Mr. Neil Moriarty is no longer chairman of the Monadnock Regional School District Budget Committee.
The information is scuttlebutt via a quick phone call from a friend,[confirmed @7am] so I’ll correct if needed, but that’s the word right now.
Apparently at tonight’s meeting, none of the Monadnock Taxpayer’s Association were present, but there was a quorum. In [...]
One of my former students asked me the other day, “So…what’s so wrong with education we have to fix it?”
I can see the point. When I left MRHS for KSC in 1996, I was appalled at what some of the students around me didn’t know. I’m still surprised sometimes by what some adults don’t know, [...]
Usually, sitting down with a parent is a bad sign. At MRHS, when things were going well with a student I never heard from a parent—with the occasional exception of an email telling me I was their son or daughter’s favorite teacher. Although heart-warming (and occasionally the only thing keeping me sane or working) it [...]
It’s always fun when things just don’t end.
The attorneys of Bradley, Burnett, Kinyon, Fernald, & Green, representing the Town of Sullivan, just handed papers to a NH Superior Court asking for a Declaratory Judgement against the district, which challenged the school board’s:
1. Ability to set the tuition rate
2. Ability to set the bottom line [...]
So the Keene Sentinel broke the news that teachers and the school board managed to come to a contract agreement. In March it goes before the voters.
Now all they need to do is agree to it.
Before they do, let’s be honest. This is a lousy contract. I say that not to impugn anyone who worked [...]
I don’t envy the Facilities Committee.
Wednesday night they met to try and create a plan for the high school and the rest of the district, and I don’t think I’ve seen a group of people more committed to doing the right thing. I truly mean that by any standard—they spent a great deal of [...]
One of the problems with preparing young people for careers is the simple fact careers aren’t ready for our young people.
At MC2, 40% of the work kids do is internship related—work directly related to potential careers.¹ It means our kids are out there exploring a range of jobs they might someday wish to do—which, given [...]
We coddle children too much.
I know schools are supposed to be places where failure is not the end of the world, where kids can make a mistake and learn from it. Still, I often feel we’re too far divorced from reality—producing kids who complain about short writing assignments they’ve had months to do, to [...]
Thursday I got to go to another curriculum alignment meeting. In many ways, it was picking up where the last one left off, and though it didn’t seem like the vertical alignment we worked out for the high school in language arts standards really went anywhere, the elementary schools in the district appear to have [...]
Interesting article in Wednesday’s Keene Sentinel¹:
Four years after voters killed a plan for a new Monadnock Regional Middle/High School, the estimated cost for fixing and expanding the current building has jumped to almost $10 million more than cost of that proposal.
The architectural firm that has been studying Monadnock Regional’s facility problems has made a long [...]
Monday was a Graduation Gateway. At any school a graduation is special, but for the Monadnock Community Connections School, it is far more so—graduation is proof what we ask of students can be done, that there is a light at the end of the tunnel. We don’t have a graduation every spring just because it’s [...]
When I taught Crime and Punishment at MRHS, one of the books I had my kids read was First Democracy. The book opens with a discussion of what democracy is not, focusing on the “doubles” which look like democracy, but are tricks which fool the unwise. ¹
One “double” floating around in education is elective courses. [...]
So with the withdrawal of Surry from the district, there’s been the question of what would happen to the Monadnock Community Connections School, given we’re currently based in Surry’s old elementary school.
Good question.
I know what I would like to see. A multi-million dollar institution where our kids are allowed the kind of education they [...]
There are some weeks where it’s almost impossible to keep up on the little lies and half-truths leaking out.
I’ve already had to contend once or twice with the misquotes and mis-figurings of Neil Moriarty and the the Monadnock Taxpayer’s Association, but it’s getting a bit too much when it starts coming from Fitzwilliam as well. [...]
One of the nicest thing about working in a team-taught environment is the instant feedback that comes after the teaching is done. It’s a vital part of the lesson, and it takes…oh roughly thirty seconds after a class for me to sit down with my partner and compare notes.
We’re hungry for the impressions of [...]
Surry left the district last night.
I’m not going to bemoan it long. I was torn between positions, and wanted to leave it to the euboulia ¹ of the people. My only complaint is I’m not sure that the people really had its say. When the vote is 1084 to 473—a total of 1557 people casting [...]
One of the joys of working with young people is sharing with them something they never knew about—and then watching them run with it.
Writing is a cross-cutting, “power standard”—a skill which, if mastered, allows students to do better across subjects and life. We should be identifying and targeting those standards, providing the most educational “bang” [...]
I should know better than to talk about things with teacher friends.
I’m left wondering whether or not some of the things that I was taught and believed about school change and about leadership as a teacher are at all true. I liked to think that teachers matter, that we can make a change in more [...]
The signs along the road are bright red. They have only a few small words. As is usual with local politics, there’s no mention of who paid or distributed the sign. There aren’t many. Still, I feel a little chilled looking at them.
“Let Surry go.”
In eight days, on November 6, there will be a vote [...]
We handed out Plato’s Allegory of the Cave a week ago Friday, giving them the weekend to read it. Although short, this is a tough text. It’s talking about hard ideas, in a difficult to understand way (everything means something else) and it’s written in translation.¹
It’s in no way easy.
We set it up as best [...]
