During the 2023/2024 school year at Blue Ridge School (my final year of fulltime teaching), I lived in a trailer.  ‘A trailer’ wasn’t completely accurate.  It was actually a cluster of trailers large enough to house four human beings along with three restrooms, a kitchen, common area and a large front porch.  However, our individual […]

María Barragán Ortiz is an internationally recognized multilingual educator, researcher, Top 50 Educator, and consultant whose work centers on creating safe, inclusive, and sustainable learning environments. From her early experiences growing up in a rural town in southern Spain to teaching and researching across Spain, Poland, England, and the United States, María has seen firsthand […]

Last year, I wrote to the Glendale Unified school board urging a bell-to-bell ban on smartphones. Since then, the landscape has shifted in ways that sharpen the argument. The Los Angeles Unified School District rolled out its own ban in February 2025 and lessons learned have now accumulated. Gov. Gavin Newsom’s Phone-Free School Act requires every California district to […]

The first time a teacher spoke to me about their student’s use of A.I. in the classroom, they said, “The students are using A.I. to cheat!” My question was, “ How do you know?” The teacher’s response was, “they just copied it word for word from their computer and pasted it to their paper. Look, […]

I Almost Missed It I had a parent meeting this morning. By the time I slipped back into the classroom, morning meeting was already underway — my support teacher at the front of the room, my students gathered on the rug, and my routine unfolding without me. I almost kept walking. Instead, I stopped at […]