Professional Affiliations

Beginning again

I have been silent on my blog for a while. Partly because I have started a "new" challenge that took some time to settle into. I have been an educator for over 20 years. I have been a classroom teacher, building administrator & district administrator. Our family recently felt called to a new location which gave me the opportunity to work for an education non-profit for a year. Then the call back to the field came. I couldn't resist. Those of you that are called into education know that the calling never really leaves you. I knew I needed to be back in a position that allowed me to have a more direct impact on students. I loved the work I was doing, but I was in a position that didn't give me any interaction with students and I needed to get back to that on some level. If you haven't been in that position, it is hard to put into words exactly what this calling means. Granted I was still able to influe...

Do you need a Philosophy of Education?

When we first start out in education we often think that we know what we're doing. We think that we don't need any help and that everything that we need to know we learned in our education classes. It only takes about three days into the job to realize that our college education did not fully prepare us for every single student that we're going to face. It didn't truly prepare us for how we really should deliver a lesson when we have students on five different levels along with multiple types of disruptions. It didn't prepare us to handle all the routines, all the the daily tasks, all the decisions that we have to make. This isn't intended to disparage any university program, but just an acknowledgement that there is now way for them to fully prepare you for every student and situation you will face. Experience is the only true way to learn how to handle all of these different types of situations. So how do we make up for that information gap? That is a chall...

4 Tools for Creating Instruction Video

Many educators are plunging into creating digital resources as part of their districts plan to continue instruction while school facilities are closed for the remainder of the school year. If you have not explored this before now, there are several options available to you in a variety of prices and skillset. The tools we suggest will be free or inexpensive and only focus on creating videos that you can share with students later. There are options for live video conferencing and some of these tools are designed for that, but we are only focusing on video recording. This type of learning model would best be classified as asynchronous because you are allowing students to work at different times. This may be the best option since some of your students may have siblings and limited use of technology at their house. Before we get started, please check with your district to see if there are any restrictions on which tools you may use. There is a possibility that ...

Hold My Chalk

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