I’m writing this article as I sit in my living room, on the cusp of a new year, thinking about what it means to be moving into a new chapter, a new milestone, etc. However, I spent the better part of my morning scrolling social media and I saw several people reflecting on the highlights […]
Instruction & Curriculum
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Teachers: The Way Home Is Through Baghdad
That holiday break we recently finished was not a vacation. It was only a breath, a moment of pause in a pandemic. Sure, many of us rested but how many educators feel refreshed and ready to return? This piece is not about toxic positivity. No one has the patience for phrases like, “You got this!” or “We […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
FIVE Miserable COVID Truths Teachers Don’t Say Out Loud
I had extraordinarily high bookish ambitions when I realized I was going to be stuck at home for a year. As a fan of classical texts and modern classics, I had some woeful gaps in my reading resume. I was going to read John Steinbeck’s East of Eden. I was going to read Ralph Ellison’s, […]
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Building a Plane While Flying, Lessons Learned from a Hybrid Teacher and His Student Teacher
In our district, it has become obvious that a return to what school once was will now come in phases. And that means an interim period where we are, as my principal recently remarked, building a plane while also flying it. My student teacher and I departed that flight in phase one of our district’s […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Painless Poetry: A Road Less Traveled
Painless Poetry “Gross! I hate this stuff!” “This is too hard, I don’t wanna do it!” “It never makes sense to me, it’s all so weird.” Then the calm voice of reason speaks- “Ladies, we have to teach it, it’s part of the curriculum.” What is this dreaded standard? Poetry. That single word would often […]
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Online Learning: Headaches and Heartbreaks and Whispers of “You’re Lagging”
You may have seen the meme on social media where it likens virtual learning to a séance: “Sally, can you hear me?”, “Bobby, are you there?”, “Knock if you can hear us”. I shared this meme with my students a few weeks ago after an incredibly frustrating week of teaching to a computer screen with […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Compassionate Teaching is Key Especially During This Pandemic
Over the past few months, I’ve been noticing tweets from users about their teachers and their online class experiences. These two stood out to me in particular: teachers be like "i know these are troubling times" then be the trouble during the times — Jeffery Perkins (@JefferyxBball) November 29, 2020 A student just wrote “My […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Rebranding the Dreaded Essay: How to Demystify Essays and Make Them Meaningful During COVID-19
Whenever students hear the word “essay,” they groan, eye roll, and plead for something, anything else. Similarly, most adults I know remember high school or college essays they grudgingly finished just under the wire; late-night coffee, obsessive word counting, and a fair amount of teacher-specific bs-ing. It’s clear “The Essay” gets a bad rap, and […]