Remarks to the student body this morning.
I used to work with a teacher, a history teacher, who was a great teacher, popular, smart, funny. But one thing always bothered me: it seemed that any time I walked past his classroom’s open door, I would hear him answering a question with the words, “well, actually.” Actually, he would say, what students had read in a textbook was wrong; actually that historian we were studying was mistaken; actually what happened in this historical event was actually different from what is commonly believed.
I have to tell you, this bothered me. I don’t think the word “actually” has an appropriate place in the language of teaching and learning.
Our world isn’t composed of truths and falsehoods, or certainties that can be claimed by the use of the word actually. I realize that I am speaking more about Social Studies, History, and English than I am about Math and Sciences—and there are things that we can be certain about, I know—but I think that in every area. there are many things about which we can never use the word “actually.”
One of my all time favorite Supreme Court Justices (you do all have your own list of favorite Supreme Court Justices, right?) is Justice David Souter, who retired in 2009. In June he gave a speech at Harvard in which he argued against the use or concept of “actually” in judicial interpretation. Some think that the Supreme Court’s job is to decide what the Constitution “actually” says, or “actually” mean. (more…)

Someone tweeted today: “when is the last time you were in a K-12 classroom that was not your own?”–with the clear implication that this happens far too rarely in our work as educators. I agree; I don’t think I visited another school’s classroom in action in the entire decade I was a teacher, and only rarely visited another classroom in my own school.













Dr. 



Collaboration by Susan Heintz:
Friday a dozen of us from St. Gregory flew to Dallas for a six hour visit to 





