The two of us – Chris Fox and Kristin Rowe , Team History in Grade 8 with “Ancient Civilizations” – have enjoyed the early days of our new course. We have had lots of space to dream, and we’ve been throwing around big ideas and grand visions regarding Flipped Classrooms, reverse instruction, the Mastery Learning approach, vodcasting and [...]

After watching a series of videos produced by the Irving Independent School Dependent on managing laptops effectively in the classroom that Jeff Utecht , our COETAILinstructor suggested, I realized that at Taipei American School , we are doing a lot right.  The following is a list of suggested a noted as the teachers from this district spoke…[Read more]

“Daniel Pink’s presentation on DRIVE entitled “The Surprising Truth about what Motivates Us” starts with two basic motivaters – food and money.  As he plows forward, he gets into the third level which included some of the the following words that really motivate us:  interest, curiosity, higher learning, thinking.  Basically, once humans get past…[Read more]

A bit like the movie Old School , when people become disillusioned with their lives, some teachers have become disenthralled with teaching in traditional conservative ways.  As I read more about this new and revolutionary method, it is all too apparent that this wouldn’t be possible without computers, internet, and all the other support soft and…[Read more]

At this point in my career, I’m more concerned with Social Studies Standards and Benchmarks than anything else.  Also embedded in our teaching are our ESLR’s ( Expected School-wide Learning Results ) and most recently weaving Character Education.  Ironically, integrating technology into the curriculum happened much earlier than the last two. …[Read more]

As a basketball fan, I love this line.  But as an educator, not so much.  Why?  Are the NETS useful?  Clear?  Appropriate.  Initially, I bulk at the idea.  Are you kidding me?  More Standard and Benchmarks?  But, as Jeff Utecht our COETAIL Instructor pointed out, we are already doing so many of these anyway.  So, as [...]

Teaching government concepts to eighth graders can be trying enough, but getting students in Taiwan to care about the workings the United States’ government is an uphill battle.  However, using visuals to help kids “see” what it looks like makes life easier.  For this unit, I worked with Erik Johnsen and Kristin Rowe (two fellow eighth grade [...]

Hooks… Leads… Grabbers… Intros… These are terms used often in writing.  Also, thinking back many years, I remember my student teaching supervisor looking critically at my ” set induction ” for each lesson plan.  As time has passed, teachers are constantly analyzing “how students introduce” a speech, essay, or multi-media presentation.…[Read more]

A few years ago at  EARCOS, I heard Ian Jukes’ Keynote speech. I found him to be quite entertaining and fairly knowledgeable. He made many insightful points, but one of the most memorable comments was about teenagers when he said they really need to be called “screenagers”. It hit me like a brick! Well, about two years have passed, [...]

Developing new curriculum is tough, especially in this day and age.  Why?  As a newly formed “History and Social Studies” department, we need to select new textbooks.  The challenge – selecting the right resource that includes a great textbook that is both hardcopy and online.  One may ask why we need the hard copy since we [...]

For our project, our group decided to tackle the revising of the TUP for Taipei American School Middle School .  We first looked at the present TUP and discussed the history of it, as we know it.  It was great to hear all the perspectives depending on how long people have been here.  This being our third year [...]

As things have slowed just a bit – budget complete, social studies review meetings completed until January, essays and social studies tests graded – you know the situation if you’re a teacher.  Well, I still have to type grade card comments, but it always seems to get done.  Okay, back on task.  I’m finally finding some time [...]

Having been overseas for over ten years now, I can only watch the mayhem of Black Friday from a distance via the internet and CNN. Honestly, I don’t miss those days – and they do seem so long ago. What’s interesting for me are the items that are catching headlines now about the “must haves.” Back in [...]

There are those times in life when as a parent you are just so proud of our kids. For me, it was this Thanksgiving weekend. My daughter, who has been the 11th player on the basketball team was not supposed to travel for the Hong Kong Holiday Tournament . Unfortunately, a girl on Tess’s team got hurt [...]

At a recent faculty meeting, our director announced that Taipei American School would be investing and switching over to Pearsons Powerschool . After years of the OLC, Homeworknow, EasyGradePro, and many GoogleSites and Docs, it will be nice to have all of these functions in one place. Power school has many benefits, and a few of these include: -…[Read more]