This past summer, with the help of my brilliant friend, Kristen Swanson, I took my Technology Curriculum to a place I had never imagined it could go. As a computer lab teacher, there has never been an easy to follow, mapped out path for instruction. As such, over the last 5 years I created a…
The more I read about school reform here in Philadelphia, the more it feels like an episode of the Food Network show, Restaurant Impossible. For those who have never seen it, picture a professional restauranteur swooping in to turnaround a failing restaurant with his years of experience and no-nonsense attitude. The changes that the host,…
Next week, myself and hundreds of other educators from around the country will be congregating at the 92nd St Y in New York City to share stories of how they have used social media to grow personally and professionally and how they have used it to empower young people both in and out of the…
I recently attended the annual ISTE conference in San Diego to participate on a panel about new teacher mentoring using technology moderated by my colleague, Lisa Dabbs. As I considered my responses to some of the panelist questions, I remembered a conversation I had at the Sunday night networking event for the conference with a…
This week’s City Paper cover story, Money Talks by Daniel Denvir, has gathered a lot of attention. The article explores the financial reach of the William Penn Foundation in the current reform plans being discussed for the school district. While a lot of the facts in the article were nothing new to me, a few…
In their inspiring book, Walk Out Walk On, Deborah Frieze and Meg Wheatley take their readers on a journey across the world, engaging with various groups of people working together to build agency where there isn’t any and growing self-reliant communities that defy stereotypes. So many of their stories are reminiscent of the work that…
This year my 2nd graders completed a research project about African American Athletes using videos from History.com and a public Google Docs presentation. The students worked in self-selected pairs and picked an athlete’s name out of a ‘hat’ (it was actually a plastic beach bucket!). Over the next few weeks, they listened to the videos…
It feels like forever since I have been to an edcamp, though I have virtually attended a few through following hashtags and the opportunity to Skype into edcampMKE with some of my colleagues. I have been more and more energized by conversations around teacher leadership, meaningful professional development. The edcamp movement has been growing, with…
Across the country, many teachers are arriving to work to find banners that say “We Appreciate You,” continental breakfasts laid out in the staff lounge, and “Thank You” cards placed in their mailboxes. I’ll be honest, I’ve never really been ‘into’ Teacher Appreciation Week. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate being appreciated. What I don’t…
As many of you may know, April is National Poetry Month. There was a time, before full time teaching, blogging, #edchat-ing, edcamping, food co-oping and other endeavors that I wrote poetry on a fairly consistent basis. It was my grounding force, my way of grappling with the world, questions, uncertainty, joy, sorrow, conundrums, beauty, ugliness…