Southeast Education Network Columnists: Education Articles

STEPHEN MURPHY | 11/27/2011

We are very excited to present SEEN’s Technology issue! New technologies can be overwhelming for both teachers and students – despite that fact that students are often considered “digital natives” – so our articles focus on how teachers can use these technologies as tools to enhance and customize learning. With careful planning towards the ultimate goal of student learning, teachers can leverage technologies to make a positive impact on their students’ learning experience. Read More...

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DEBORAH AUGHEY | 11/27/2011

Just before graduation in 1983, the journalism teacher of my sleepy southwest Florida high school brought a few editors into the backroom of the library to crowd around the school’s first desktop computer, an Apple 2E. We watched in bemused wonder as he typed a few sentences. He proudly bragged that this computer — that could underline, bold and even italicize words — was going to change the world. It did. Flash forward to 2011, and my convergence journalism class seamlessly integrates and manipulates a bevy of software programs, smart phone apps and digital media to support our paperless classroom where we publish nine online editions and f... Read More...

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Dr. Ruth Herman Wells, M.S. | 08/09/2011

Teachers, you may be working in the single most difficult time period ever for K-12 educators. You may feel as discouraged and low as you have ever felt during all your years in education. You continue to be asked to do more with less, meaning that your job has been getting tougher and tougher. As someone who trains teachers all over North America, I’ve been hearing over and over again that classroom management is getting harder and harder as classes get bigger and bigger, and students seem to be more and more difficult. Many of you have told me that you’re so discouraged that you’re thinking about finding a different job. This column has imm... Read More...

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Larry Biddle | 08/09/2011

Building strong, self-reliant, self educating young Americans is as relevant today as it was when we started the #1 Program at Conway High School in South Carolina — the home of Jostens Renaissance. Seth Godin, in his blog — www.sethgodin.blogspot.com — says, “The lottery is great, because it is easy. Not certain, but easy. If you win, the belief goes, you’re done. Medical School is great because it is certain. Not easy, but certain. If you graduate, the belief goes, you’re done. Most people are searching for a path to success that is both easy and certain. Most paths are neither.” Today’s 10 Essential Elements of Renaissance (review SEEN Fal... Read More...

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Franklin Schargel | 03/21/2011

Schools are being asked to do more and more with fewer resources. For any school program to assure the high academic achievement of all children, there must be an active partnership between the school and community to address the social and personal, as well as the academic, needs of children. As Jehl, Blank, and McCloud (2001) conclude in Lessons in Collaboration , educators and community builders differ about the goals and scope of schools. Educators tend to see educational reform as focused on promoting the academic achievement of young people. Community builders — and some educators — focus on academic achievement in a broader context tha... Read More...

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Dr. Ruth Herman Wells, M.S. | 03/21/2011

I wonder if any other industry is as prone to trends and fads as K-12 education. Every couple of years, a new model promises much, sweeps through the nation, then largely fades from view. Enter a new fad that promises much, and repeat — endlessly. The trouble with most education models is that they’re one-size-fits-all. In the real world, students come in all shapes and sizes, with all manner of challenges and barriers, and one simple approach will never fit all of them. To expect one basic model to fit all students coast-to-coast is like expecting one textbook to fit all students coast-to-coast. Read More...

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Larry Biddle | 03/21/2011

Dennis G. Wiseman, former Director of The Biddle Center, and Gilbert Hunt, former Dean of the College of Education at Coastal Carolina University, have released the second edition of Best Practice in Motivation and Management in the Classroom. The text published by Charles C Thomas Publisher, Ltd., Springfield, Illinois, is dedicated to those students who enter schools each day and bring with them, or encounter there, problems in motivation and management, and to the many dedicated teachers who continue to seek ways to meet both the personal and learning needs of these students. The research is a comprehensive work that offers practical infor... Read More...

