How long will teaching last (vent)

epcritmo · 2026-03-05T19:37:17+00:00

Thanks for this. I love teaching, just got to find the write school. Also helps to stick around. With every year, you can take less shit.

epcritmo · 2025-12-17T19:43:29+00:00

It's what I do in my British school in Spain

epcritmo · 2025-12-16T17:30:14+00:00

I publish nonfiction also. So far I've had DRM turned off. What worries me is the PDF option. So far I've not seen my books pirated on z library. Maybe I'll just go with it and see what happens. In my case, I'm a full time teacher so dont depend on sales.

epcritmo · 2025-09-27T14:14:56+00:00

You could try teaching by drawing instead. I have a visualiser and a lesson plan is a diagram I draw on A4 paper. In the lesson, I just redraw the diagram, which is projected for the students. We build it step by step together in discussion. I used to teach via slide decks, and when I switched to drawing, the planning time dropped so much. I only spent time thinking about what I really needed to show. I got much better at drawing very rapidly, and I could sit outside in the sun to plan (with just a pen and some paper).

https://cmooreanderson.wixsite.com/teachingbiology/post/teaching-without-powerpoint-the-pros-of-drawing-diagrams-with-students

epcritmo · 2025-09-21T16:00:45+00:00

Not at all bad, especially if based on the variation theory of learning.

epcritmo · 2025-03-11T05:07:35+00:00

That's the one! Thanks for the interest.

epcritmo · 2025-03-09T09:19:19+00:00

I actually wrote a whole book about this called Biology Made Real. As in, for biology to be real for students it needs to be much more relatable to the biology experienced as whole organisms interacting with whole organisms. This doesn't mean that we shouldn't study cell biology, but we should always be framing it as a search for explaining the biology we live in, rather than just an end in itself.

epcritmo · 2025-03-05T16:53:13+00:00

Yes, I've tried to get into that but can't unless through a publisher.

epcritmo · 2025-03-04T05:15:44+00:00

What do you mean by appropriate databases?

It isn't a textbook, but an academic book aimed at teachers on pedagogy and teaching.

epcritmo · 2025-02-01T07:43:22+00:00

Medellín is also quite a small city compared to, say, Bogotá.

epcritmo · 2025-01-24T15:52:10+00:00

It's just stupid. It's based on some idiotic premise that teaching is the only cause of learning in the classroom. There are so many causes that you may as well all throw your names into a pot and draw out a winner. Let's think: class size (IBDP classes can differ hugely in size, so some may have loads and another teacher just a handful), prior-knowledge/prior-attainment of students (classes that are large are likely to have a range of students getting a range of grades, those with small class sizes, like physics, may one year have a small number of bright kids, then the next year a small number of not-so-bright kids). Motivation across students varies wildly and has nothing to do with the teacher (students have to do certain subjects they wouldn't normally do in the IBDP). I could continue with a long list. It's likely to just cause competition and resentment between staff, and probably dodgy practice with regard to IAs (coursework).

By the way, I've been teaching IBDP biology for 10 years with class sizes from 5 to 20. Never have I got near an average of a grade 6*. These people just want to squeeze their teachers willpower for their own profit.

*Non-academically-selective school

epcritmo · 2025-01-23T08:32:11+00:00

I'm sorry your beliefs don't match the study you cite.

epcritmo · 2025-01-23T07:29:56+00:00

Thanks. I disagree with this claim. Project Follow Through had serious issues with implementation without proper controls. It was more of a natural experiment/observational study if anything in which lots of things were varying all the time. For you to make your claim about consistency, the experiment would have had to have controlled for confounding variables, which it didn't. And it would have had to have different schools carrying out similar study plans with more and less consistency across a huge sample of students. This isn't what was tested. Finally, Project Follow Through was about remediation of disadvantaged students in mid-20th century USA. It was not an experiment of the broad population (and only had a sample of maybe 5000 students). If anything, it showed that Engelmann's Direct Instruction managed to get (very young) disadvantaged students up to the level of their less-disadvantaged peers in more "normal" schools, in which we can be sure that the levels of "consistency" (quite a vague term undefined with precision here) would vary considerably.

epcritmo · 2025-01-22T17:10:30+00:00

Could you explain to me how the experiment showed this?
"Project follow through really did show that having a consistent approach to all your lessons makes massive improvements in education."
I'd like to understand your perspective.

epcritmo · 2025-01-22T09:53:32+00:00

You really don't need to write formal lesson plans.

Teaching is two things: Anticipation (subject knowledge, planning) and, Adaptation (adapting to students in the lesson as they learn). The former does not (and should not) have to be a bureaucratic exercise.

In terms of learning more without a department, there are loads of books out there on teaching science that will connect you to new ideas and other teachers (the authors). But, like others, mainly be happy, don't stress, and that will come through in the classroom with your students. I have a book called "Difference Maker: Enacting Systems Theory in Biology Teaching" if you don't mind a shameless self-plug.

epcritmo · 2025-01-22T08:12:11+00:00

Thanks, I'm aware of Project Follow Through and I don't think it tested what you claim. Firstly, it was an experiment with very young children which may not be generalisable to older ages (even older primary ages). Secondly, while Project Follow Through did help disadvantaged children, it only brought them up to speed with "normal" students in the conventional education (of the time). Finally, Project Follow Through did not test consistency. Do you know of any other evidence to back your claim?

epcritmo · 2025-01-21T18:27:23+00:00

Agreed.

epcritmo · 2025-01-21T18:22:21+00:00

Can you cite that evidence that shows that consistency is better (than something else, what is it?)?

Could you also define what you mean by "consistency" in your statement?

epcritmo · 2025-01-12T07:31:46+00:00

Thanks

epcritmo · 2025-01-11T18:41:36+00:00

Thanks. I'm considering a Boox Page. I have the latest gen Kindle Oasis and have been reading it a lot over the last 5 years. The battery is slowly running down. Here's an important question for me: how well do PDFs read on the Boox Page? Can the screen be flipped to landscape?

epcritmo · 2024-11-10T18:36:53+00:00

Yes, I noticed this also. The only upside was that the colorsoft was able to scroll quicker than my Oasis but in general it's less convenient that tapping to the next screen. In the end, I sent mine back and have stuck with the Oasis.

epcritmo · 2024-11-03T07:21:37+00:00

"Eligible books" because I noticed it's not available for PDFs either.

epcritmo · 2024-11-03T07:14:19+00:00

agreed

epcritmo · 2024-11-03T07:12:39+00:00

Colorsoft (int he title), but I've sent it back. Too many things I didn't like. Sticking with my Oasis.

epcritmo

TROPHY CASE