Our site has recently begun the journey of evaluating our grading practices through a deep dive into the book, “Grading for Equity“, by Joe Feldman. It’s a hard conversation to have for any teacher because it is personal and our brains have been so ingrained in the current grading practices that are in place. However,… Read More Grading for Equity: Interactive Self-Assessment
Whether you work in elementary, middle, or high school…it’s that time of year! The time of year that we start planning for the transition for many of our students to new grade levels or even different schools. As a middle school Vice Principal, I’ve been reflecting on what a huge transition our 8th graders will… Read More Vertical Articulation for SEL Support
Social-Emotional Learning (SEL) has been a huge focus for our site over the last couple of years – especially during the last year during the pandemic and distance learning. SEL is “the process through which children and adults acquire and effectively apply the knowledge, attitudes, and skills necessary to understand and manage emotions, set and… Read More Optimist or Pessimist: An SEL Activity
A few years ago, I wrote a blog post and shared a survey called “The Teacher Transparency Challenge“. To this day, it is still one of my favorite things that I have ever done in my classroom. It was simple – I wanted to know how my students felt about my class and teaching. The… Read More Distance Learning Transparency Survey
Distance learning has been a challenge for thousands of educators around the country. Not just professionally, but it has been a great challenge personally. Working from home is not as glamorous or easy as it seems. It can be quite a challenge. It can be a challenge to balance taking care of your own children… Read More Self-Care During Distance Learning
Years ago, I read a book called How Full Is Your Bucket while I was attending graduate school for my administrative services credential. Although it wasn’t technically an “education” book, it was probably one of my favorite books of my master’s degree program. In this book, the author talked about the “magic ratio” of positive and negative… Read More Focus on the Positives: A HyperDoc Activity
I’ve become a huge fan of implementing social-emotional learning (SEL) practices into the classroom over the last few years. Personally, I felt like I had already implemented many SEL practices into my classroom (just naturally) but I became more intentional about it over the last couple of years. I’ve seen it have a profound and… Read More Getting Going with SEL: A Free Slides PD
This week, I will be sharing social and emotional learning (SEL) activities and strategies in a breakout with our staff. It’s a completely brand new presentation – and a little outside my normal wheelhouse of presentations. However, I have been trying to be intentional in my last few trainings to create and lead on topics… Read More Getting Going with SEL
Earlier this week, I came across a TEDEd video called “Why You Should Define Your Fears Instead of Your Goals?” The premise of the video is: The hard choices — what we most fear doing, asking, saying — are very often exactly what we need to do. How can we overcome self-paralysis and take action?… Read More Defining Fears: An SEL HyperDoc
If you work in education, there is a very good chance that you have attended your fair share of parent/teacher conferences. Throughout my 12 years in education, I have attended dozens upon dozens of parent/teacher conferences. These meetings are so important for students. The more communication that can occur between all stakeholders, the more likely… Read More Student-Led Parent/Teacher Conferences
