October Carnival

Unfortunately, I am very busy this month and the carnival had to be reduced to basics.

I am thankful to Karen at the Britannica Blog for telling me that “Charles Murray (of the controversial Bell Curve book) has a new book out on education that argues that some kids are not worth the time and trouble to educate because they are 'just not smart enough,' in his words, to learn anything more than manual skills. And he can prove it! Scientifically! A controversial but important topic in education.” Regular readers of this blog can imagine how offended I am by the notion that class denotes intelligence or the right to an education. I will be writing more about this later.

Britannica Blog also submitted another issue in the ongoing saga “Young teachers who stay just long enough to be discouraged and a big bulge of baby-boomer teachers starting to retire, leaving a lot of kids being taught by people on their way in and out of teaching.”

Teaching Challenges shares a wonderful example of teacher creativity in Teddy Bears Picnic.

Damien at Dynamite Lesson Plan talks about how to Activate Prior Knowledge. A new blogger, he hopes you find his approach useful, so send him your comments and encouragement.

This article takes a training focus but many of his suggestions apply to training at any age How to Empower Someone to Become a Learner .