The end of the school year is always a time for a deep sigh. Let’s be honest…more so this school year. But for the last few years, the end of school has been a time of reflection for me. I wrote about these reflections in the past, https://edtechease.com2020/06/12/reflections/ and https://edtechease.com2020/02/02/year-end-reflections/. The first was a reflection on my first year in a new school environment after…
That is the theme of our achievement testing week. And before I go any further… yes… my two current client schools are having the students do an achievement test. Both are private schools that have been in person all school year. Both have been able to have strict covid guidelines and maintain in person classes. So it was decided to have the achievement testing this…
Catching Up. That phrase has been on my mind. By the number of posts and articles, also on a lot of other people’s minds too. I am not going to try to hypothesize what that phrase means to others. Rather I am going to suggest that the phrase, Catching Up, is meaningless to supporting our students. Maybe that is a touch bold, or harsh or…
Last year, before Covid, I gave an in-person parent workshop on Social Media. I was happy to discuss the more popular social media sites and parental controls. The workshop was well-attended. I think it is important for parents to understand and have the resources to guide their children into making positive social media choices. I had a parent the next morning tell me that she…
So after a little hiatus from writing this blog, I am back. I had decided a while ago that if nothing was occupying my thoughts then I was not going to write just to write. But talking with teachers recently, I am reminded of the necessity of sending out more postive communications to parents. The Bank of Goodwill. No it is not an actual bank…
Just a few days ago was Black Friday. Now as it was Black Friday 2020, it was a different Black Friday. But what was the same was the enormous number of texts and emails that I received (and I assume you did too) about the deals available. What this really means to me is that holiday gift shopping season is upon us. So as I…
So I have written about perspective before, https://edtechease.com2020/02/02/perspective/. In that blog piece I touched on how I use perspective in school. But I have been thinking more about perspective the last few weeks. It came fully to my attention this week when talking to a student’s parents. They told me how their daughter was feeling about her class. I did not agree with how the…
So it happened again! Sent home scores for the first progress monitoring assessments and parents are calling, texting and stopping at carpool to ask how to improve their child’s reading scores. First, the true question is how to improve their reading skills. Second, READ! So I started to write down my thoughts and said to myself this sounds familiar. And it was…I have written about…
Each week during the past Spring’s sequestering due to Covid I wrote an Instagram post (and 1 blog post) about what I had learned. These thoughts mostly came from the distance teaching I was doing with Kindergarten and my talks with my other teacher colleagues about their experiences. So while walking the other day I started making a mental list of how this first week …
This is an excellent question. I have had parents tell me that I can and should “make” their child sit and do his/her work. Now let me be clear… I can’t “make” kids do their schoolwork. I can encourage them, I can support them, I can reteach the material, I can praise them, I can even bribe them with a reward system. But I can…
