This was initially written in response to a facebook meme… (started Jan 6 2022, but I am finishing up this re-imagined response on the first day of the next year and if I had more time…) I figured the rant belongs here instead. Or lecture. Or wishlist. Because when you talk with actual teachers (not […]
Category: education
Long month, longer year ahead
A challenge I didn’t expect during this school year is the number of students who are absent on any given day, and the students who will be absent for multiple days… We have protocols in place for when a student enters with a fever, a runny/stuffy nose, coughing, sneezing, etc. However, this is also the […]
When Giving Up is a GOOD Choice
I spent my own money, close to a “grand” to attend a module for a particular teaching method I have dabbled with but never been officially trained in. The week before it started (5 days before) a dear family member died of covid. The second week of the 2-week course I took ill on Wednesday […]
Asynchronous Instruction: The New Normal?
Remote learning. Distance education. Home schooling. These ideas came as a real shock to most families (and teachers!) in the spring of 2020. Districts and schools were woefully unprepared to support students who needed to work from home in terms of planning for supplies as well as how to deliver instruction remotely. Students without internet […]
School Closures: Mar-Jul 2020
[I wrote this in March and July, but didn’t post it. I am posting it now… as we rapidly approach the end of August. I have more reflections, but will do those in a new post!] I am up early, the first Sunday of the official closure. We thought, last Sunday, that we would at […]
School Year, First Quarter
Already we are in the last week of the first quarter. I have a wonderful group of kiddos this year – curious, energetic, and engaged. Not perfect (what class is?) but so willing to try, to try again, and to bravely keep trying even when they are clearly struggling. They are not struggling though – […]
Missing month… catching up
This is the first year in a long time that I didn’t participate in NaPoWriMo (National Poetry Writing Month). I was working with poetry, reading and writing it nearly daily, but didn’t have the energy to even sign up at NaPoWriMo. So here are a couple of poems I wrote during that time. Song of […]
What motivates you?
As a teacher, I am constantly being told (by non-educators!) that I must “motivate” the students. What they usually mean is: make lessons entertaining. They think it should all be fun and game-like. It is similar to the now-passé concept of “learning styles” (link opens a new tab and directs to a study released in […]
Not-quite-summer vacation
It’s not-quite summer in our part of the world. My students finished their last day of the year this past Wednesday. Like all endings, it was a bittersweet day for me. I handed out their report cards, we talked about how they can keep up with all the progress they made — and how if […]
NaPoWriMo Second Post
in school we were taught to say but not to follow the golden rule we learned clear speech and calculations invented histories concise writing and we yearned for connection between textbooks our lives in boxes but always looking outward, forward, ahead the land sea, air, forests dying slowly or quickly taking a stand for justice […]