Minnesota Teacher of the Year

I wanted to extend a special note of thanks to our local ING Investments office. A few weeks ago they sent me an email telling me that I had been selected to be the recipient of their school supplies drive for this year. It turns out that every year their office collects random supplies from [...]

No matter how many years I teach, I always wake up well before I need to during the first week back to school. Last night I set my alarm for 6:00A.M., but this morning I snapped wide awake at four in the morning, ready to go. I sat there for an hour trying to fall [...]

A few weeks ago I stumbled onto this video:

The piece speaks for itself, but it has to be one of the more uplifting things I’ve seen in a long time. It’s hard to look at the clip and not feel that somehow, some way, we’ll eventually get things right. I also think there are a [...]

For my first post I thought I’d start with my comments from the Teacher of the Year press conference:
I am honored and humbled to receive this recognition. I know that my path to this podium is a unique one. But perhaps that will bring focus, in a good way, to the fact that there truly [...]

Mike Geisen, the 2008 National Teacher of the Year, has started blogging about his adventures this school year. As National Teacher of the Year, Mike leaves the classroom for one school year to travel the world and speak about education. He will serve in this role through May of 2009. In addition to his sharp [...]

Malcolm Gladwell, in his book Blink, talks about the snap decisions human beings make and their accuracy. The book is a fascinating read that touches on a wide range of subject matter. One chapter of the book, interestingly enough, talks about an experiment on evaluating teachers done by Tufts psychologist Nalini Ambady.
In her series of [...]

A few weeks ago I was invited to give a speech on Myths, Assumptions, and Attitudes in education. It wasn’t a viewpoint I was accustomed to examining. Initially I found myself struggling with the topic, but after a bit I realized that our educational climate is packed with stubborn misconceptions that are incorrect yet refuse [...]