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Franklin Schargel | 11/19/2010

The job of running schools is too complex for schools to do it alone. For any school program to assure the high academic achievement of all children, there must be an active partnership between the school and community to address the social and personal, as well as the academic needs of children. But a disconnect exists between educators and community people. Educators tend to see educational reform as focused on promoting the academic achievement of young people. While community builders (and some educators) focus on academic achievement in a broader context that includes social and personal development. Read More...

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Ruth Herman Wells, M.S. | 11/19/2010

For the Facebook generation, their worlds revolve around all things electronic. As a result, the venue for student problems is shifting from the real world to the virtual one. Unfortunately, virtual world problems can often become real world problems too. At our professional development workshops all over the U.S., we’re getting a lot more requests for help with students who are facing or engaging in cyberbullying. We have also been getting a lot of questions about what to do about students who are literally trashing their own reputations and credibility by posting damaging pictures and comments about partying, substance abuse, their interper... Read More...

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Larry Biddle | 11/19/2010

Several years ago while preparing for a meeting of the Board of Directors at Burroughs & Chapin Company — one of the founding development companies started over 100 years ago in Horry County, South Carolina — I was reading a golf course appraisal and evaluation report on our Arcadian Shores golf course, which at that time was leased to the oceanfront Myrtle Beach Hilton hotel. As I studied the comprehensive document, a four-tiered assessment about the quest for excellence caught my attention: golf courses and schools are very much alike. There are lots of traps! Too many students fall into traps every day! This report featured four distinct c... Read More...

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Franklin Schargel | 08/23/2010

What follows has been excerpted from 162 Keys to School Success: Be The Best, Hire The Best, Train, Inspire and Retain The Best which was published by Eye on Education in July, 2010. Ask people what is the most valuable resource America has and they will come up with a variety of answers including coal, oil, or other natural resources. For me the answer is “its people.” America has a talented, educated workforce. Education has supplied this workforce with knowledge and skills that most nations fail to provide. Yet educators are not valued in this society as much as they are in many other nations. And we are losing them a rate where schools o... Read More...

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Dr. Ruth Herman Wells, M.S. | 08/23/2010

As I spoke last week at a huge Iowa K-12 education conference, I noticed commotion in the hall’s front row. After my keynote was finished, a person from that row came up to apologize for the disruption. She explained that the woman next to her had been checking her phone messages while I spoke. The woman had discovered she was being laid off by e-mail, and was simply unable to control her shock and anger. The educator standing in front of me then said that she herself had been laid off last week after several decades as a teacher. Read More...

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Larry Biddle | 08/23/2010

From our humble beginning at Conway High School in South Carolina until now, Jostens Renaissance has continued to focus on the power of teaching and learning across our nation. When Conway High School launched the CHS #1 Program on January 20, 1984, we knew that our quest to create lots of niches for lots of kids would begin to close the recognition gap on our campus. It was simple. There was an achievement gap because there was a recognition gap! What we needed was an inside-out business approach that centered on our entire school community as the most important business in town. We knew that we must elevate and appreciate the teaching profe... Read More...

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Maggie Martin Connell | 03/31/2010

There is a certain hurley-burley in education these days as the urgency to correct the math problem heightens. The search for a remedy is acute as research points to the need to make meaning — curricula are reshaped and programs are rewritten — all important changes. But equally important are those smaller shifts we can all make in daily practice. One of those shifts is in the way we make (or break) meaning, by the words we choose to talk about the math we see. You see, here’s the thing, in our quest to make it easier for our students, we sometimes use bad language. We give them ‘non-sense’ rules and terms to memorize, we expect them to simp... Read More...

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Franklin Schargel | 03/31/2010

Schools need to be globally competitive, just as businesses are. We have come to recognize that Coca Cola is a global company, and you can buy a McDonald’s hamburger all over the world. Faxes, cell phones and the Internet have freed industrial firms from geographic boundaries. Toyota can build cars as easily in Evansville, Indiana as it can in Japan. Motorola can assemble pagers as easily in Singapore as it does in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. Look at the label of any “American product.” General Motors makes cars in Canada and Korea as well as the United States. I.B.M. makes some of its computers in Mexico as well as the Far East. Pitney Bowes ... Read More...

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