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Pavement rubber band (Photo credit: nicolasnova ) When surveying writers, I always scrutinize their resume to see if the person is a paper or a pavement kind of person. A paper person has read a lot of paper and perhaps written a lot of paper. He knows the theories and how things should work.She read a lot of studies and may know a lot of people. There is certainly a place for paper. A pavement person hits the pavement every day. She is doing it. He speaks from experiences that are real and that happened yesterday or today. She is very practical. I think that the most successful educators are paper and pavement. I know college professors who are always talking to teachers. Who are looking at research studies for practical applications. These professors care about their own teaching practice as well and are on the pavement teaching in their own class. Paper Tigers can devour learning When we have to be afraid is when paper rules the day. We have too much of this. WE literal...

"Sometimes we throw more out the back door with a spoon than we can bring in the front door with a wheelbarrow," said my Poppa Adams. (My great-grandfather.) I've been thinking about this saying and how it applies to my classroom, my pocketbook, my life. I guess it is another version of the "small holes sink big ships" kind of thinking. Classroom Are we spoon chucking away our classroom time? Add up all the distractions: fire drills, testing (if you're stuck with mandatory testing), assemblies, kids leaving for sports and how much time do you really have to teach? Perhaps if administrators look at the classroom time that is being "spoon chucked" out the back door it will help improve learning because kids will have more time to learn. Are we spoon chucking away the time we do have? It is rare that I will end 5 minutes early. Multiple 5 minutes by 5 days and that is 25 minutes a week. Multiple that by 30 weeks and you have 750 minutes or ...