I heard the last squeals of summer from the kids at the pool today. It reminded me of how strange it is to not be at the store frantically buying composition books and folders. I’ve just received my acceptance to Gardner-Webb Divinity School! I am going back to school this fall and will be the …
A college education professor has to advise her teacher candidates not to connect with their students because of the “Facebook Law:” “It’s just better not to connect that way,” Talbut said. She said she thinks one thing schools could do to benefit students and teachers when it comes to communicating online would be for them …
So often, we talk about our technology expectations for students and we talk about what kind of digital literacy we want to foster in students, but are we as teachers and administrators holding ourselves to the same expectations? The leadership in the school should be modeling the use of technology and helping to build community …
In cleaning out my inbox, I found this clip from high school. I can’t quite remember what this was for, but I think it was a Sunday School curriculum. Beyond being embarrassed by my southern twang and my clothing decisions, I was embarrassed with how similar my flawed theology resembles the conversations in public schools …
On my last flight, I realized I’ve stopped enjoying flying. Rather than being amazed at the sights I was able to see and the experience of defying gravity, I was muttering under my breath, “Straighten up! Remember there ate people back here!” I was speechless when I realized how critical I was being. Just because …
I’m astounded at the number of teachers who complain about teaching in the age of accountability and yet do nothing. We are letting the press and media talk about untruthfully and unfairly about us and our students and we are doing nothing. “It’s the law. There’s nothing we can do.” True. It’s hard to overturn …
There’s something about being a technology teacher that elicits all kinds of unprovoked bitter diatribes from people. The conversation always starts off nice and neutral and then the question: What do you teach? History and Technology Oh typing, right. No actually we have been doing a lot of blogging and video editing. Oh that’s interesting …
I grew up in the you-need-a-cell-in-case-of-an-emergency mindset. Texting was around, but the online social community was still based in instant messaging on computers (side note: this is how I learned to type, not by looking under the cardboard screen in typing class!) I was in college at the perfect time for the Facebook outbreak (which …
For the longest time, I thought that my passion for teaching and my faith were independent of each other. I thought that there were two different parts of my life that didn’t pertain to each other: my professional life and my personal life. I was wrong. You can’t separate out parts of yourself any more …
There’s a heated debate in the world of education about value-added teacher evaluation systems. DCPS is one of the first district’s in the nation to attempt a value-added teacher evaluation system that is connected to merit based pay for teachers. Founder Jason Kamras decribes the system like this: “And through this regression formula [a statistical …
Devaluing Students + Valuing Adults = No Value Added Read More »
