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“What fall sport is Sara playing? Oh, y’know, the usual. Sara plays field hockey from 3:30-5:30 Monday through Thursday, with games on Fridays.” Read more here…
We had our first lockdown drill today. For anyone unfamiliar with these drills, it’s practice for not if, but when we have an armed intruder in our school. It involves hiding all students away from any windows or doors and locking them in a secure place. Read more here.
There are lots of wonderful things about teaching high school English. One of those is that I get to use a lot of fun novels to help my students reach the standards they need to achieve..….Read more here.
I don’t know why it took me so long to jump into flexible classroom seating. After 27 years of dodging clunky desks, tripping over backpacks and watching kids fidget uncomfortably in their hard plastic seats, I had had enough..…Read more.
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The Novels I Use to Teach Secondary English
The Novels I Use to Teach Secondary English There are lots of wonderful things about teaching high school English. One of those is that I get to use a lot of fun novels to help [...]
Copying the Nation’s Founding Documents by Hand
There are different ways to become familiar with our nation’s founding documents: reading, memorizing, studying, reciting are a few. But in our keyboard- swipe-click-centered world, rewriting by hand is not one that immediately comes to [...]
Six-Word Memoirs as an Introduction to Narrative Writing
Six-word memoirs are not a new thing. A simple Google search will bring up Smith magazine and their six-word memoir site that all began in 2006. If you search Pinterest, you'll find dozens of ways [...]
Book Review: The Smartest Kids in the World
The inside cover of Amanda Ripley's book asks the question, "What's it like to be a child in the world's new education superpowers?" - namely South Korea, Poland, and - yes, of course - Finland. [...]
Why I Create a Class Motto
Why do I spend several lessons during my first weeks of school creating a class motto? There's so much to do. Students need to learn rules, routines, and procedures. There's the beginning of the year [...]
Hiding in the School Building: Why Lockdown Drills Suck
We had our first lockdown drill today. For anyone unfamiliar with these drills, it’s practice for not if, but when we have an armed intruder in our school. It involves hiding all students away from [...]
The Value of Boredom: Overscheduled Kids and the Destruction of Childhood
A common conversation among parents: "What fall sport is Sara playing?" "Oh, y'know, the usual. Sara plays field hockey from 3:30-5:30 Monday through Thursday, with games on Fridays. She takes piano lessons Tuesday evening, and [...]
TEACHING RESPECT: Removing Creativity Hinders Respect for Teachers
Lack of respect is something that I've discussed with many of my fellow educators, as it has seemingly run rampant in recent years. The product of our discussions usually center around our love for teaching, [...]
When Your “Helicopter” Parent is a Teacher
I am enough years into teaching to have experienced a few of those parents. You know the type I mean: near daily notes, frequent phone calls and messages, surprise visits at school, requests for some [...]
Is The Moment of Death Different For a Teacher?
Some day—barring an unforeseen accident or circumstances beyond my comprehension—I will lay dying in my deathbed. I think about this a lot, probably too much. And I know it is macabre and slightly ghoulish to [...]
My Coming Out As A Conservative Teacher
The phone rang, and on the other end was the principal of the elementary school I had interviewed at just a few days prior. The middle school where I had worked until the end of [...]
I No Longer Want to Be Professionally Developed Due to Brain Overload
I love conferences. I always have, and now that I’m working in education, I love them even more. My background is in history and archaeology, so there was always a lot of them. You would [...]
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