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Elon Musk – and First Principle Problem Solving

Published on: March 5, 2025 Author: bette Leave a comment

In about 2014 I came across a YouTube interview with Elon Musk at Tesla Motors that changed the way I will always think about problem solving. Backing up a bit … During my career as an English teacher, I loved teaching writing. That’s wrong. At one point along the line I realized that writing… Continue reading →

Reorganizing – A Simpler Way

Published on: June 14, 2016 Author: bette 1 Comment

I’ve been back in Brookings for a week and finally feel settled enough to get back to these blogs. As I was moving books from one shelf to another and filling a couple of boxes to donate to the library, a book that I’ve had for many years caught my eye. It’s called A Simpler Way… Continue reading →

Meanderings … and the Common Core Writing Standards

Published on: March 16, 2016 Author: bette Leave a comment

Writing for me is a process, an internal conversation – a way to process my thoughts. I started this blog in 2009 for two reasons. One was to capture some of those random thoughts, and the other was to learn about “web logs” … or as I found out they were called: blogs. Edublogs… Continue reading →

Resolutions in Retrospect

Published on: January 1, 2015 Author: bette 3 Comments

It’s New Year’s Day 2015, and if I made any resolutions a year ago I’m sure I didn’t keep them. That’s not surprising because I realized a long time ago that it works best for me to write my resolutions at the end of the year instead of at the beginning. If I had made… Continue reading →

A Blog on Blogging

Published on: January 10, 2014 Author: bette 5 Comments

The nice thing about a blog is that it is never set in concrete. It’s not like writing a novel, or a story, or a poem, or even a self-help book that has a beginning, a middle, and an end. Maybe it’s a bit more like writing a soap opera . . . a story… Continue reading →

Overcoming Writer’s Block: It’s Just Not that Hard

Published on: July 5, 2013 Author: bette 1 Comment

When I’m working with a student who is experiencing “writer’s block,” my advice is to just start writing. Period. Put the pencil on the paper and just start pushing it across the line. If nothing else, just begin – “I don’t know what to write . . . I don’t know what to write .… Continue reading →

Stuck :-(

Published on: September 5, 2011 Author: bette Leave a comment

When I started playing around with this blog in 2009 it seemed to me like it would be an easy way to keep my writing fresh and ideas flowing. What happened? It seems to me like it’s exactly the same thing that happens to children in class when we assign them a topic… Continue reading →