tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478Tue, 17 Mar 2026 17:32:53 +0000EducationPoliticsArtOther ThoughtsFamilyreligionMusings on teaching, writing, living, raising children, and whatever else comes to mindhttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/noreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)Blogger396125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-858895456815440251Fri, 14 Apr 2023 13:56:00 +00002023-04-14T09:56:42.047-04:00 I'm moving this operation over to Substack. For anyone out there looking for me, here's where you'll find me: https://brokenhand.substack.com.http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/04/moving-day.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-6657994086251219211Sun, 19 Mar 2023 14:27:00 +00002023-04-14T08:28:44.691-04:00Other ThoughtsPolitics I've been thinking about "manhood" and what it means--or what we think it means--to be a man. I am not a psychologist or a sociologist or any other kind of -ologist qualified to say anything with authority. I’m just a guy, thinking out loud. I'm a guy who has been a man for his whole life, and a father of two men for nearly 23 years. But that's all I am, so...caveat lector. What I keep http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/03/the-normal-distribution-and-act-like.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-7095586576227347235Fri, 03 Mar 2023 18:28:00 +00002023-03-03T13:28:52.410-05:00 I wrote this eBook for Catapult Learning in 2015 on the importance of flexible thinking, better teacher-questioning, and the need to "play with your food" as a student.https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ZSnsAQ09jywWWr4rSR1xThDLhubRfI4F/view?usp=sharinghttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/03/teaching-for-stretch.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-5870717449266023236Fri, 17 Feb 2023 14:40:00 +00002023-02-17T09:40:51.586-05:00EducationThis is a repost of an article I wrote for the Achieve3000 online magazine in November of 2020. The magazine appears no longer to be available online, so I thought I'd post it here for quasi-posterity. It focuses on topics covered in earlier of my blog posts and in PD sessions and keynote speeches I used to deliver under the umbrella title, "Teaching for the Stretch."  *** “Believe me, my http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/02/tinkering-with-text.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-7061120238118619491Fri, 10 Feb 2023 18:51:00 +00002023-02-10T13:51:45.847-05:00ArtreligionPoint towards the deep source Of mind of things of starlight There is no thing there Handwriting in smoke Invisible evidence Wind on the waterhttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/02/two-haiku.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-7089437062798898130Fri, 10 Feb 2023 01:44:00 +00002023-02-14T12:29:07.718-05:00Art A little boy knows no tomorrow The game he has set for you Piece by piece  Like a trap Like love Awaits    but you breeze down the stairs brush a kiss on his head say tomorrow Tomorrow is a thing You know The assumption of more lets you open the door    the breeze and the brush and the game forsaken and the house behind you    ...recedeBut http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/02/a-little-boy-knows-no-tomorrow.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-5234460108286199726Fri, 27 Jan 2023 15:54:00 +00002023-01-27T10:54:42.128-05:00EducationLike everyone else in Ed World, I’ve been playing with OpenAI’s new tool, ChatGPT, sometimes with excitement and sometimes with dread. I asked it to compare Bertolt Brecht’s verfremdungseffekt with Antonin Artaud’s Theater of Cruelty. Done. I asked it to summarize the core principles of trial practice for attorneys. Done. I asked it to write me a villanelle about eggplants. Done. The poem was http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2023/01/will-chatgpt-be-death-of-writing-no.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-4585801501907025508Fri, 28 Oct 2022 13:46:00 +00002022-10-28T09:46:54.505-04:00EducationPoliticsI know it’s liable to drive tribalists crazy, but the truth is that education is both conservative and liberal, both traditionalist and progressive. Education is conservative and traditionalist at its core, and to pretend otherwise is silly. The point of teaching content—any content—and not simply skills—is to connect our children to their cultural history and allow them to continue the story http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2022/10/education-is-old-world-and-new-world.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-3413430366297830147Wed, 12 Jan 2022 15:16:00 +00002022-01-13T10:01:55.291-05:00FamilyWe interred my aunt’s ashes this morning. It was a winter day in southern Florida—cool and grey and threatening rain for most of the morning. The mausoleum was filled with Baums and Shapiros and Leibowitzes and Friedlanders, with Stars of David carved into marble above each name. Most of the people there were of my Aunt’s generation, born in the early 1930s. Some were a bit older; some were a bithttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2022/01/my-aunt.