I stumbled upon a passionate blog entry from a loving mother [see post here]. I immediately connected to her message- love your child just enough that they feel cherished but not too much that you disable them as individuals. As a teacher, my philosophy has been and always will be to help a child…

This year has been extremely challenging for me in a new way. Over my 8 year career, I have taught third grade for 6 of those years. I have seen multiple instructional programs and approaches come and go, and with these changes lots of new learning occurred for myself. However, this year, just when I…

Last year I had to opportunity to experience an in-house field trip. I normally do not find these events as engaging, exciting, nor memorable as going out into the community for a traditional field trip. However, this experience was like no other! [see post here]. So, I had to reach out for the opportunity again…

Public speaking tops most people’s list of fears. Not mine. I absolutely love to talk to people. I may not know everything there is to know about a subject, but I know how to share information in a way that relates to people and comes off more like a story than a list of facts.…

During planning one day, my literacy coach proposed that my team engage students in a review of material in a manner similar to the game “Jeopardy.” However, why not have each student work on a device at their desk to answer instead of answering out loud as one large class? This was genius- why not?!…

I’m fired up!!! It’s been a while since I stepped foot on my soapbox, but it’s about that time again! I really wish our educational system was better. In fact, I wish our educational system was the best in the world. I wish our children had the promise of a better future because we prepared…

During one of our many staff meetings, my principal got up to speak. For whatever reason, she had quite the message to deliver that day and I raced to grab paper and pencil to capture her passionate, sage advice: You will make the school what it needs to be and we are here to support…

                Our educational system is ever-changing. We have many “new” ideas that turn out to be old ideas with a new name. If you stay in the profession long enough you will go through the cycle once or twice and think “is this Déjà vu?”  What is quite sad is that I have been teaching…

Students love to sit around the room to work independently. They often fight over who gets to sit where and run at light speed to the latest “hot spot.” With safety being at stake (and my sanity as well), I decided to allow students to remain in a secret spot for a length of time.…