Category Archives: Essays/Readings

This category often, but not always, designates a piece of my own writing on a topic on a variety of topics. So, if you are interested in listening to me bloviate, click on this category! The Essays/Readings category may also include extended quotes from books, particularly on pedagogy, literacy, terms of art, and philosophy.

Term of Art: Inclusion

Posted on September 14, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The practice of placing students with disabilities in regular classrooms in accordance with federal law. To the maximum extent possible, students with disabilities are supposed to be educated alongside their peers in regular education classrooms unless ‘the nature or severity of the disability of a child is such that education in regular classes with the use of supplementary aids and services cannot be achieved satisfactorily’ (P.L. 94-142020 U.S.C 1412 (5) (A)).”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Hamlet’s Blackberry

Posted on September 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

About ten years ago, when I still listened to National Public Radio regularly. I heard William Powers interviewed. He was discussing a research endeavor at the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy that resulted in report he titled Hamlet’s Blackberry. Over the years, I meant to read it. Then, in 2010, he expanded the original essay and published it as a book.

But the original essay, at 75 pages with the works cited page, is still available at no cost under the link, if you search “Hamlet’s Blackberry PDF,  The Death of Paper.

I have a particular interest in the history of books and book lore, including changes in printing technologies, I had an interest per se in this piece of writing. For educators, I think this is a good read because it says some things we need to know about the reading and reception of texts.

And Mr. Powers is a fine stylist, so this is a quick and breezy read about a subject that is, by any measure I appreciate, quite profound.

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Lao Tzu

Posted on September 11, 2018 | Leave a comment

Here is a reading on Lao Tzu and a vocabulary-building and comprehension worksheet that deepens understanding of the reading itself.

If you find typos in these documents, I would appreciate a notification. And, as always, if you find this material useful in your practice, I would be grateful to hear what you think of it. I seek your peer review.

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Term of Art: Readiness

Posted on September 10, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The degree to which an individual is prepared developmentally to learn a new skill. Readiness is a term often used in early education to describe a child’s acquisition of prerequisite emotional, social and cognitive skills for academic learning.

For example, reading readiness would include pre-reading skills such as letter identification, print awareness, and rhyming. When a child has demonstrated mastery of such skills, that child would be ready to learn to read.

However, the concept of readiness can be applied to any stage of learning. For example, readiness for algebra must mean an individual has mastered certain mathematical calculations.

Normal three- to six-year-olds acquire academic and social readiness naturally when brought up in a literate environment, but developmentally delayed, learning disabled, or environmentally deprived children may need extra training or early intervention to prepare them for learning. Early school failure or unnecessary referrals can be prevented with some extra attention in early education to bolster children’s readiness for school.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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Freud’s 3 Elements of Personality

Posted on September 6, 2018 | Leave a comment

Id * Ego * Superego

“Sigmund Freud conceived of the personality as consisting of three interrelated influences. The Id is a person’s natural instincts and desires, such as to procreate, to eat and to survive. The Ego uses reason to mediate between reality and the Id, so one might say that in today’s world I can only afford two children, or there are six people needing to eat so I can’t have the whole chicken. Lastly, there is the Superego, akin to the conscience, and thought to originate as an internal version of what parents, school, and society teach. This introduces the concept of ‘I should’–for example, share my good fortune with those less fortunate than myself.”

Excerpted from: Rogerson, Barnaby. Rogerson’s Book of Numbers: The Culture of Numbers–from 1,001 Nights to the Seven Wonders of the World. New York: Picador, 2013.

