On Friday night, my school board voted to go virtual for a week. YIKES! We teachers have only a few days to plan ( and, yes, those days are outside of working hours). Your school may have gone virtual already, and we all may be facing the possibility of off/ on remote this year. I wanted to share how I prepare my units for equitable remote learning, because with a little planning and preparation you can ease a lot of the burden from yourself if and when this happens at your school. This is also important as we are seeing upticks in the number of absent students who are quarantining…
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5 Lessons I Learned from a Year of Pandemic Teaching
I’m going to say something that is not being said enough: The pandemic did not create problems in education. It forced us to recognize and stop ignoring the ones that were already there. Before, there was no money to waste on 1:1 technology. Suddenly, students had access to wifi and laptops. Before, students had to sit in a chair for each class from 7-3. Suddenly, we could give independent, asynchronous options. The list goes on. Although this year of teaching has easily been the longest and most exhausting year of my career, I realize that in a lot of ways it has been a blessing, and not just because my…
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How I Declutter My Classroom!
Spring Cleaning for Teachers Series – Part 3 Click here for Parts 1 and 2 of this Series. Every year as my teaching duties start winding down, I begin the therapeutic process of decluttering all of the printed paper I have collected throughout the year. As a teacher, I feel like this is SO HARD. I always think to myself, “What if I need these 7 copies next year?” I don’t believe “Just in Case” is a good enough argument for cluttering up your classroom with a ton of paper. Here’s why: Cluttered classrooms are almost NEVER tidy, even if you think they are. This sends a message to EVERYONE…