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-3767864845177873020Thu, 02 Dec 2021 15:15:00 +00002021-12-02T10:15:09.654-05:00PoliticsWhen I was in seventh grade, my Social Studies teacher decided to hold a mock trial as part of the curriculum. I don’t remember what the academic purpose of the whole thing was, whether the trial was based on some actual, historical event. All of that is lost to me. What I do remember is that I was the prosecuting attorney (a position I was very proud of, as my father was a law school professor),http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2021/12/why-i-am-not-surprised.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-1410193287177204496Wed, 20 Oct 2021 19:49:00 +00002021-10-20T15:50:32.976-04:00Education(originally published at www.Achieve3000.com)What we know about learning (what we’ve known at least since the National Research Council’s, How People Learn) is that when information is contextualized, it is understood and remembered better. We can memorize lists of discrete things, like vocabulary words, multiplication tables, or rules of grammar, but to truly understand those http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2021/10/why-grammar-matters.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-4495823543837905066Thu, 18 Feb 2021 15:13:00 +00002021-02-18T10:13:02.670-05:00We are ruining our world and ourselves by insisting that important issues are toggle switches instead of slide switches. You know the difference. A toggle switch has a limited number of settings—on and off, 0 or 1. A slider can be moved across a span between two extremes, and can include many states between. Toggle-thinking allows for only two static states: it’s A or B; it’s black or white. http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2021/02/sliders-vs-toggles.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-7119512509819877346Mon, 07 Dec 2020 16:04:00 +00002020-12-07T11:05:04.788-05:00It used to be fashionable to talk about how technology was going to solve all of our educational equity and excellence problems—bringing relevant, high-quality content to all students, scaffolding instruction to meet each student where he or she was, and engaging every student in meaningful learning, even if that student didn’t have access to excellent teachers…or any teachers. Maybe teachers http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2020/12/who-needs-teachers-your-textbooks-do.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-2055679257915237570Tue, 18 Feb 2020 13:42:00 +00002020-02-18T08:42:26.782-05:00EducationOriginally published on the Achieve3000.com blog. How do you prepare for an important challenge you’re about to face? Whether it’s running in a race, acting in a play, or taking a test, preparation usually involves honing your skills and then applying them in practice simulations. If you’re going to run in a 10K race, you might pace out the course to become familiar with the hills, turns, and http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2020/02/everything-counts_18.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-4845854495788415482Tue, 17 Dec 2019 20:42:00 +00002019-12-18T09:38:34.238-05:00ArtFamilyPolitics The trailer for the movie, In the Heights, was released this week. Many people have been viewing it, sharing it, tweeting about it, and generally going bananas over it, miserable that they’ll have to wait until summer to see the movie. I remember having the same feeling when the soundtrack to Hamilton came out. In both cases, it didn’t take more than a single song to get people’s hearts racinghttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2019/12/reaching-for-heights.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-3577515662139333831Fri, 01 Feb 2019 22:22:00 +00002019-02-01T17:22:06.034-05:00Education Life is hard and we try to make it easier. Every technological advance we’ve ever made, from the digging stick to the Smartphone, springs from this simple statement. Life is hard and we try to make it easier. So it has always been; so it will always be. There’s nothing very controversial about that idea, but what’s interesting is the extent to which our desire to make things easier for http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2019/02/the-middle-way.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-1170258779066253631Thu, 03 Jan 2019 14:47:00 +00002019-01-03T09:47:25.354-05:00ArtEducationFamily Our older son is home from college—his first year of art school, studying animation—and at the dinner table, while listening to us grill his little brother about his English class’ coverage of “Romeo and Juliet,” he asked this little gem of a question: “Why does everyone have to read Shakespeare in school, anyway?” This is a young man who is an avid reader and a vacuum cleaner of a http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2019/01/to-be-or-not-to-be-educated.