"Critical Friend" Kevin

At our back-to-school meetings, the new teachers had the opportunity to hear English teacher George McKee speak. Mr. McKee shared advice with the teachers, and none of his advice stood out more to me than his assertion that "it is insulting to [his] students, if [he] is not deeply invested in the subject [he] is teaching. And while Mr. McKee was speaking only of his own personal philosophy, the first two weeks of school have taught me that this is a philosophy the permeates the culture at Borgia High School. To illustrate my point, I would like to share some of the great things I have seen in our first two weeks of classes: *Mr. Unnerstall had students create "cave paintings" on Notability as they explored early forms of communication. *In Spanish, Mr. Thompson had the students working on "Padre Nuestro," allowing them to practice their faith in Spanish. *Ms. Parsell had the students create maps to their homes in an effort to show how much more world th...

On Tuesday, Borgia welcomed six new teachers to its family. All six of these new teachers just happened to be guys, and three of the six are named Andrew. However, that's not the only unique thing about this class of new hires. Four of the six of them are Borgia graduates, and you can't talk to any of the six of them without wanting to be in their classes. Students will have a lot of fun learning with them. Learning was the focus of our new teacher orientation on Tuesday as we discussed our favorite classroom learning experiences. We discussed these in our effort to analyze what makes learning memorable. It was a lot of fun to hear about some of the experiences the new teachers came up with! The following ideas were among the memories: 1. Teachers wearing costumes to get students interested.  2. Sugar-box sculptures of Ancient Greece. 3. Having to participate in a debate and argue for a side aside from one's own. 4. Having to become a planet to participate in ...