Teacher Talk
Teachers vs. Tech: Putting an Old Adversary to Good Use
By: Dr. Jerri Ward-Jackson | Aug 9, 2023
Since the first clunky cell phone rang in a silent classroom, technology’s place in education has been hotly debated. Does its potential for good outweigh its potential for disruption? Do kids need more screen time than they already get at home? Is educational technology actually beneficial or is it just a dazzling, counterproductive novelty?
To Dr. Jerri Ward-Jackson of the University of West Alabama’s College of ...
6+ Steps to Addressing Bullying When It Occurs
By: Jon Konen | Jan 28, 2017
Back to the main Bully Prevention Guide.
Many of us know how it feels when someone repeatedly harasses or intimidates us from our days of being in school. In fact, we still may be in a work environment or live in an area where this happens to us as adults. Nothing infuriates ...
5 Reasons Why We Need to Define Bully Behavior and Stop Generalizing Events as “Bullying”
By: Jon Konen | Jan 28, 2017
Back to the main Bully Prevention Guide.
As soon as an incident makes the media and the term “bully” is used, people get enraged. Rightly so, they have a reason to be upset. Feelings of past bully situations from High School or Junior High start to populate people’s minds. Anger and resentment ...
5 Reasons Why Daily 5 Is the Best Reading Structure out There
By: Jon Konen | Dec 3, 2016
A solid learning structure will stand the test of time, legislation, and even other unfunded mandates. I believe a learning structure such as Daily 5 is more powerful than any scientifically based reading research program. What started during the No Child Left Behind era, and the push for curriculum taught ...
KARMA: 4 Lessons Learned from ISS/OSS
By: Jon Konen | Dec 3, 2016
After garnering a job as a teacher, I was walking through the hallways of my alma maters. There were still teachers working whom I had when I was a student. I respected those teachers, but in reflection, I sure was a handful while in school. In fact, I was suspended ...
8 Questions for Proactive Reflection
By: Jon Konen | Nov 19, 2016
How often as educators do we reflect? I mean truly sit down and reflect on the decisions we have made for the day, the week, or for the past year. As our lives get busier, it seems we get into a “reactive” state. We only have time to react to ...
13 Manners My Mom Taught Me That Affect Behavior
By: Jon Konen | Nov 19, 2016
My mom, Pat Konen, helped me to understand that manners are essential. Being a classroom teacher for over 30 years (Kindergarten, second grade, fourth grade, and a traveling science teacher) she understood that weaving manners into her instruction supported her classroom management and even more importantly, she understood it was ...
Have Times Really Changed?
By: Mary McLaughlin | Nov 4, 2016
Today is a lazy day here in my home. Went to early church, went to the grocery store, went to the local waffle place, went to the dollar store, ran a load of laundry, and then put on my p.j.’s to enjoy the rest of the sunny, warm, breezy, Southern ...
The Best LIVE PD, EVER: 7 People Who Supported My Elucidation of Education
By: Jon Konen | Nov 4, 2016
It’s funny that in the business world when you steal other company’s ideas, you may see yourself in a lawsuit. In education, we encourage our people to beg, borrow, and steal successful ideas in order to implement them in our own schools. Since I started in education back in the ...
9 Reasons Culture Trumps Strategy
By: Jon Konen | Oct 7, 2016
Back to the main Bully Prevention Guide.
This last summer one of the most profound speakers I have ever heard was Dr. Bill Daggett from the International Center for Leadership in Education. His words of “Culture Trumps Strategy” have given me a resurgence and confidence into education and changed what I have ...
Child Development, the Bell Curve, and the Twenty First Century
By: Maury Cook | Sep 28, 2016
I wrote a column recently about teaching our kids resilience and how to prepare them for the competitive world they have been born into. Those things are important, but where, I now ask, is that reality leading us? Read on.
Isn’t it interesting how the world views the development of the ...