When I became a first-year teacher, I joined a team of exceptional educators that had been on the same team together for sixteen years. The person I replaced had retired and in turn, I was given the opportunity to join
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Rethink Your Resolutions
It’s that time of year again: New Year Resolutions. Does that make you feel excited (like myself) or make you roll your eyes (like my husband)? People across the globe are reflecting on the past year and thinking about what
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Resolutions and a Plan
Monday was the first day of the second semester of my first year teaching high school since I was a student teacher in 1987. At the beginning of the first semester, I wrote here about what questions I had and
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Cultivating Joy
Joy: Noun 1. The emotion of great delight or happiness caused by something exceptionally good or satisfying. 2. A source or cause of keen pleasure or delight; something or someone greatly valued or appreciated. 3. The expression or display of
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Fresh Start
2021 has felt like it is taking three years to get through. I look at the first graders in the hallways and I think, “Was it just last year that we worked together online?” It seems like it was much
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‘Tis the Season
‘Tis the season! It’s that time of the school year where we notice that the second quarter is coming to a close and we realize all the things we have left to do before we go on Winter Break. In
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Gifted or Talented?
Chapter 1 of Differentiation for Gifted Learners (Heacox, 2019) explains something I never knew: the distinction between gifts and talents. Heacox based her viewpoint of gifts and talents on the position of Francoys Gagne. Gifts are “superior innate aptitudes…[present at birth]…the
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Teaching Gifted Kids in the Regular Classroom – Winebrenner (Chapter 1)
Whether they have been identified or not, it is important for educators to understand and accept that gifted students are everywhere! We have spent so much time, energy, and resources in supporting the needs of struggling students (especially since COVID)
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Keep on Growing!
Each year, I look at my bookshelf in my classroom and I think to myself, “You know, I should really go through this stuff and get rid of things.” Each year, I always come across my original teaching portfolio from
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