Years ago I stopped presenting, coaching and even talking about ‘classroom management’. Who wants to be managed? To be ‘handled’? As an adult, I want to be led. Students want to learn and they want (yearn for) boundaries; AND they want to be led. Creating and adhering to a list of concrete rules and automatic […]
High School
Posted inFeatured, From the Front Lines, High School, Opinion
How to Survive the Last Semester of the School Year with Your Sanity Intact!
News Flash: The Winter Break is almost over. Yup. Just like that. We wait, and wait, AND WAIT all of first semester for two unadulterated weeks to experience a WHOLE lot of Netflix and chill only to remember that it was only temporary and we have been kicked to the curb yet again until the […]
Posted inFeatured, From the Front Lines, High School, Opinion
CONVERSATIONS WITH CRAIG: How Teaching With a Friend Makes Me A Better Teacher
Almost every morning of my life, I have a conversation with one of my best friends in the world. His name is Craig. Our conversations wander. I never really know what our serpentine dialectics will yield. But there is one thing I know for sure: these conversations over the past five years have made me […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, Featured, High School, Instruction & Curriculum, Instructional Strategies, Literacy
Controversy: Addressing Challenging Topics in Your High School English Class
On August 9, 2014, Michael Brown, an unarmed Black teenager, was killed in the streets of Ferguson, MO. On August 11, just two days later, school was scheduled to begin. As I watched the story unfold over the weekend, I was met with an anger and frustration I had not experienced since Trayvon Martin was […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, Educational Apps, Featured, From the Front Lines, High School, Literacy, Social Studies
Classroom Work Flow Before the Holidays
I have one week and three days to go before students are released for the holiday break. It is such a difficult time of year to set goals, establish a workflow and keep the enthusiasm in student learning. Students carry the stress and the burden of the holidays on themselves in a myriad of ways […]
Posted inHigh School, Instruction & Curriculum, Instructional Strategies, Literacy, Mathematics
Teaching Math: Is There a Right or Wrong Way?
When I talk to math teachers I tend to forget that most math teachers see themselves as an “expert” in teaching mathematics. So, last night’s Twitter Chat was not any different. If you have ever participated in a Twitter chat you know that the chat is an hour long with about 5 to 6 questions […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, High School, Social Justice, Uncategorized
Terror, Terrorism, and the Teaching of Social Studies
“We are not used to live with such bewildering uncertainty” wrote Jessica Stern in a New York Times editorial How Terror Hardens Us on Sunday (12/6/15) after the San Bernardino, California, shootings. Stern, an adult, was writing about adults collectively when she used the pronoun”we.” That same bewildering uncertainty also confronts our children, our students in schools. That bewildering uncertainty is happening at […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education, Educational Apps, From the Front Lines, High School, Instructional Strategies, Literacy, Social Studies, Technology
E-Sub Plans for Educators
Writing sub plans is the task I dread most as a teacher. It is time-consuming and often the best-laid plans go awry. Substitutes misinterpret directions or students use that excuse to claim that they were led astray from a meaningful task. I have found a few digital applications that have changed the nature of the […]