An earlier post of mine regarding ideas for summer learning drew some attention from online readers. It is still receiving regular views, despite not being published recently. This tells me that people, most likely parents, are looking for ways to enrich their children over the summer. Over the next few months, I will try to…
A post by a fellow teacher-blogger the other day reminded me of something I have been thinking about but couldn’t really put into words until after I read her post. She will be taking a National Certification Exam for Teaching soon but will not get the results until December. She was anticipating a long notification…
It used to be that my role as a nurse was celebrated on May 6th, commonly known at National Nurse’s Day. The exact date of this professional celebration had escaped me recently. I knew it was the first week in May. I haven’t practiced as a nurse for almost twenty years, but I do remember…
Slice of Life Tuesday crept up on me this week. Notably, we’ve had the college graduation of our oldest son and the death of one of our dear cats, Clark. Additionally, I’ve seen many posts about summer learning, and even written an educationally themed post mid-week on Positive Behavior Intervention & Supports (PBIS). Our fruit…
PBIS. One of the fairly new buzzwords in education. It stands for Positive Behavioral Intervention & Supports. Our schools have been practicing this method of behavioral management for several years now. During the same time, I worked as a very occasional substitute teacher at the elementary level, as well as voluntarily led students groups. I…
Today, my garden club for third, forth, and fifth graders will meet after school. We have two meetings in the month of May, instead of our usual single monthly meeting. On this first meeting, we typically weed the garden, turn over the soil to aerate it and loosen it up. If you read my post…
This morning I got some great news! Thirteen students who attend enrichment opportunities I offer at one of local elementary schools will have their Haiku poetry published in the Young American Poetry Digest for this year! Wow! Thirteen students! I have helped students to submit their poetry to this compilation for the last six years,…
Yesterday. Friday was Arbor Day. Friday, April 28th, yesterday, was Environmental Day at our school. Approximately 24 hours ago, 375 students visited with me in K-5 grade level groups for 35 minutes per grade level, at our local Elementary School, Evergreen Elementary, to hear me talk about the importance of Forests. Yes. I talked about…
If you’ve ever taken a statistics course, you’ve been warned about these. Outliers can throw your data off. If you’ve ever looked at a bell curve, you’ve seen a graphical representation of these – data points at either of the far ends of the scale. If you’ve ever read Malcolm Gladwell’s book, Outliers, you’ve read…
via Daily Prompt: Measure Having students who work hard and do well in school, I always bought into the premise that grades measure learning. With years of experience in education, and the advent of digital grading systems, where every little grade book entry can be seen 24/7, now I am not so sure. Lately, I…