Last week I sat through an hour long safety training at my community college. It was run by Sargent Anastasia Koutsidis, our safety goddess who is a complete and utter bad ass. She gave us her background first in order to claim some legitimacy (I can’t even image the number of times this woman has … Continue reading »
Been thinking a lot about issues of race and class in education this week. The day my students respond to the question in black with something similar to that answer in red, my work will be complete.
As per my last post, my mind is everywhere considering the testing quagmire and I feel stuck in as a parent. But I am feeling the need to do something. Something big. Don’t know what that is yet, but I’ll keep you posted. This image/quote came across my facebook feed when I got home that … Continue reading »
Working in a Title I high school for ten years where the poverty level of the students exceeded 80%, we were forced to face many educational reform movements head on. Due to our students’ low literacy and numeracy skills, we struggled to make Adequate Yearly Progress (AYP) for No Child Left Behind every year. Each … Continue reading »
I HATE and have always HATED formal outlines. Outlines with Roman numerals, small letters, and that strict formulaic approach never seemed to match my writing. I felt squished when using those outlines as mandated in middle school and high school, and I scoffed at professors in college who suggested that my writing could benefit from … Continue reading »
A few years ago, the ESL teacher at my school cleaned out her library and gave me a bunch of her books. They were all children’s books that her high school students, although they were English Language Learners, refused to read because they looked like children’s books. Since these books had been bought for a … Continue reading »
Sometimes you have to laugh to keep from crying, right?
I find a lot of joy, inspiration, solace, humanity, and love in reading blogs. Blogs about mothering, life, illness, grief, teaching, whatever. I feel connected to friends, acquaintances, and total strangers through the words they toss into the universe through their blogs. Thank you, bloggers. One blog I am a big fan of is called … Continue reading »
I have been formally teaching for 13 years now. Eleven years in secondary school, two years in community college. That means I have been observed at least 40 times formally; those formal observations were written up, rated, and put into my permanent teaching file. Of course, having held various leadership positions at my high school, … Continue reading »
What am I writing this week? Applications for professional development opportunities. I decided long ago never to walk in anyone’s shadow and to seek out my own professional development (PD). I feel that as an educator it’s imperative to keep ahead of the curve and to seek out programs that support my interests in the … Continue reading »
