
Building Confidence in Teens Through Hispanic Poetry and Music
I’ve been teaching a class. It’s called Hispanic Poetry and Music. It’s “Language Lite” as I described it earlier to a special education teacher who placed an 8th grader in it who had never had Spanish before because they have significant learning disabilities. Except it works in a confidence- building, artistic-expression, motivational kind of way.…

One Teacher’s Take on Reading
I LOVE reading. I get excited by language, by plot, by character descriptions. I’ll read silly poetry, junky thrillers, moving mysteries and fascinating nonfiction. Reading opens worlds and allows you to travel on exciting journeys without every leaving your chair. Yet, why are there so many kids in our schools that hate it? And what…
The Data That Schools Should Really Care About
If you’re a teacher, you know about data. You should pretest and post-test to note progress. You should track student math scores over time and make small groups based on what skills are missing. You should track writing scores and focus on which proficiencies to work on as a whole grade. But what the data…
Five Hilarious Memories from Teaching (That I can Remember At the Moment)
Teaching is anything but dull. And teaching middle school can be predictable, so when something happens that is unexpected, at this point in my career I can see the bright side. Entertainment! Much of teaching is entertaining while keeping in mind boundaries. So it is WONDERFUL when both teacher and students are entertained. Here are…
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Thanks for coming to the teacher’s room! Let’s get real and talk about school without kids present.