It's the time of year when lots of people make lists. List of things to do (new year's resolutions), lists of things they've done (goals accomplished, goals yet to achieve), and lists of the bests and worsts of the previous year. Lots of bloggers have naturally translated this to a post about their "best" posts of 2006. I'm a little hesitant to do this, because it feels a little self-indulgent (sing it with me, "It's my blog and I'll self-indulge if I want to"). But I also realize that this blog has one or two more readers at the beginning of 2007 than it did at the beginning of 2006, so it might be helpful to cull through the 199 (yikes!) posts of 2006 and point out some of the most interesting (not necessarily "best") ones for readers of this blog.
Please note that I'm not necessarily saying these are all great posts. When you compare them to some of the heavy thinkers out there in the edublogosphere, they definitely won't match up. But I do think these selected posts will give readers a flavor of the thinking we've been doing in our staff development efforts and our work with students. Since that's probably why many of you read this blog, I thought this would be helpful to any relatively new subscribers that wanted to go back and see where we've been (without having to read through all 199 posts from 2006). So I've selected the "best" post of each month to highlight - which would give you just 12 to read. But, I couldn't help myself, so I also selected some "honorable mentions" for each month - which would give you another 22 if you're a real glutton. (I'd recommend picking and choosing based on their titles - that's really too many to read.) No matter how many you read, make sure you read through the comments, as those are often the best part of the posts.
Then, at the end, I've also listed links to 16 posts that reference and link to student work that you might like to look at.
So, I culled 199 down to 12 (or 34, or 50 . . .) - I hope this is helpful. If nothing else, it helped me to go back and look through these to see how we've progressed over the year - and to use as ammunition to give my teachers grief over their lack of blogging as of late.
Here we go.
January
Best: Teachers as Leaders
Honorable Mention: Asking Hard Questions of Colleagues
February
Best: Can Students Articulate the Vision?
Honorable Mention: Riding on the Surface of Their Education
March - Bonus Month!
Best: Tradition Part 2 and Tradition
Honorable Mention: Telling the New Story: Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3 , Part 4
April
Best: What If We Didn't Have Grades?
Honorable Mention: SunRocket and Hating School Vacations
May
Best: Take Your Student to Staff Development Day
Honorable Mention: Could (Should) Students Help Us Design Our Units? and Checkmate
June
Best: The Beginning
Honorable Mention: About This Blog and Blog With Next Year's Students
July
Best: NECC: Fearless Courage
Honorable Mention: None. (Hey, I was really busy.)
August
Best: Did You Know
Honorable Mention: The Messy Authenticity of Individualism and As We Begin Year Two
September
Best: What If?
Honorable Mention: The Teacher's Safety Net and Who's The Audience? and Learning from the Business World
October
Best: A Math Teacher's Experience
Honorable Mention: Students as Producers of Information
November
Best: 2020 Vision
Honorable Mention: Trust But Verify
December
Best: It's About Time
Honorable Mention: Are Final Exams Meaningful? and If You Build It, They Will Learn
Posts That Reference and Link to Student Work
Producers and Consumers
Scribe for the Day
Vocab and Thesis Statements
Learning and Laptops
Laptops - A Bad Idea? and Our Students Impress - Again
This I Believe - AHS Version
SAT Vocab Podcast
Student Mockumentaries
Blogging in Biology
This is Montag's Brain on PowerPoint
Isn't It Romantic?
More "This I Believe" Podcasts
There's Skype In My Fishbowl
Canterbury Tales Campaign Ads
This Is Not Education As Usual
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