Every year, I get to the part in my high school curriculum where I start to introduce Shakespeare's Macbeth. And every year, the students complain. "Why do we have to read this?" "What's even the point of Shakespeare?" "I don't understand anything that's happening right now." "What is this?!" And every year, I tell them [...]
I can still remember how I felt as I looked at the tears falling from one of my brightest students as she sat in her assigned seat for the Georgia Milestones Assessment last spring. Because I was mandated to sign my life away on a form acknowledging the serious nature of standardized testing, all I [...]
Last year, I taught The Princess Bride in my classroom, which is a fairy tale satire. To make sure my students understood what, exactly, William Golding was making fun of, we spent about six days taking a deep look at fairy tales. I was amazed at the conversations we had. Students were struck by how the place [...]
The word “curriculum,” as it pertains to education, can include everything from the materials used to teach our students to the planned learning experiences. If we think of the Common Core standards as the academic destination for our students (the “what” we want them to know and be able to do), our curriculum is the [...]
The temperatures are warming. The skies are bright. The birds are chirping. Spring fever is in full effect, and everyone is awaiting summertime! Unfortunately for educators and students, there is a huge hump to get over...standardized testing. End of the year assessments are looming over us. It seems like the entire school year comes down [...]