Author: Patrick Egan

Summertime, and the Learning is Easy

Summertime has arrived. Gershwin’s song from Porgy and Bess is clearly on my mind, if you caught the allusion in my title. If you have a moment, watch Ella Fitzgerald’s soulful performance of “Summertime, and the Livin’ is Easy” in Berlin during the summer of 1968. You could listen to any number of recordings, but this one stands out because you can see the intricacies of her performance. She was a true master. One of the great joys of being a teacher is summers off. This may be one of the chief compensations, more important to teachers than healthcare or

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Habit Training during Online Distance Learning

Everything changed a couple months ago when school went online. At-home learning has caused every school to attempt schooling in new and creative ways. We can also get creative about habit training during online distance learning. I shared my new eBook on habit training in the classroom about a month before we stopped meeting in classrooms. So here is a brief update where we consider how habit training might work while doing school online. The Method of Habit Training Doesn’t Change Even though our classrooms are online and it feels like everything has changed, the method of habit training doesn’t

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Education is Life: A Philosophy on Education

The study of education is the study of life. At least that’s the way it should be. Too often educational thought seeks precision in the use of the techniques and technology brought into the classroom. Have one’s lesson plans fully articulated all of the learning objectives spelled out in the curriculum? What is the new feature in the student management software? A flurry of activity surrounds the art and craft of teaching, so much so that we might miss the opportunity to observe life occurring right before our eyes.  One of my favorite podcasters, Brian Johnson who put out a

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The Black Death and an Educational Renaissance

An infectious disease causes a pandemic that decimates the major urban centers in northern Italy. Doctors are recognized by their masks. The economy is disrupted through the loss of a workforce. The social order is overturned. Many turn to religion as a response to the pandemic, yet dogmatic norms are questioned. The pope issues indulgences for both those who must practice social distancing as well as for those who are deceased.  The parallels are stunning. It’s truly hard to tell if we’re talking about the 14th century or the 21st century. The parallels, though, enable us to comprehend our own

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art of learning chess

The Art of Learning: Four Principles from Josh Waitzkin’s Book

My mother-in-law feeds my addiction to books. For over a decade she has worked at a used bookstore, and often shows up at family events with a stack of books for me to add to my personal library. She now also supplies my friends and my school. Jason was recently the beneficiary of her generosity, inheriting a slew of Hebrew resources–much to his enjoyment as he begins teaching an Intro to Hebrew class. At Christmas, my mother-in-law got me a brand-new copy of Josh Waitzkin’s book The Art of Learning. Since then I have been devouring the book, and there

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writing with black ballpoint pen

The Writing Process: Sentences, Paragraphs, Edit, Repeat

Why do we need instructions on a shampoo bottle? After only a few training exercises, any three-year-old can operate a shampoo bottle. Yet every bottle of shampoo I can find has instructions. The sequence, “lather, rinse, repeat,” became such a well-known instruction that it took on meme status in culture. Brian Regan has taken on a similar set of instructions on a Pop Tarts box. If you haven’t enjoyed his take on the ridiculous nature of obvious instructions, you should take a moment to watch it here on YouTube before proceeding. I will wait. (And while you’re there, you might

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monopoly game with dog in the dog house

School Is a Game: Finite and Infinite Games in Education

This is a website about education, particularly pertaining to thinking about education differently. Jason, Kolby and I really enjoy discussing educational philosophy, and hopefully you, our readers, enjoy and benefit from our peculiar take on education. In addition to being educational philosophers, we are also teachers – educational practitioners. What we talk about in our weekly posts we are also trying to live out in the classroom every day. Even though we write from a place of deep thought about educational ideals, sometimes the reality of the daily classroom means we get to workshop how those ideals play out with

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typwriter saying only a writer knows

Writing on Purpose: How Ought We to Instruct Young Writers?

To teach writing is to teach an art form. It takes lots and lots of practice to write well. The way we think about writing can sometimes limit students, so that they don’t gain the practice they need to write effectively. In order to write effectively there are three concepts that should guide our goals as instructors of writing: 1) The Primacy of the Audience 2) Perspective is Power 3) Multiple Styles In teaching an art form, we can tend to focus on the technical aspects of the art, but we also need to take a long-term view of the

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brain in internet

Habit Formation: You, Your Plastic Mind, and Your Internet

Shallow. Our brains are shallow. Or at least they have become shallow. This is the point Nicholas Carr drives home in his book The Shallows, where he examined the impact the internet has had on the human brain. Almost at the middle crease of the book, he writes: The information flowing into our working memory at any given moment is called our “cognitive load.” When the load exceeds our mind’s ability to store and process the information—when the water overflows the thimble—we’re unable to retain the information or to draw connections with the information already stored in our long-term memory.

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woman exercising the habit of Bible reading and prayer

Christ Our Habitation: A Consideration of Spiritual Habit Training in Education

I have begun to explore habit training once more. In this post I want to explore what it means to consider students as whole persons and address questions stemming from our being spiritual persons. What does it mean for Christians to apply habit training? The greatest liability of education is an undue focus on the intellect. One of the chief concerns teachers have when they plan their lessons is the conveyance of knowledge. This is indeed an important aspect of teaching. But this is not the only aspect of teaching and perhaps actually not the most important, despite the fact

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