Blog

November 7, 2019 A Whole Child Approach to College and Career Readiness through Project-Based Learning

On any given day, a visitor to my middle school science classroom would observe a variety of activities. A cursory glance around the room would reveal a board covered in post-it notes of student-generated questions, experiments and projects in various stages of completion, and groups...

November 7, 2019 Building Community to Achieve High Standards

Every year, regardless of my students' ability levels, I start with community class time. Community class time is when students learn trust, seek help, and gain the skills to be responsible in their daily lives. If we want our children to master high academic standards,...

October 31, 2019 Supporting the College and Career Development of Our Students

I am excited to be an educator in a state that so strongly supports initiatives for college and career readiness. In Tennessee, we have made these initiatives a priority by identifying them in our strategic plan under the heading “High School and Bridge to Postsecondary.”...

October 30, 2019 Real-World Opportunities for Students

I spent many years in school just “doing work” but not having a deep understanding of the concepts or how they connected to the real world. For example, I vividly recall learning the process of factoring in Algebra using the acronym FOIL (first, outside, inside,...

October 29, 2019 Who’s Doing the Heavy Lifting?

It’s five a.m. in a brightly lit studio as I stretch out and awaken my muscles. My sister-in-law is a trainer, and whenever I visit her, I like to take her classes. I watch her set up the room with kettlebells (her favorite, not mine),...

October 18, 2019 Utilizing “Reading for Meaning” to Raise Achievement for All Students

This is my fourteenth year in education overall, sixth year serving as a school board member, and second year teaching 5th grade. My school is a Title I school, and although the opportunity gap is large, our students and their families still have high expectations...

October 7, 2019 Becoming a College Learner

After hearing a lot of noise, I looked out my classroom window. I laughed and then immediately groaned before going to find the 9th-grade coordinator. She was already on her way to find me because she’d seen it too: Twenty-seven students, the first-ever group of...