Making Rest a Priority in the Summer Blog Post

This is my latest article in a series on owning your professional learning. Teaching is an exhausting gig and when teachers take the time to rest during the summer, they able to find a place of renewal and restoration. Research has demonstrated that rest is…

How to Read 50 Books in a Year (Even When You’re Busy) Blog Post

This is my latest article in a series on owning your professional learning. According to a Pew Research poll, over a quarter of the U.S. adult population said they hadn’t read a book within the last year, whether that was in audiobook, ebook, or physical…

16 Ways to Own Your Professional Learning Blog Post

This is the first in a summer series on owning your professional learning. I created a sketch video as a preview. If you enjoy the video, would you click the “like” button and consider subscribing to my channel? Right now, teachers all over the world…

Empowering Students in Distance Learning Environments Blog Post

Student engagement can be a real challenge in this sudden shift toward distance learning. But one way to improve engagement is by empowering students. In this article, we explore how to improve equity and access and how to shift toward student ownership. Listen to the…

5 Ways to Boost Attendance in Virtual Class Meetings Blog Post

I have a friend who is a phenomenal teacher. She has been making a positive impact on middle schoolers’ lives for 20 years. I used to go into her classroom during my prep period and take detailed notes so I could refine my class. She…

How to Make PBL a Reality in a Distance Learning Environment Blog Post

If you think about your most powerful learning experiences, there’s a good chance at least one of these experiences involved a project. This is where you learned how to research, how to ideate, how to work with others, how to engage in productive struggle, and…

10 Free Classroom Activities for Your Distant Learning Classroom Blog Post

In my last article, I wrote about using a vintage innovation approach to create meaningful distance learning lessons. Being creative often means designing these activities and projects from scratch. However, creativity doesn’t always work this way. When we think of creativity, it’s easy to picture…

Taking Distance Learning Away from the Screen Blog Post

In education, we often use a metaphor  of content delivery. We use terms like “deliver a lesson.” We ask, “did the students get it?” But the last week and a half has proven that teachers are not merely content delivery machines. In my last post,…

Classroom Materials Page

CLASSROOM MATERIALS I believe classrooms should be bastions of creativity and wonder. I believe that something powerful happens when you empower students with voice and choice. They grow into critical thinkers and problem-solvers and you become that teacher they remember forever. But I also know...