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April 22, 2021 This week, we will celebrate Earth Day, an annual event started in 1970 to inspire people to clean up our planet and make conscientious decisions in our everyday life. We see community celebrations, clean ups and crafts dedicated to this, but how can you apply this mindset to your classroom’s everyday practices. …
April 19, 2021 My oldest son and his girlfriend are coming over tomorrow night for Taco Tuesday dinner, a family favorite. But I wanted to do something a bit more special since we don’t get to have dinner together as often now that he doesn’t live at home. I remembered Tijuana Flats cookie dough flautas…
Educators need to take time off regularly to replenish. I share my tips for daily, weekly, monthly and quarterly down time to restore my sanity, soul, and health.
Use learning menus to create an engaging student-centered model for teaching that can be used for a variety of lessons, grades and subjects.
March 31, 2021 As teachers, we often feel a sense of urgency with the tasks we do. Deadlines, testing windows, end of term, personal goals set by us, parents or even students—so many things impose this on us. What if I told you that not everything is an emergency, would you believe me? Because they…
March 23, 2021 Today was my monthly call day for the week. In my virtual teaching world, I have to have a monthly call to check in with my students and families working at home. It’s just what we do. I always thought that what I did was the same as everyone else—until today. I…
March 12, 2021 Evaluations are a dreaded part of being a teacher. We teach all day for 180 days a year but have only a handful of observations to catch us in action. Some teachers just teach like a regular day, some prepare and ensure they hit every mark, some fall somewhere in the middle…
February 27, 2021 My first teaching job was 6th grade Reading and I had no idea what I was doing. I had been military, then corporate while I worked through a business degree, but when I realized that life was about making money and not so much helping people and limited how much time I…
January 29, 2021 When I started teaching in 2007, I was the hard teacher that had no issues failing a child that wouldn’t work or didn’t complete all their work. It took me about ten years of teaching to realize that, at least through middle school, it was a pointless standard to uphold and I…
January 22, 2020 Luna is our newest family member. We adopted her in August, a couple of months after our oldest doxie, Angel, passed away. Molly, our remaining doxie, was quite lonely without her lifelong pal and our 9-year-old son had desperately wanted a dog to be both a cuddle buddy and a playmate. Our…
