I got upset at the local weather coverage during a snow storm last week. The local weather forecasters had been warning the locals of a coming snowstorm, and when it came, people were right in the middle of their holiday travels.  As car after car, was left stranded in the road that the 3ft snow drifts that 50mph winds blew up, I heard news personalities one after another say something like “I don’t understand why people were out when this came through.  We’ve been warning that this storm was coming, all week”.  What!?  How dare you!?

Here’s some background on this:  Read more... (486 words, 1 image, estimated 1:57 mins reading time)

Lets be honest, most things I learned in the 7th & 8th grades haven’t been used since I got out of school.  I can’t remember the last time I needed to diagram a sentence at work.

I believe that some of those more specialized things should take place in college, while secondary education should be reserved for basics that you will use in nearly any environment after high school.  For instance, how about teaching an english literature major how to diagram a sentence in college instead of requiring them to pay the university extra money take a bowling class for some bogus required physical education course.  Read more... (248 words, 1 image, estimated 1:0 mins reading time)

I think my kid may have the coolest teach alive this year.  Halee is a fourth grader here in Edmond and I absolutely love herteacher’s ideas about homework.  She says home time is for family.  She wants to guard her time with her family and so then she should guard the family time of her students.  Also, when she does give something to be given at home, it has a minimum of a 48 hour deadline.  No more late nights because of surprise large homework tasks when we had family plans.  How cool is that?  Read more... (273 words, 1 image, estimated 1:06 mins reading time)

I’d like to take a couple of days to celebrate the beginning of yet another school year.  Today I think I will speak to memorization.

I can’t stand this whole “memorize the answer” thing.  Listen closely people.  IT’S NOT AS IMPORTANT TO KNOW THE ANSWER AS TO UNDERSTAND WHY THE ANSWER EXISTS.

Let me explain.  If I hold a flash card stating 3×15 and my daughter shouts out “forty five”, and can shout that answer quickly from memory, is that as important as her understanding why 3×15 equals forty five?  If she understands why, it will help her to find the answer to 6×15 and so on.  To many times though, our public school systems force our teachers to teach to a test and get their students to memorize answers rather than teaching them why the answer exists.  Read more... (217 words, 1 image, estimated 52 secs reading time)

I was driving down the road yesterday and hoping to find out some information on OU linebacker Mike Balogun as he fights a legal battle with the NCAA.  You can find out more by reading the NewsOK.com story here.

I’ll let you read the article for details on that, but anyway, while driving down the road, I figured the best place to find out the latest news as it came out might be the local sports talk radio station (WWLS).  I turned to the station (which I normally frequent only during football and basketball seasons) only to be reminded of why I don’t listen until opening week.  Read more... (618 words, 1 image, estimated 2:28 mins reading time)