I teach high school English and Reading Strategies. And I read, and I write, for a range of audiences and purposes. Besides enjoying these activities, I think it is good personal policy. All teachers should do what they ask students
Read MoreEasy Like Sunday Morning….NOT.
I distinctly remember my first Sunday during the first weekend of the first school year in 15 years that I was not going to teach. I had "moved up" into an adminstrative position. That Sunday felt weird. There was something
Read More
Big Brown Eyes
Two weeks ago, my daughter proclaimed that her mother is a workaholic. Last week, my husband noted that I had not been home before six o’clock in weeks. As we wind down the first quarter of the new school
Read MoreSmall Data
I'm beginning to truly believe that our obsession with "data driven decision making" will end one day. I used the term the other day and I felt like I was saying something outdated, like "paradigm shift" or "Michelle Rhee". It
Read More
(Un)Informed Critical Thinking?
Surprise, surprise. In a survey released this week, pollsters found that the American public is uninformed about a host of public policy issues, in particular the Common Core Standards. As educators we gasped at the numbers generated by the
Read More
NOT Like School in the Summer
When I was a kid, I used to watch Fat Albert, a cartoon about a bunch of kids living in "the projects" in some urban setting. The kids had a common insult for eachother: "You're like schoooool in the summah.
Read MoreThe Real Barrier is Permission
I spent this last week teaching a workshop on social media for learning at Arizona K12 Center's Camp Plug and Play event. We approached the topic from the perspective of personalized professional development and an integrated aspect of project based
Read More
Buyer’s Remorse
Schools around the valley are analyzing their long awaited AIMS results. For the past two years I have had a positive experience analyzing our results. We have seen steady growth in all grade levels in math and reading for two
Read MoreIt’s Cultural
As a school administrator, I get dozens of emails a week from companies selling programs designed to facilitate any number of "school reform" efforts. I put "school reform" in quotes the way someone might put air quotes around "day off"
Read More