A few weeks back, I examined a hotly contested election for State Senate, and I remarked to a few friends and colleagues that it would be great to host a debate for these candidates seeking the post – and I should be the one to organize it. While all of those folks thought it was a good […]
Current Events in Education
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
EFL Earth Day Lesson in Kinmen, Taiwan
I teach English in Kinmen, Taiwan, a rural island home to beautiful natural beaches, large evergreen pastures of land, tropical birds, and lots of cows—lots and lots of cows. Literally a million miles from celebrating Earth Day the way the United States honors nature. Kinmen’s nature is very well preserved, and when I want to […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, Elementary School, Instruction & Curriculum, Literacy
Bringing Kids Together
Each teacher has a favorite. Favorite subject, favorite activity, favorite lesson. Three years ago I started one of my favorites. Each year we start January with “Where I’m From”. The students reflect on where they are from and what makes them who they are. While reflecting on themselves and where they are from, students can focus […]
Posted inUncategorized
Who Will Care for the Teachers?
When I sat down to write this piece, my purpose was to scribe a thinly veiled, autobiographical accounting of my own experience of surviving the middle school classroom while I struggled with depression. However, wanting to avoid the cathartic-memoir trope, I planned to include information on the prevalence of depressive disorders among classroom teachers .I […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
[The Empowered Educators Fellowship] Teachers Know How to Fix Education
In June 2016, we will begin a one-year Empowered Educators Fellowship with 30 educators who exemplify our motto of, “Empowering Teachers as the Experts in Education.” These thirty teachers will the masterminds in “fixing” issues in education through the best source available- other teachers. This once in a lifetime opportunity was developed for teachers, by […]
Posted inUncategorized
Imposter Syndrome Among High School Students
For the sake of this article, we will call him Jarvis. Jarvis is a current junior at a math/science magnet high school in Georgia where he has the second-highest GPA in the entire building. Not his grade. The building. Out of 2,275 students, there is the only person who has a higher GPA than he […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, Instruction & Curriculum, TeacherEdprenur
CLIMBING MOUNT EVEREST: THE QUEST FOR PUBLICATION
The following is the second piece of a four-part series entitled “TeacherEdprenur” and will follow the journey of how a simple idea about teaching became the subject of a new book, The Secrets of Timeless Teachers: Instruction that Works in Every Generation, published by Rowman & Littlefield next month (May 2016). Non-stop self-loathing. Interminable rejection. […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Common Core, Current Events in Education, Featured, From the Front Lines, Opinion, Uncategorized
Standardized Protesting
Most Americans are quite aware of their First Amendment rights, namely their freedom of speech, freedom of religion, and freedom of the press. One of the most often overlooked freedoms in that all-too-important amendment is the freedom to protest, and it’s something that teachers should consider when it comes to standardized testing. They can standardized […]