I came home in a serious funk, slamming the door behind me, barking at my family, huffing and puffing under the heavy weight of the stack of papers I bring home (optimistically) every evening. I sat down on my bed
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A Holiday Wish List for ELD Equity
It’s that time of year when the child within us develops a dreamy, far-off look, and her eyes begin to gleam. Sugar plums? A Red Ryder BB gun? A new laptop? A roof rack and two kayaks? Creating a holiday
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Do Evaluations Improve Teaching?
I spend a lot of time thinking about my district’s evaluation system these days. As a first-year director of personnel, developing something new, meaningful, and usable is on my short list. After years of being evaluated by our current evaluation
Read MoreMOWR…Is 2nd Grade the New 3rd Grade?
Move On When Reading (MOWR) is a policy currently in effect with the intention of preparing students to be proficient readers by 3rd grade so they are properly prepared to enter 4th. This leads to the questions: What is so
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A Student of My Students First
The question I had been waiting for… “So, Mrs. Maloney, where are you in terms of the pacing guide?” I knew that it would come during one of our “data chats” in which teachers check in with our administration team
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Riding the #EdWave and Diving Deeper into Teacher Leadership
Last spring, when 70,000 teachers flooded the Capitol to make five demands known, there were as many leaders as followers. Educators flexed the bullhorn, organized a band, wrote initiatives, arranged meetings with lawmakers, trained people to circulate petitions, set up
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Fire in the Hole!
In 2010, the AZ State Legislature ended funding for a program called the Early Childhood Block Grant [ECBG]. The loss of money was a devastating blow to many school organizations. In the district where I worked, the ECBG funds were
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My Advice for Newly Elected Arizona Leaders
I am a proud product of Arizona’s public schools. I am a native born Arizonan who spent her formative years in the Paradise Valley School District. I earned a degree from Northern Arizona University and have worked in schools both
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The Arizona Leaky STEM Pipeline
My wish for the next group of elected state officials is to adopt a growth mindset when you take on your new roles. But even more specifically, my hope is that this new crop will adopt a growth mindset
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Where are the Teachers?
This was going to be the year: the year where classrooms were going to be filled with certified teachers. Arizona, like many states across the country, relies on alternative certification allowing for teachers to earn their credentials while teaching. These
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