Andrew Ordover's Blog: Scenes from a Broken Hand, page 11

My Aunt

We 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 bit

Why I Am Not Surprised

When 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),

Why Grammar Matters

(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 things, they need

Sliders vs. Toggles

We 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.

Who Needs Teachers? Your Textbooks Do

It 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

Everything Counts

Originally 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

Reaching for the Heights

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 racing

The Middle Way

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

To Be or Not to Be Educated

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

One Thing Leads to Another

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 of