Again. People are talking about the VARK again. Most research has discredited the VARK. Just Google it and you’ll see the debate pop up right away. But I still like it, the same way I like astrology, Tarot cards, and various other personality tests. The VARK is a framework that can over-determine or define people once we buy into it too much, and any framework or typography can lose its helpfulness if its overly rigid (hardening of the categories”). Lately, I have been rethinking my commitment to this schema, and why I like it, because POD folks trash it regularly. Their skepticism and rejection isRead More →

Look, let’s be frank. Some schools swear by the VARK. Some researches say the VARK has been disproven or no research has substantiated it. Due to my own academic training, which emphasized the metatheoretical and critical, I believe that something is useful and super-awesome until it’s not. To me, the VARK makes total sense, and whether or not it’s a legitimate framework or voodoo is irrelevant. There are other frameworks that I overlay with the VARK when I teach, but the VARK is language people understand. The problem, the MAIN problem is when teachers are unwilling to engage in pedagogy at all. They teach entirely from anecdote and subjectivity, and their teaching is solipsistic: “I know it when I see it,” and, secretly, “I teach to the way I learn best.” That, to me, is the most devastating to the classroom learning environment. I just needed to get that off my chest. Whew.

I never fully claimed Louisiana or Baton Rouge as my home, and I never participated in the full spectrum of Baton Rouge Mardi Gras events. These past two weeks I’ve been homesick, missing the festival spirit that consumes the entire state, even the most reclusive among my friends. You’d think the weeks and weeks of Mardi Gras spirit – preparations, build up, multiple parades in every town – would be tiring, but it’s just part of the culture, something everyone looks forward to every year. Mardi Gras in New Orleans, pshaw, that’s for the tourists. Mardi Gras everwhere else – that’s a wonderful phenomenon thatRead More →

The other day, I didn’t realize I left my coat in the office until I was half way to my car. I weighed walking back upstairs against completing the trek to the car in the light snow and 15 degrees cold. I felt fine, so I decided to shrug off the weather. Once in the car, I Facebook Bragged about officially adapting to the Northwoods weather. The car never warmed up before I made it home. I regretted the decision from the moment the Fiat Popsicle made it out of the parking lot. In the morning, I realized “I ain’t got no coat” to wearRead More →

1. A new semester, crisp and clean

2. Engaged students

3. A new textbook to engage the engaged students

4. Fresh snow that looks like cotton growing in treetops

5. Blankets and a home to protect me from fresh snow

6. Family

7. Coffee, always coffee

8. People who work hard and do their jobs

9. Old school Bic pens.