Writers, teachers, teacher educators, people-who-say-they’re-not-poets-but-just-might-be (essentially, everyone)! I know it feels too soon for April and National Poetry Month, but I am looking forward to springtime in great anticipation of living in the universe with and through verse. During the month of April, I will …
I was born in the 70’s. I had my first email address in the 90’s while at the University of Illinois, Urbana. There was a computer lab in the basement of the dorm, and I spent hours there learning how to type, saving and re-saving …
Tonight was the last night of the last class that I will teach at this university. I am taking time today to reflect on my eight years of teaching evening teacher ed courses — adolescent psychology, secondary English methods, middle school methods, literacy across the …
A six-foot-ish seventh grade student sits with knees pressing the desk nearly off the floor, hunched over his device scrolling up and down to solve the mathematics equations of the new-not-new state test. The once blanket of snow beyond the window over his shoulder is …
I packed my yellow NPR bag with 30 granola bars, a package of tissues, band aids, and my roster. Oh, and my husband (in the car, not the NPR bag). Today, he was coming to school with me to chaperone a field trip to the …
When we can set up learning experiences for students to be the facilitators of learning, the teacher can be positioned as a listener-observer. In this slice, I share two photographs from our classroom today as we read the lyrics from Joni Mitchell’s “Big Yellow Taxi” …
I try to tell a story with this one. It was very windy today in Chicagoland. On my way from one school to the next, I could barely keep my car on the road, but it wasn’t the car as much as it was my …
At the end of every term that I teach (college of junior high), I like to end with a celebration video — a video filled with memories of the term and gratitude statements from the students. I take you through my process here. *The great …
Today, I am sharing the tabs I have open on my computer: testing bell schedule, sub plans, 3rd quarter grades reflection, field trip plans, open mic GIF. I feel like I do a great job compartmentalizing all these tabs and tasks while I am with …
In this slice, I show you how I use the school’s grading system to enter standards and features of writing and then give students feedback into the grade system by not entering a grade but by using the comment feature of the SIS grading system. …