Gordaen's Blog

I’m nearing the end of my high school teaching internship, and I have finally had an opportunity to reflect some on the experience. Rather than ranting about the ridiculous paperwork requirement of the certification process, I thought I’d focus on a bigger issue. I think that too many students are not getting what they should [...]

A rubric is designed to give some sort of quantifiable assessment, overshadowed with a sense of fairness. Though rubrics can lead to a very mechanical, disconnected approach to reviewing assignments, they do have a place in the education system. Unfortunately, many educators do not really think about how a given rubric works.

1. Page Length Requirements The purpose of a college paper is generally to show understanding of a particular topic. I recently had to write a 3-4 page paper that addressed three points and I found that I had said everything by the end of the first page. I double-checked and ensured that I had covered [...]

“You must use at least 3 resources from the library.” Anyone who has been in school in the past ten years has probably heard a teacher say something like this. If you’re anything like me, a limitation on the types of resources you can use because a teacher doesn’t trust the Internet (or worse, doesn’t [...]

I would guess that the majority of people do not know what it takes to become a public school teacher. People just think you earn some degree, a fancy certificate, and that’s it, but there is more to it than that. According to the Western Washington University College of Education‘s FAQ, someone seeking to complete [...]