In Aesop’s “The Dog and His Reflection,” a dog loses his bone because he is distracted by an illusion, ending with the moral, It is very foolish to be greedy. As a 6th-grade ELA teacher, I have wondered if educational technology is doing the same thing to our students. Are we dropping the “bone” of […]
I had my first encounter with a Socratic seminar in my 9th-grade honors English language arts class, after reading Ayn Rand’s novella Anthem. I recall feeling nervous, as we had spent much of the semester preparing, and my teacher (hi, Ms. Granberry!) laid down the foundation that this was a really serious, important event. There
Spring 2024: Page 66 and a Pivot After school one day, I was tabling for Girls on the Run, trying to connect with families attending a basketball game and recruit new participants for the upcoming season. A colleague stopped by my table, and we chatted about the sheer exhaustion we were dealing with as new
During my first hour planning period, you can most likely find me, door closed, with a calm classroom playlist turned up, drowning out the sound of hallway chaos. Working in the public school system is exhausting. The demand to simultaneously act as an educator, therapist, nurse, and coach can often feel like navigating a toxic
What a Securly Guide Taught Me About Plain Language New Tech and Teacher Burnout Teachers are burnt out and tired, especially as the school year feels like it races toward the dreadful testing season. When a new technology is introduced, teachers do not always have time to experiment with it or schedule an appointment to
For CEP 858, Upskilling in Learning Design, I decided to try learning JavaScript. It was only one week into the project that I realized I would not, in fact, be learning JavaScript in a 3-week period. I did, however, create a course on morphology in Articulate Rise 360 and embedded a JavaScript game I built
I began my search for a Master’s program with the belief that being poor does not mean that someone should miss out on a quality education. This belief stemmed from teaching middle school in a Title 1 district and from my own fractured education. As a Hurricane Katrina kid, I attended many different elementary schools,
A week ago, I became an anonymous hero amongst teachers at my school. I also became a villain to many of my students. I have been dealing with an uptick of cheating—or at least directly copying and pasting from Google’s AI overview—this school year. The most recent (and perhaps most insidious) infiltration of AI-cheating in
Rooted in my years of K-12 teaching experience, this leadership dashboard translates the pedagogical realities of the classroom into high-level organizational strategy. Each component of the dashboard was designed to cultivate a culture where mistakes are viewed as stepping stones to mastery and where every team member has the tools they need to succeed independently.
As a learning experience designer, my Vision for Learning Design is rooted in a single, decisive shift: moving adult learning from passive compliance to adaptive mastery. Nowhere is this more urgent than in K-12 education, where professional development (PD) too often feels like an obligation rather than a career-enhancing opportunity. My vision was to create