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-8045916148672138757Mon, 29 Oct 2018 14:49:00 +00002023-04-09T08:38:20.143-04:00ArtEducationFamilyPoliticsreligion I was flipping through a poetry book over the weekend and landed by chance on “The Destruction of Sennacherib.” If you read any poetry in high school or college, you probably encountered this piece by Lord Byron. I don’t remember studying or discussing the contents of the poem at all, but I do remember talking about its anapestic rhythm (ba-ba-BA, ba-ba-BA), which can feel like the galloping ofhttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/10/one-thing-leads-to-another.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-6596765417609810921Mon, 22 Oct 2018 19:24:00 +00002018-10-22T15:31:14.723-04:00EducationPoliticsAccording to the National Center for Education Statistics, our total annual expenditures on public education (Kindergarten through Grade 12) are projected to be $654 billion this year, or just shy of $13,000 per pupil. That sounds like a lot of money, but spread across a not-quite-ten-month school year, it averages out to about $342 per student, per week, or about $68 per day, all expenses http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/10/all-trees-no-forest.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-2740295869552179095Tue, 16 Oct 2018 14:36:00 +00002018-10-16T10:36:11.181-04:00Education As teachers, we ask questions constantly. “Why didn’t you participate in class?” “What’s ¼ + ½?” “Who saves Scout and Jem from Bob Ewell?”  The questions go on and on, all day, all week, all year. We know from our teacher-training that wait time is hugely important. The great Bob Marzano has said so, and who are we to question him? (Actually, we have every right to question him, and allhttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/10/questions-worth-asking-answers-worth.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-5309875796841775374Mon, 08 Oct 2018 15:29:00 +00002018-10-08T11:29:59.784-04:00Education “WHAT ABOUT TIME ON TASK?” When I talk about something like engaging math students in problem-solving discourse, somebody always says, “But what about time on task?” When I write something about argumentation using textual evidence, when I do presentations on growth mindset—really, no matter what the topic might be, somebody always want to talk about time-on-task. If students simply spenthttp://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/10/all-learning-time-is-not-created-equal.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-8124162155199719161Mon, 01 Oct 2018 23:41:00 +00002018-10-09T09:37:17.638-04:00Education When I was a young theater student, my greatest moment of learning came not from a book or from a lecture, or even from watching a performance, but from being left on my own to work with an actress on her monologue, and then having the director put the actress through an exercise that completely changed (and improved) her performance. When I asked the director why he hadn’t just told me to http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/10/reaching-for-peak.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-7818751131527929441Mon, 01 Oct 2018 23:39:00 +00002018-10-01T19:39:58.498-04:00Education Teachers like to talk. I was a teacher, and while I think of myself as an introvert at heart….I have to admit, I like to talk. My parents were teachers. My wife was a teacher. Talkers, all. This shouldn’t be surprising. We know a lot of stuff, we’re passionate about the things we know, and we like to share. We love to share. My wife and I drive our friends crazy with constant book http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/10/the-importance-of-shutting-up.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-9118893231823317049Fri, 30 Mar 2018 19:29:00 +00002021-03-27T10:33:36.906-04:00religion It's hard to stand up against Pharaoh and demand your physical and spiritual freedom. But we tell the story every year, because it can be done and it must be done. It's hard to pack up your things and leave a place where you have been abused and despised. It's hard to remember that you are valuable and important, when all your life you've been told you're not. But we tell the story every year, http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2018/03/pesach-2018.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8286850597195008478.post-3086551830814301986Thu, 19 Oct 2017 13:21:00 +00002018-10-09T10:11:18.234-04:00Politics This month’s Atlantic Magazine has a depressing little article about how the idea of America—the set of beliefs that animated people like Whitman, Emerson, and Thoreau—appears to be disappearing with each passing generation, leaving only a dry husk of nationalism, racism, and xenophobia in its place. According to the article, on a scale of 1-10, less than a third of Americans born since http://agathon-sbh.blogspot.com/2017/10/feudal-america.htmlnoreply@blogger.com (Andrew Ordover)0