I recently read a tweet by the National Education Association’s (NEA) president, Dennis Van Roekel, which brought me to this quote: “I’m so tired of OTHERS defining the solutions….without even asking those who do the work every day of their professional life.” Consider how solutions determined by others have determined the profound changes in education […]
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Posted inFeatured, Parents, Technology
Protecting Our Digital Kids
My mom grew up in the 1950’s. I remember her telling me a story of her and a friend seeing a word spray painted on a building. They did not understand the word, had not heard it before, and so they got a dictionary and looked it up. Their confusion continued as the literal definition […]
Posted inFeatured, From the Front Lines, Uncategorized
4 Ways to Make Your PLC Meetings More Productive!
The quickest way to send any teacher into a frenzy is to make us sit in an ineffective PLC (professional learning community) meeting. We’d rather grade a million essays, meet with an irate parent or even hear nails scratched on our chalkboard–anything but another meeting that tells us how to use graphic organizers. After […]
Posted inCharter Schools, Current Events in Education, High School
Charter School Diaries 3 – Keeping It Real
Last week, our students took their midterm exams. On midterm exam week, high school students in our district receive a half-day week so that teachers can input grades, so that students can get more studying in (it is debatable as to whether or not they devote their time off to quality studying time, but I […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum, Teacher Branding, Uncategorized
Taking the Bitterness Out of Teaching: 4 Ways to Find Your Professional ‘Breath of Fresh Air’
This whole month we’re discussing teachers building their personal brands. Take a moment and read the previous articles here. For years, I thought that being bitter came with the territory of being a teacher. When I Â first entered the classroom, I was a bubbly person always volunteering to lead a committee or sponsor an after […]
Posted inFrom the Front Lines, Opinion
The Gift of Giving: Sabbaticals for Teachers are Needed!
I just read an interesting blog on Surviving Teaching by Cool Cat Teacher, Vicki Davis and John Kuhn’s viral hit, The Exhaustion of the American Teacher.  Teacher burnout is a perennial problem. It is impossible to survive with idealism, purpose and dignity intact amid changing mandates, recessions, and media inflamed paranoia about American public education. Public schools do not advertise or […]
Posted inFeatured, How to Fix Education
Courage to Teach- A Renewal to Teaching
We start this journey of teaching to help, to inspire, to give. We start this journey excited, full of hope, with great expectations. I remember setting up my first classroom with wild excitement, ready to meet my students and so happy to give what was needed. We give of ourselves, our own free time, our […]
Posted inNew Teacher Bootcamp, School Improvement
The New Teacher Bootcamp: Who Do You Listen to In the Building?
Being a new teacher is hard. You have to plan lessons, call parents, grade assignments, discipline students and somehow live your own life all within a 24 hour time frame.  In the midst of all of your duties and responsibilities as a teacher it is routine practice that you have a team of  people in the […]