As a College Counselor, a certain part of my world is dictated by ratings. I have parents and students who speak with me all the time asking about colleges that they have heard of because they may only appear in some ranking list. The most popular of the lists that I hear about is U.S. […]
Mike Dunn
Mike currently serves as the Director of College Counseling and Upper School History teacher at a small independent school outside of Philadelphia. He teaches courses in interest/career exploration, college essay writing, college admissions fundamentals, and World History. He is also the Principal Consultant for Mike Dunn Educational Consulting.
Posted inFeatured
I Tutored The Same College Student For 4 Years. Here’s What I Learned.
My school is about to graduate its sixth class of students. In independent school years, it is a young institution. By comparison, some of the older schools in my area have been around for 173 years and 328 years- a few more than our 11. As a young school, we have had to be particularly […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
The Sound and The Fury, The Bite Fight, and the Demise Of Standardized Testing: Part II
Read Part I of this Article I here. While the Tyson/Holyfield match certainly marked the end of Iron Mike’s boxing career, his decline had begun years before. In 1990, Tyson found himself in the ring against a lesser known fighter named James “Buster” Douglas. It was clear from the start that Tyson was in for […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
The Sound and The Fury, The Bite Fight, and the Demise Of Standardized Testing: Part I
I sat on the couch with popcorn and soda ready for the match. “Dad! Come on, Don King is on camera!” Wide-eyed, I watched the infamous boxing promoter smile and chat with his evening’s guest. It was 1997, I was 15 years old, and had never really been into boxing. My experience with the sport […]
Posted inUncategorized
Social Studies Lessons from Zootopia
NOTE: If you haven’t seen this movie, there are spoilers below! Zootopia was hardly the largest grossing movie of its opening weekend. With a meager $23.2 million in box office sales, it fell short of the much heralded (and much worse…) Batman vs. Superman, which grossed over $170 million. But, while countless articles have talked […]
Posted inFeatured, Instructional Strategies
Commitment Is Key: Love and Logic In The Classroom
The concepts behind Love & Logic (L&L) have been around since the early 1990s and were initially developed as a parenting strategy. With the goal of creating independent, thoughtful, caring, young people, L&L is is designed to help encourage students to be active participants in their existence while providing clear consequences and rationale for them […]
Posted inFeatured, High School
Embracing Change: A Teacher’s Journey Across The Desk
When I began at my school in the fall of 2010, change was already in the pipeline. The school was in its fourth year, growing at breakneck speed, and poised to continue to change for the foreseeable future. I was brought on to teach most of our upper grade history courses. This included classes from […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, School Improvement, Uncategorized
Crisis In Flint = Disaster For A Generation Of Students
When hearing news about the financial issues of major cities in the United States, headlines often point to Camden, Cleveland, St. Louis, and, of course, Detroit. Countless articles have been published about the downturn of these formerly bustling hubs. Detroit alone has garnered international development attention from planners looking to avoid such collapses in the […]