After An Educator's Journey
Out of the classroom & into the universe
recent posts
about
Once upon a time, I taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. Now I’m retired and working on new ventures.
Author: amybisson
-
About six weeks ago, I found an article in the Washington Post that caught my attention: School Lunch Can Be A Teachable Moment. Does the institutional nature of school lunch periods make a difference to kids? The idea that using place settings to create a more civilized lunch period sent me straight to Home Goods…
-
Recently I happened upon a video of Steve Jobs giving the 2005 Commencement address at Stanford University. Having sat through a number of such addresses – and well aware of how rare is the speech that is remembered 30 minutes afterwards – I was curious what, beside the celebrity of the speech-maker, might be the…
-
I am an avid reader of the Choice Literacy website. I love reading what the leaders in literacy have to say and particularly value those who not only share their pedagogy and thinking, but also work in classrooms with real students. Franki Sibberson is one of those contributors on Choice Literacy; her writings always make me…
-
Yesterday, we – my class and I – wrapped up our standardized state testing for 2013. What a long, strange, trip it has been. Starting last March with our Reading MCAS test, my students have been demonstrating their knowledge of third grade skills. That’s right, last March, when we were 7 months into our academic…
-
This week my principal approached me with an intriguing question – would you be willing to loop to fourth grade with your students? I needed a little time to think about that, but not for the reasons you might assume. My hesitation had nothing to do with a repeat year with my students, some of…
-
Their uncle called them “losers”. What can make a difference in the life of a youth whose behaviors are at once destructive to humanity and self-destructive? We hope and wait for answers to the “why” of the Marathon tragedy; those answers may never materialize. Why was there such a disconnect to the rest of humankind?…
-
It has been a hellish week, this vacation week that so many of us in Massachusetts looked forward to. Today we are about and around in sunny, but unseasonably cool spring weather. The grass has finally decided to green up, daffodils feel safe poking up from the damp earth. Most of our routines have returned…
-
I know that I have only one voice. But I have one, and I am determined to use it. On the four month anniversary of Sandy Hook, we are reminded that nothing has been done to prevent yet another shooting of this nature. Listen to the family members of the victims in this tragedy. They…
-
I’m afraid we didn’t get very far in “diving deeper” into today’s poetry selection. Mostly, today was a lesson in multiple meanings of words. By that, I mean, a word that meant one thing in the mid- to late-1800s (when this poem was written) and the colloquially accepted meanings that kids hear today. First of…
-
We are beginning a new unit of study in English Language Arts this week – poetry! Going through this new unit I discovered a poem by Emily Dickenson – Autumn. And that reminded me of something Adrien shared with me long ago. You see, you can sing almost every Emily Dickenson poem to “The Yellow…
After An Educator's Journey 