I am sitting in the back of the school bus. Waves rock my body as we navigate the red sandy-washed roads. I’ve been riding in traditional yellow buses just about my whole life as a student, teacher, and chaperone. This time is different. Traditional Navajo songs echo through the bus, intermittent with the news Dine’ […]
Current Events in Education
Posted inFrom the Front Lines
Teach to the Rest: Three More Ways We Can Use the Pandemic to Transform Schools For the Better- Part 2
By Thomas Courtney Last year, I wrote about the opportunity we had to change the very way in which our schools operated. Twenty years ago, teaching to the test transformed our educational system. To many, the pandemic was simply the last piece of the puzzle that revealed the picture of what our schools had become. […]
Posted inCulturally Responsive Teaching
4 Ways to Improve your Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Studies for Elementary Learners
By Tamara V. Russell, NBCT Each year during the months of January and February, elementary school classrooms across the country whitewash the story of Dr. Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. Because students are so young, many times teachers will limit the scope of the movement to the idea that Dr. King was […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
How This Teacher Healed from Racial Trauma
Kim Lee is a physics teacher at Pinole Valley High School in West Contra Costa Unified School District. She has been teaching for the last four years. She is the teacher sponsor of the Anti-Racism Club and helps run the Peer Tutoring Program. She is committed to promoting diversity and equity through STEM education, as […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Dear First Year Teacher: This Is a Time Like No Other
It’s been nineteen years since I walked into my first classroom, but I remember it like yesterday. It was a small private school on the far south side of Chicago. The school had little money, I was the only English teacher for 9-12 grade, and my 80+ students came from a whole range of experiences and socio-economic circumstances.
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Why I Microwaved My Strawberries: An Analogy for this Entire School Year
Setting the Stage It’s Tuesday and I’ve just closed my classroom door so I can eat my lunch. I have pulled apart students in two separate fights already in the first part of the morning and I’ve heard rumors of others happening through the building. My first-period lesson didn’t happen because the technology wasn’t working. […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Before You Check That Education Major Box …
by: Lorianne Palinkas I have taught middle school ELA for over twenty years. I have taught sixth, seventh, and eighth grades at all levels. My favorite thing about middle school is the magic of watching people come into our building as children and come outgrown! I wanted to be a teacher my whole life. […]
Posted inBack to School
Why Every School Needs An Equity Team
Yep, Teaching is Still Political As we get ready to start the year, the political tension of equity work is once again front and center. While Critical Race Theory is not banned in our state, the collective community temperature is boiling. In just the past few weeks, our district has experienced: A hiring and firing […]