Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

I am a blogger for the Balancing Act on the Lifetime Channel and enjoy watching their many videos on learning. Yes, each session does have a vendor ( this one is Virco  talks about the Zrock rocking chair ) on the piece, however, I had to share this one that I totally agree with that shows and talks about the redesign of schools from furniture, to making them green, to use. At the beginning of this video, the speaker says: "Sitting still does not mean learning." I have students all the time who lean back (and break) my regular "four on the floor" chairs because they lean back. I am a leaner and like to lean back as well. In this clip, they have a school that bought these "rocking chair" style chairs for their students and it totally warms my heart to see the students rocking. They need this! In the Flat Classroom book , we talk about in Chapter 7: Choice - giving students choices. I believe students need choices. Ewan McIntosh shares in the b...

"The moon is covered in water," said the child.  "Preposterous," said the teacher. "You are just an ignorant little child, how could you think that?"  And thus, the teacher has just killed the inquisitive nature of... Leonardo da Vinci, one of the greatest thinkers the world has ever known. Although he was wrong about the moon being covered in water, he first theorized that the moon was reflecting light. It is now called the "da Vinci glow." More of us need that "da Vinci glow" If we create a lot of theories, we're going to be partially or completely wrong much of the time. If you're worried about being right all the time, don't invent. Don't theorize. Don't experiment. Then, we can sit in our little room all along and do nothing with our lives. But even then, we'll find that although we were never criticized for being wrong that we were, in fact, WRONG. Because we wasted our life afraid of makin...

We talk about cost in monetary terms all the time. No one talks about opportunity cost. Education should start now. This is definitely a very little thing with BIG implications for turning around schools. Opportunity cost is the opportunity you give up when you or your employees work on something else. Teachers have a certain number of hours to work in a day. There is a finite limit to the number of hours they have. Do we ever consider the cost of what we're asking teachers to do? Here are some examples: When a teacher spends one hour completing paperwork that no one will read. Attending a meeting that no one wanted to have and no measurable outcome was attained for a person who justifies his existence by having meetings. Putting lesson plans in an extensive format that have no measurable improvement in how the lesson will be delivered in the classroom. Paperwork that no one will read. Having teachers file paperwork. Forcing a teacher to use a system (like a word wa...

Too many educational leaders are ageists . With life expectancy growing, some of our most productive, wise, caring professionals are going to be older. It is unfair and just wrong to stereotype the "young" as the best teachers and the old as "irrelevant." Grace Adkins, 83 year old Learning Lab Leader who rides her bike 12 miles a night Mrs. Adkins is one of the greatest teachers I know. She is head of our learning lab and close to 83. She bikes 12 miles a day, takes home the testing folders of 3 children a weekend (just to think and pray over them) and is unafraid to call anyone about a problem. I want to be like her. If she had retired eighteen years a go, two of my own children would have missed her attention and pondering. I'm thinking of my friend Heather Davis who is getting ready to move from Beijing, China to Guatemala to teach there next year. She is 63 (and won't mind me telling) and has hit the age that one is unwelcome to stay in China i...

Tom Peters  is right. You can tell a lot about an organization by looking at the bathroom. The first chapter of  The Little Big Things: 163 ways to pursue Excellence , Tom says: "To me a clean and attractive and even imaginative loo is the best..." He's talking about retail shops and he goes on to say that a nice employee restroom is even more indicative of the pride in an organization. I'm thinking back on the school's I've visited and I think this applies to schools as well. A nice school bathroom shows how willing you are to seek excellence and pride even in the small things.  In our school, although there is sometimes drawing on the bathroom walls, we as the faculty go in there enough that if it is there, it is usually gone pretty quickly. This is so hard to deal with, especially in the elementary boys bathroom (I'm sorry but there's no delicate way to talk about this.) Think about it, besides the cafeteria, it is the one place...