From the Factory to a Personalized Model If you’re old enough, try to think back to the way teaching and learning was designed 40 or 50 years ago. The teacher was the “sage on the stage.” He or she had the subject information in their mind, and it was up to the teacher to make […]
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Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Don’t Be Tooled by Your Technology
Technology can be a tool, but also a trap The tools technology has brought to education can come with conveniences and learning opportunities. For example, many classrooms in my district, if not most, now have a SMART Board. I didn’t even know what a SMART Board was until just a few years ago. Now my district […]
Posted inBook Review
A Comic Book Helped to Inspire the Civil Rights Movement
My school district recently purchased a class set of the March Trilogy, the graphic novel memoir that recounts the experiences of Congressman John Lewis (5th District, Georgia) in America’s struggle for civil rights including the marches from Selma to Montgomery. The comic book-style illustrations are engaging and some may mistake the memoir as something for children. Lewis’s experiences in the […]
Posted inCommon Core
Teaching Writing With Hyperdocs
If you’re looking for a new approach to teaching writing, you’ve got to try teaching with hyperdocs. What are hyperdocs? According to their creators, Lisa Highfill, Kelly Hilton and Sarah Landis, hyperdocs are “a transformative, interactive, personalized engaging too to help facilitate student creativity and collaboration” (The Hyperdoc Handbook). And I can testify that hyperdocs […]
Posted inChild Development
Teenage Girl Drama: Breaking The Everlasting Gobstopper
The film Mean Girls is a lesson for anybody teaching, living with, or raising teenage girls. It’s no doubt that the line between being “popular” and being “Plastic,” as the 4 main characters are satirized, is a fine one. And, without some adult intervention, it can become an everlasting gobstopper that chokes out the functioning of […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
10 Years Later: 10 Takeaways on the iPhone and Education
Ten years ago this month, Steve Jobs walked out onto the world’s stage and said “this is a day I’ve been looking forward to in 2.5 years” because of this “revolutionary product that absolutely changes everything.” I’m talking about the iPhone. And boy, did it change everything. Today, nearly 7 in 10 adults has a smart […]
Posted inCurrent Events in Education
Who is the Teacher: School or Family?
I saw a discussion post on Facebook the other day about education. No surprise. Everyone went to school, everyone has learned something in their life, so everyone has an opinion. Parents are passionate about their kids and have opinions about all things school. This discussion, however, was a newer one to me. It was about […]
Posted inCommon Core
Have You Been To A #GAFE Summit?
I’ve been teaching for 26 years – English, AVID, Yearbook, Reading, History and any sort of intervention class that gets thrown my way. I’ve been through whole language and back. I’ve survived NCLB. I’ve been trained in teaching the Gifted and Talented, the At-Risk and 21st-century students. And last weekend, I went to my first […]