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Term of Art: Infinitive

Posted on September 2, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The non-finite verb that has the uninflected form of the verb: be, say, dig, make. The form may be used alone (the BARE INFINITIVES I made him tell the truth). The bare infinitive is commonly used after a modal auxiliary verb (be after the modal may in We may be late) and after the auxiliary verb do (I did answer your letter, They do know the difference). It is also found in the complementation of a small number of main verbs such as have, let, make, see, and hear (I had Tom paint the fence; The soldiers let us pass; They need us to leave). In some instances, either type of infinitive may be used: Steven helped Susan (to) teach the children good manners; What Sidney did was (to) help Justin with his homework. The to- infinitive has a wider distribution as the verb in an infinitive construction: (1) It may be a subject (To meet you was a great pleasure), though a variant with postponed subject is more usual: It was a great pleasure to meet you. (2) It may be the object in various types of verb complementation: I hope to see Judith and Percy soon; I asked John and Joyce to come to my party; Jeffrey and Rosalind want me to be there. (3) It may be introduced by a wh word: Anton and Stella asked me what to advise their elder son. (4) It may function in various semantic classes of adverbial: To set the alarm, press four digits; He grew up to be a fine man; To be frank, the meeting was boring.”

Excerpted from: McArthur, Tom. The Oxford Concise Companion to the English Language. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Morpheme (n)

Posted on September 1, 2018 | Leave a comment

“A minimal unit of grammar into which a sentence or a word can be divided. E.g., come inside can be divided into the minimal units come, in- and –side; distasteful into dis-, taste, and –ful.

The term was introduced, originally in French, in the late 19th century, and its use in English reflects in part successive technical definitions from the 1930s and 1940s especially. Thus, in detail: 1. A “morpheme” was at first a unit within a word which has grammatical as opposed to lexical meaning; originally opposed in that sense to a “semanteme.” For Martinet, in the 1960s, it was thus one type of moneme. 2. In Bloomfield’s definition a morpheme is a form with either a grammatical or lexical meaning. It was thus one element in a minimal linguistic sign: e.g. the morphem dis in distasteful as linked to a meaning “not” or “negative.” It is on this use athe “moneme” was later modelled. 3. As defined by Charles F. Hockett and other Post-Bloomfieldians, it was an abstract unit at a grammatical level of representation realized by a form, or two or more alternative terms, at the level of pholology. These are its allomorphs, e.g. the [dis] of distasteful might be seen as one allomorph of a “negative” morpheme, of which another would be the [un] of unpleasant.

Sense 1 is effectively obsolete in English-speaking countries, where sense two tends to be more normal.”

Excerpted from: Matthews, P.H. The Oxford Concise Dictionary of Linguistics. New York: Oxford University Press, 2014.

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Term of Art: Scaffolding

Posted on August 31, 2018 | Leave a comment

“Coaching or modeling provided by a teacher to increase students’ likelihood of success as they develop new skills or learn new concepts. Scaffolding in education is analogous to scaffolding in construction: just as a building’s scaffolding is a temporary framework that is withdrawn when the structure is is strong enough to stand on its own, so too is scaffolding on the classroom removed when students achieve competence in the targeted area. In any classroom, the teacher’s goal is to enable students to perform tasks on their own, with a minimum of adult aid. Effective scaffolding occurs when the teacher explains an assignment, brings the task to an appropriate level of difficulty, breaks the task into a doable sequence of operations, provides feedback, and helps students gain mastery of new knowledge. Good teachers have always employed scaffolding, even if they never heard of the term.”

Excerpted from: Ravitch, Diane. EdSpeak: A Glossary of Education Terms, Phrases, Buzzwords, and Jargon. Alexandria, VA: ASCD, 2007.

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Term of Art: Neuropsychology

Posted on August 29, 2018 | Leave a comment

“The study of the relationship between brain function and behavior. This field includes neuropsychologists who work in experimental and clinical settings; experimental neuropsychologists who work with both human and animal models; and clinical neuropsychologists who look for procedures that will help people with neurologically based disorders by studying brain and behavior relationships.”

Excerpted from: Turkington, Carol, and Joseph R. Harris, PhD. The Encyclopedia of Learning Disabilities. New York: Facts on File, 2006.

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The Devil’s Dictionary: Education

Posted on August 29, 2018 | Leave a comment

“That which discloses to the wise and disguises from the foolish their lack of understanding.”

Excerpted from: Bierce, Ambrose. David E. Schultz and S.J. Joshi, eds. The Unabridged Devil’s Dictionary. Athens: The University of Georgia Press, 2000. 

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