Category: Teaching

Popple

Catholic Education / Music / Teaching

No One Can Dance Like the Pope Can!

My 8th grade students just wrapped up a video project for Religion and here are two of their creations, based on the music of the Catholic band Popple: Little White Square: Papal Disco: The class would love to hear what you think of them, so please leave comments on the videos or on this post. And please spread the word. Thanks, and enjoy!

Socratic Logic by Peter Kreeft

Teaching

For Teachers of Students Who Don’t Ask Questions

While reading Peter Kreeft’s book, Socratic Logic, I came across this anecdote that all teachers will appreciate: There is a story that Aristotle, after one of his lectures, was disappointed that his students had no questions afterwards, so he said, “My lecture was about levels of intelligence in the universe, and I distinguished three such levels: gods, men, and brutes.  Men are distinguished from both gods and brutes by questioning, for the gods know too much to ask questions and the brutes know too little.  So if you...

pencils

Humor / Teaching

Teaching Humor

This email has been making the rounds lately, and I enjoyed it so much I thought I’d share it: After being interviewed by the school administration, the teaching prospect said, “Let me see if I’ve got this right: You want me to go into that room with all those kids… correct their disruptive behavior observe them for signs of abuse, monitor their dress habits, censor their T-shirt messages and instill in them a love for learning. You want me to check their backpacks for weapons, wage war on...

Book Review / Books and Reading / Teaching

The Intellectual Devotional

I never buy new hardcovers because they’re too expensive, but I made an exception yesterday and bought two: The Intellectual Devotional and Made to Stick. At first I was a bit worried when I saw the title for The Intellectual Devotional, thinking it was going to be a kind of anti-prayer book for atheists, pitting faith against reason or science against religion. As I thumbed through the pages, though, it doesn’t appear to be any such thing. Like a devotional, it consists of daily readings, but rather than...

Jacques Futrelle

Book Review / Books and Reading / Teaching

The Thinking Machine

I’m currently reading “The Problem of Cell 13” by Jacques Futrelle to my eighth grade students. Futrelle is probably the best mystery writer you’ve never heard of. He could have been the next Arthur Conan Doyle except for one tragic event in his life: he bought a ticket to sail on the Titanic. He and his wife were in Europe and decided to return to American on the Titanic, cutting their vacation short. When the ship began sinking his wife May boarded a lifeboat and survived, but Futrelle...

Lady of Shalott by John William Waterhouse

Books and Reading / Catholic Education / Poetry / Teaching

The Best Thing I Read Today

The best thing I read today was “The Lady of Shalott” with my eighth grade literature class. One of my favorite stanzas: She left the web, she left the loom, She made three paces through the room, She saw the water-lily bloom, She saw the helmet and the plume, She look’d down to Camelot. Out flew the web and floated wide; The mirror crack’d from side to side; “The curse is come upon me,” cried The Lady of Shalott.