J.P. Prezzavento - The Bits and Bytes of Education:

For a few months, my wife Kim and I have been discussing adopting a dog.  After a lot of careful thought and reflection we decided to adopt Molly a 3 year old puggle.  Between the time we decided to adopt Molly and when we brought her home, I did a lot of reading about how to welcome a new dog into our home.  While reading information from the web and talking to employees at the Open Door Animal Sanctuary I realized that bringing Molly home for the first time wouldn't be all that different from starting the school year with a new group of students. Here are five ways that adopting Molly has helped me prepare for the upcoming school year...and vice versa: 1.  Each day will not go as planned.  After we got home from the animal shelter, we decided to take Molly for a walk.  We tried to put her new harness on her, but no matter how hard we tried, Molly wouldn't put on her harness.  After about 20 minutes of trying to put on her harness and...

Dear Teachers, We know that you have a difficult job.  From what we hear, grading homework and tests, planning activities and going to meetings takes up a lot of your time.  In addition, we know that we can be a handful at times, too. While we may not always show it, we really respect what you do, and no, we can't do your job even though at times we say and act otherwise.  With that being said, there are a few things we would like you to keep in mind when you are planning lessons and interacting with us throughout the school day: 1.  Please consider toning down the amount of homework you assign us each night.  We know that when you assign homework you don't mean to keep us busy all night, but if you give a half hour of homework and so do our other six teachers, that means that we will have 3 1/2 hours of homework each night.  After we finish practice, dinner, and a spend a little time on Facebook, the only way we can get that much homework done is by s...