Happy New Year to all of my readers! I hope that you had a chance to enjoy the holiday and rest up for what will hopefully be a terrific 2010! I was able to enjoy some quality R&R myself. The stretch between now and Spring Break is the busiest of the year from an administrative perspective: student re-enrollment contracts, faculty contracts, admissions events and decisions, and financial aid committee meetings, to name a few of the major occurrences coming up. It is an exciting time, because the current school year is going full steam ahead while major planning for 2010-2011 is happening at the same time. By the way, it will take me a good month or so to get used to writing and saying "2010." Where did the last decade go? It seems just yesterday when everyone was panicked over the "Y2K" transition!
I need to make a selection for my spring book club evening, to be held in April. I am a little more than halfway through Checklist Manifesto, by Dr. Atul Gawande, who wrote Better, one of my previous selections. Checklist Manifesto is very good thus far. I am wondering about the applicability of checklists in education. If checklists work in surgery, which requires both knowledge of basic procedures plus the ability to adapt on the fly, will they work in a classroom? Do we use checklists already in education without calling them checklists? Do my readers have any book suggestions?
Best wishes to all for a wonderful 2010!
