As I prepared my room for the new school year back in August, I did a lot of thinking about the hallway bulletin board that is under my control. I hate doing bulletin boards, generally speaking. In this post, I walk through the process of creating an interactive bulletin board for students to color.
My son Ryan plays travel baseball and high school baseball, and he is fortunate to get to play both of those with his cousin Hayden. They are three weeks apart in age, so they naturally get to do a lot of things together. However, having the same throwing partner for both the travel team and the high school team is pretty cool. Your throwing partner is important, so having the right one is crucial.
My hat is off to all educators out there who just survived one of the hardest years, if not THE hardest, in education to date. If we never hear the words “flexibility” and “pivot” again, life would be grand. However, as we look ahead to the 2021-22 school year, there is still a cloud of uncertainty hanging over it.
Recently, my fourteen year-old son had to pitch for his high school varsity baseball team against the best team on the schedule. He's just a freshman, and pitching isn't his passion or any of the positions that he practices regularly outside of actual baseball practice. However, with the pitch count and rest rules, every team needs as many pitchers as they can scrounge.
One of the greatest advantages of today’s technology is the power of connection. If we weren’t aware of it before the Covid19 pandemic, we are now. As a teacher in a rural Missouri high school, I always look for ways to expand the world for my students. Our community is small and is very supportive of our students, and while I bring in guest speakers from the community each year and value what they can offer my students, technology allows me to broaden our definition of community.
We teachers are often reminded by parents, students, colleagues, and administrators of all the things we're not. And if we somehow skate by with feelings of competence locally, then there's the visions of teaching and classroom perfection all over the internet, in our beloved PLNs (Professional Learning Networks). It's easy to forget that the perfection we see posted is but a moment of that educator's day. We have those moments too, though maybe we forget that in the hustle and bustle of our day.
There are several similarities between a canoe trip down the river and how school districts or buildings (or even businesses) can function. Regardless of the obstacles in the way, we need to work together to go around them, through them, or drag our canoes past them until it is safe to float again.
I Could Make It Alone, I Got All That I Need to Survive I had an epiphany while reading Relentless by Hamish Brewer recently. As I put the finishing touches on my #BookSnaps of the quote below then saved and exited Snapchat, I realized it really grabbed me. Definitely. By the throat. You might be … Continue reading Push Me, Please
#RocknTheBoat 