First Hitchhiker’s Guide gets the movie treatment and now Wallace and Gromit get their own feature film!

Apple has the trailer up.

Enjoy!

Billmon, writer of perhaps the most insightful political blog out there — The Whiskey Bar, returns in his own voice to tell us about why he left and why he came back.

For those of us who had been following his return to posting — enjoying the juxaposition of sources, even as we missed his unique voice — it’s a reminder of the best of what political blogging can be.

Also, his angst and frustration with what blogging isn’t and can’t be in the political world is shared.

Welcome back, billmon. I, for one, enjoy the thought process.

So… one of my responsibilities that I’m not very responsible about is getting up to the third floor at the change of classes just to ensure that the hallways are managable. It is, I freely admit, an important thing to do. Given our physical plant and the number of kids in the building, the change of classes always goes a little more smoothly if there is an adult reminding kids not to congregate at the top of the stairs, or talk in a group eight kids deep, thus making the halls impenetrable, etc… It’s one of the little things that just makes the day smoother for the community.

And here’s the thing, at least once a day — often more — I am so engrossed in what I’m doing that I forget to do it.

O.k. — bad me. Ms. Lacey rightfully gives me grief about it.

But today when she did, I was particularly resentful about it because I really was knee deep in solving one of the problems she wants me to work on. "How am I supposed to stop my train of thought, just because it’s the change of classes?" I thought, "I was really getting into this problem, how can I just stop?"

Except that is what we ask kids to do six times a day.

And it did call into question our (our meaning American, not our meaning Beacon) structure of high school where we ask kids to completely shift their trains of thought when the bell rings.

Now, at Beacon, we’re better than a lot of places because a) there are no bells, thank gawd, and b) our classes are an hour long, so there is some chance to engage. Looking back, I don’t know how I learned anything in 40 minute chunks in high school.

But as we think about real constructivist learning, should we think about a return to some of Ted Sizer’s ideas of depth, not breadth? What would happen if we created a school that worked on — say — a quarterly system where kids took three classes a quarter rather than six, and kids had thoses classes for eight hours a week not four? (For what it’s worth, my colleague Sam Abrams pointed out that Colorado College works one a "one course at a time" system.)

I think that there are two downsides of a system like that — one, it puts huge pressure on the teaching faculty. When I first got to Beacon, we had 90 minute classes three days a week, and I know that on the days I bombed, I bombed long and hard. In recent years, I’ve thought that I’d like to try that system again as an experienced teacher, but it was harder to do. And secondly, courses that require more of a "use it or lose it" methology, like math and foreign language might suffer. That’s not my argument, it’s what I’ve heard math and language teachers say about the problems with block scheduling. I’d love to hear a counter-argument to that, though.

Anyway… just some food for thought. And I did remember to get upstairs for all the other change of classes today.