point where we need professional mediation to create, for example, a polished piece of video. Anyone today can choose to express themselves in video without intermediation, from shooting, to editing, to final production. They might express themselves well. They might express themselves badly. But then it has always been […]
Continue reading →This is the second in an occasional series of posts highlighting some of the books that led me into education or that have greatly influenced me as an educator over the years. The first in the series can be found here. In 1971, Ivan Illich published Deschooling Society, and then two years later Tools for Conviviality. I read both books […]
Continue reading →Euan Semple has a knack for short posts that force me to confront some assumptions. A recent one is a case in point, entitled Mass Illiteracy: Are those who espouse the primacy of face to face communication really just hiding the fact that they are illiterate? I mean this in the sense that they are […]
Continue reading →I have to admit that I had never heard of the five-paragraph essay until I read a piece by John Jones in DMLCentral: Teaching Publishing as a 21st Century Literacy. It seems to be a common way to teach writing in primary and secondary school in the USA – it might well have a wider […]
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