Merianna Harrelson

I am the Pastor of Garden of Grace United Church of Christ in Columbia, SC and the Director of Consulting at Harrelson.Co. I am always looking for a good cup of coffee and a great book.

What if students led teacher professional development?

“Reverse mentoring is a concept borne of the information age… Reverse mentoring asks the younger, technologically savvier youngsters to tutor or support the older generation in learning how to leverage social media, blogs, email, cloud-based services, and other tools that we now have at our disposal.” — Meredith Ely What if the most meaningful professional …

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Take Back Your Inbox

After recently listening to this week’s Back to Work, I have been working to declutter. Unlike Merlin and Dan, I am not to the point where I can sit down and go through mass amounts of acquired clutter attachments, but what I have been able to do is freely throw away the clutter that I …

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Maybe students should be writing the Common Core Standards

Mathews writes that he was at first impressed with “the brain power and good intentions” of the new standards and thought they would “elevate instruction” and help low-achieving states do better. But after talking to Brookings Institution scholar Tom Loveless, he has concluded that the new standards represent “another big disappointment we should have figured …

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Who are schools users?

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Gamers understand to make a successful game, they need to do the following: Design the game with the user in mind. Provide continuous feedback. Make it challenging enough that the user is interested, but not impossible that they will quit in frustration. (Flow theory) Work with an end …

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Avoiding Miscommunication

Communicating with someone is never easy whether we are face to face or communicating through a screen. Communication is one of the most important things we do everyday. It’s done formally through great teaching practices, emails and one on one conversations we have with parents and professional conversations with colleagues. Formal communication is a part …

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