var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; When I was a boy the word "please" was said to be the magic word, and I suppose it was when we were performing for adults in order to get something we wanted, but "let's" is the word with real magic in it. "Let's" is, of cou … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Let’s take a moment to think about our own childhoods.I want you to recall a beautiful moment. A time when you were young. Go back as far as you can. Most people, they tell us, don’t have many memories from before they were … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I didn’t start out my adult life as a teacher. I have a degree in journalism with a minor in English. I’ve been a junior business executive, a freelance writer, and a baseball coach. It wasn’t until I was close to 40-years-o … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; As a boy, even as young as 4, mom would say, “Tom, you're driving me crazy. Go outside.” And then she would close the door behind me, not expecting to see me again until she rang the dinner bell – and she had a literal dinne … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Hi. I'm Teacher Tom. And welcome to Teacher Tom's Podcast . . .That's right, the first three episodes of my brand new podcast have dropped! You can find them at the Mirasee FM Podcast Network page, on Apple Podcasts, and on … | Continue reading

The two-year-old said to me, "If you eat this food you can have ice cream." She placed a plate in front of me on which she had positioned a glob of purple play dough. I said, "What is it?" "It's healthy food." "What kind of healthy food." "You just have to eat it." "I'll need a f … | Continue reading

Some years ago, an older relative got remarried. Her first marriage, a stormy one by all accounts, had lasted decades, producing two children. The divorce had seemed inevitable to her loved ones and her second marriage to a more even-keeled man seemed a good idea. One evening ove … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; As a very young child, I knew my way around our house like I do the back of my hand. To this day, a half century later, I can still recall the nooks and crannies of that house. I looked it up on Google Earth awhile back. It' … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; "We figured out (two millennia ago) that the Earth is spherical," writes physicist Carlo Rovelli, "and (a half a millennium ago) that it moves. At first glance these are absurd ideas, since the Earth appears to us to be flat … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Time has passed over me," she thought, trying to collect herself; "this is the oncome of middle age. How strange it is! Nothing is any longer one thing. I take up a handbag and I think of an old bumboat woman frozen in the i … | Continue reading

Marcus was working on a cardboard block tower. Lilyanna was helping. They built it as high as they could, arriving at a point when they struggled to reach the top. It was really quite beautiful, these 2-year-olds spontaneously coming together in common cause like this, not talkin … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I never pretend to know what kids will learn on any given day and, honestly, any teacher who does is either deluded or blowing smoke. No one can possibly know what another person is going to learn. You can hope. You can plan … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; The long-term effects of the things we do to children in schools is a notoriously difficult thing to capture in research.Generally speaking, however, we as a society have concluded, based on our collective behavior and with … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself. ~John DeweyPeople tend to have one of two responses when I tell them I'm a teacher. Either they say something like, "Good for you . . . Such important work," o … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; The opposite of play isn't work, it's rote.  ~Edward HollowellThis might sound like an odd thing for a teacher to write, but I sometimes get the idea that knowing stuff is the enemy of education. There is little gratificatio … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; According to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the World Economic Forum, and Unicef (and according to the dubious measurement of standardized test scores) Finland has the best schools in the world. T … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; As we open enrollment for the 2024 cohort of my 6-week course, Teacher Tom's Play-Based Learning, I'm reminded once again how radical our ideas are about young children. I forget that not everyone trusts children even if mos … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; I started this blog in 2009 simply because I'd written a couple articles for Seattle's Child magazine that I thought were pretty good and felt they deserved a life beyond the recycling bin. That was the entirety of my ambiti … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true};  "Institutional wisdom tells us that children need school. Institutional wisdom tells us the children learn in school. But this institutional wisdom is itself a product of schools because sound common sense tells us that onl … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; Human babies are born possessing a collection of reflexes. Most of us, for instance, are born with a rooting reflex, a stupid name for the instinct to nurse. Scientists have identified the startle reflex, the grasping reflex … | Continue reading

And one day we must ask the question, "Why are there forty million poor people in America?" And when you begin to ask that question, you are raising questions about the economic system, about a broader distribution of wealth. When you ask that question, you begin to question the … | Continue reading

Yesterday, educator, author, and lecturer Alfie Kohn posted this on the site formerly known as Twitter: "Essay" comes from the French word meaning "to try." But that spirit of tentativeness is crushed when essays are graded and the point isn't to explore but to snag an A. I've al … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; My wife's family tells the story of her younger brother's first words. He was a three-year-old who hadn't spoken until suddenly, motivated by his parents having cross words with one another, he announced, in a full sentence, … | Continue reading

var addthis_config = {"data_track_clickback":true}; In third grade, we were taught the "times tables," which is to say we were to memorize it up to 12 X 12, which was, as far as I was concerned at the time, the end of multiplication. I managed to demonstrate to my teacher tha … | Continue reading