Tag: education

  • Selling Education (Part 1)

    As I may have mentioned, I have spent much of the last 8 months immersed in marketing courses. There’s a knack to marketing, but it’s not rocket science… and I would know.(1) It makes perfect sense. Figure out what you have that’s worth selling, to whom, and how to find and contact those people that…

  • “Position Yourself,” He Said

    (This blog has a glossary. Or it will, someday.) When I was in grad school the second time, I signed up for a course taught by a radical queer theorist/anthropologist. Because that’s what all physics teachers need, you know? My very first assignment in this course was to summarize the readings (three full length academic…

  • Thinking about Thinking

    You might not be surprised to hear that I’m big on metacognition. It’s one of my things. It might actually be my thing. I have struggled with this, because in the academic world I was brought up in, one does not become an expert in process, one becomes an expert in object. The topics in…

  • Ten Fundamentals

    Welcome to the March Carnival of Natural Parenting: Natural Parenting Top 10 Lists This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared Top 10 lists on a wide variety of aspects of attachment parenting and natural living.…

  • Observations on an Urban Campus

    30,000 people live, work, and study here. It is a university. If you were to walk into the soaring atrium of the central campus building, and were to stand for a moment, and really notice where you were, you would know that you had entered a temple. In ancient days such an edifice would be…

  • Finding the Holy Grail

    Before Holy Grail, Fix Cars, Ferry Children. After Holy Grail, Fix Cars, Ferry Children This week we finally got to a point that we’ve been working towards for the last twenty years: my husband got tenure. I think that this is an occasion that should include a ceremony involving funny hats, because lacking such ceremony,…

  • But is it Technology?

    My daughter and I were working on her social studies project last night about technologies that are important to her. She had to have 10 pictures to paste onto a piece of paper, and to be able to talk about why she picked them. She quite quickly looked around our house and recognized that pretty…

  • Gluons Make me Dance

    Why teaching about gluons made me hop up and down in front of a class of undergraduates.

  • Here’s the Payoff

    Last night I was taking my 7-y.o. daughter to her first Taekwondo class, and my 11-y.o son asked to come along for the ride. In the car on the way the conversation turned to why she wanted to take it in the first place. “Well,” she said, “Christopher likes it. And I like a lot…

  • In defense of Theory

    This is a very long article (word count 1800)  that I wrote several years ago to explain why I spend so much time immersed in theory, even though I am deeply concerned with practical implications. The examples are specific to education at the university level, but the idea of the connection between theory and practice…

  • Poem: Calling in…

    For a change of pace: Bad beat poetry about universities. Calling in… Apathetic. I’m too tired. And my chest hurts anyway. And somehow I just don’t care. About your priorities, And all your pet projects, And the fact that you guys just can’t Get it together. So you’ll buy a $60,000 multimedia Whiz-bang high def…

  • Despite the Big Yellow Bus

    Welcome to the September Carnival of Natural Parenting: We’re all home schoolers This post was written for inclusion in the monthly Carnival of Natural Parenting hosted by Hobo Mama and Code Name: Mama. This month our participants have shared how their children learn at home as a natural part of their day. Please read to…