This week I talked about building relationships with students, and I wanted to elaborate on that a little here. The single most influential thing that I have done in my teaching career is build relationships. It helps students to know that you are a human and that you actually care about them and whatever is … More Building Relationships | Sunday Bookstack
How do you see power relationships in education? They don’t have to be limited to the two that I mention below. View this post on Instagram I had some thoughts on working with teachers last week. What do you think about power in education? A post shared by the (book) supplier (@thebooksupplier) on Jun 11, … More Working With Teachers | Monday Musings
Here’s last week’s teaching highlight, and this week’s bookstack. What are you reading this week?
This is what I was thinking about as I walked around a classroom of 20+ eighth graders who were taking this year’s state test. Here are the logistics of this treadmill: It’s set at 0.5 miles per hour There are no TVs, there is no music, and there is no other aural or visual stimulation … More Testing Is Like Being on a Treadmill
Text book adoption was exhausting. Between sifting through the core curriculum, the supplementary materials, and the intervention program options, if I don’t see curriculum for a few months, I’ll be happy. As I was putting together information for my department, one external company (who partners with one of the text book companies) caught my attention. … More Resource Spotlight: Listen Current
Note: I started these musings on Monday, I just didn’t finish them then. I didn’t know very much about GLAD strategies before the beginning of this semester. For all I knew, it was a set of strategies teachers from elementary schools received training for. So as a secondary teacher, I put it out of my … More GLAD in My Middle School Reading Classroom | Monday Musings
Little by little I’ve been working my way through Read Side By Side, which is designed to help students with close reading and stamina. I had the opportunity to see Sarah Collinge and Bethany Robinson at the New Mexico International Reading Association conference earlier this year, and their talk was compelling. Not sure how much … More Beginning with the Blurb | Monday Musings
Back when I taught 9th grade, I used The Lord of the Rings movies to teach symbol and archetype. It was beautiful. That is, until a student of mine came in on a Monday after we’d talked about nature archetypes. He said to me, “Miss, you ruined movies for me.” I responded, “What are you talking … More The Literary Stick No. 2: Birds
Here’s the tl;dr for this tl;dl bookcast: One of my students is writing a story. He’s sharing that story with you. Long version: I’m really excited to be able to produce this podcast for my student. There’s something powerful about having an authentic audience with whom to share work. I hope you enjoy the first chapter … More You Know, There's No Title: tl;dl bookcast #2
Two weeks ago, in an effort to engage more of my students, I thought we’d learn about animation. I like animation. It’s fun, and challenging. The kind of work I enjoy doing. I found that many of my students also enjoyed this kind of work, and are going on to create their own animations about … More Stop Motion Reader Response
