Listen. Connect. Empower.

I knew this year would be challenging.  After my first 3 days of remote teaching I wasn't sure there would be any life left in me to check out a book or have any brain cells left to compose an email.  Seven days later I admit that I still feel stumped and frustrated, but I have had small victories that are worth celebrating.   The Challenge 1st and 2nd grade students did not have the skills to minimize our Zoom and interact with content. The Solution Create opportunities for students to interact without clicking while we develop these skills.  I developed activities that required students to make a choice (think "This or That" or "Would You Rather" type activities).   Introducing Vocabulary  To launch our celebration of reading, one of the books I read was Wild About Books.  There are so many different animals and potentially unfamiliar words in the book though.  To introduce these, we played several rounds of "Would You Rather Be A..." ...

I have never had such a productive spring/summer. What made this one different? I found myself at home. My job as "Mom's Taxi Service" was closed. We didn't go anywhere. The heaviness of the pandemic and the racism running through our culture weighed on my heart. My answer to that heaviness was to dig in and get something done.  I tried to greet the challenges as "opportunities" and look at them with a "what if" mentality. Eternal optimist here chose to think about “what we could learn from this” rather than dwell on what we lost or what we are missing out on. "What if" we can make something better out of this situation? "What if" I can use this to grow something I never would have imagined before? "What if" I can learn something about myself/my students/my community through this? I spent a significant amount of time looking at new tools and looking at features new to me on tools that I was already using. I prep...

I enter the 2020-2021 school year in a very different place. I am feeling like a new teacher again. Oh wait, that's right. I am! This is new to us all. I have read passionate letters and tweets expressing the anxiety and concerns of many educators. Here, I decided to do something different. Here, I air my concerns, talk myself off the proverbial cliff, and share my "plan" for surviving another turbulent pandemic season. Why?  These thoughts have cluttered my brain for months.  Then, they made it to a notebook in colored marker where they became a little more real.  Posting them here makes them REALLY come alive and challenges me to hold myself accountable.  (You are now officially my accountability partner).  Here we go. Worried me: Planning .   It runs in my family (just ask my sister).  However, I can't plan for the unknown.  I don't know what teaching will look like or how I will be able to develop relationships with students through a m...