Education
Cool, Connected, and Successful
Attitude usually plays an essential role in success. In my experience, the most successful students tend to see themselves as students and feel a sense of pride in being a student. Learning matters to them; they want to learn (which is very different from merely wanting a good grade). They are intellectually alive and curious,…
Read MoreA Cure for Senioritis: How to No Longer Be “Sick” of School
Are you constantly plagued with a lack of motivation? Do you find yourself scrolling through Tik Tok instead of through your extensive list of assignments? Have you claimed, “I’ll just do this in the morning,” knowing full well that you most certainly will not be doing this in the morning? Would your friends describe you as ‘checked…
Read More#TeacherQuitTok: The face of a current teaching crisis
For the past few months, my TikTok For You page has been riddled with teachers using #TeacherQuitTok on their videos. This hashtag has become a place for teachers to shed light on current problems in education and advocate for change, and it is clear that change is needed. While some teachers have quit their teaching…
Read MoreDeath to the GPA
The GPA system can stunt our intellectual growth due to undue pressure and excessive grading. As an international student, the concept of the ‘GPA’ — the grade point average — was foreign to me. Since coming to Penn, long gone are the days where homework did not count towards your grade, due dates were…
Read MoreRisky Business
Of all the claims that schools make, perhaps the most ubiquitous is the assertion that “our students learn to take risks.” Risk-taking is meant to suggest that students are able to “move out of their comfort zones” by trying new things—like befriending classmates from other cultures or leaping into new activities or, especially, engaging with…
Read MoreBlack history is your history too
People of all races should see themselves in Black history. In elementary school, February was the only time I learned about Black historical figures. I recall cutting out paper dolls of Harriet Tubman, Martin Luther King Jr., and Rosa Parks — all the same shade of brown due to the singular brown crayon. While…
Read MorePhonics Can Cure Cancer
[Editor’s note: Educators may find “A Mathematician’s Lament,” cited and linked in this essay, interesting reading.] Evidently phonics instruction can cure cancer. Well, perhaps I slightly overstate, but a recent New York Times column by Nicholas Kristoff offered some mighty powerful claims of phonics instruction as an educational panacea. According to Kristoff and nearly…
Read MoreAn Open Letter to my 7th Graders
How Penn did and didn’t prepare me to teach you I took a leap to become your teacher; after four years as an undergrad at Penn, I thought I would be ready to instruct middle schoolers. I declared a major in English very early on, but I grew a passion for serving students and…
Read MoreGaming the Educational System
I did not grow up a “gamer.” I never played D & D. We had an Atari (I am that old), but I had no thumb intelligence. I had no interest in PS anything, Nintendo, or any of the other game systems. I watched, observed, and studied kids playing lots of games through the years…
Read MoreThe Content of Character
“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.” – Martin Luther King, Jr. Few readers will be reading this quote for the first time. Those on the anti-racist…
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