After An Educator's Journey

Out of the classroom & into the universe

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about

Once upon a time, I taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. Now I’m retired and working on new ventures.
I taught second, third and fourth graders. Teaching was my passion and joy for 30 years. And it didn’t hurt that they called me “mom” sometimes.

Category: Braindroppings

  • Daily Five and Neuro Brain Function

    Today, I had the privilege of attending The Sisters Daily Five presentation here in Massachusetts – and if you get the chance, it is well worth your time…. and money. Some of the most intriguing parts of the presentation involved the research on brain function. When I try to apply a something new and exciting…

  • Three Things My Students’ Test Scores Won’t Tell You

    Every day there appears a new idea for making teachers accountable for student achievement. Yesterday I noticed a pip of an idea in a twitter post: Phys. Ed. teachers should be evaluated based on their students’ fitness level.  This preposterous idea, that the fitness level of a student who has maybe 40 minutes contact time…

  • Fasten Your Seatbelts…..

    It’s going to be a bumpy night.” I love this quote from “All About Eve”; and coming straight from Bette Davis’ mouth – well you can imagine the delivery. The more thinking is done about the implementation of the new mathematics curriculum frameworks – the Common Core – the more it becomes apparent that this…

  • Using Test Results to Evaluate Teaching

    The writing is on the wall… the DESE is in the process of recommending that the teacher evaluation system overhaul include data about teacher effectiveness using the state’s MCAS test. I really am annoyed that no one is listening to teachers who are saying “Wait a minute…”. Not because we don’t want to be evaluated;…

  • A Break in the Link

    Twenty-four hours after the end of the 2010-11 school year finds me still trying to analyze why this year was so difficult. Why was it that so many students in the past group were such a challenge? Did my teaching change? Is my tolerance level low? Have I lost “it”? The more I think about…

  • Hakuna Matata

    which translates to “no worries”…. how often is that a part of an adult’s thought process? This week marks the last week of the academic year for us. It’s part of the fabric of the school year cycle – that time when I reflect on what worked and what didn’t. When I start to see…

  • Memorial Day 2011

    For many, or maybe for most people, Memorial Day means picnics and the start of the summer season. Yesterday, with the first summer-like weekend since, well since last summer, we went in to Boston to walk around and soak up some sun. As we usually do when we don’t have a specific agenda, we drove…

  • Endurance

    This must be the word of the week as it has come up so frequently. I think of my earnest third graders enduring the grueling high stakes mathematics testing that we concluded this week. Their reactions ran the gamut from just filling in any random test bubble to get the thing over with to painstakingly writing and…

  • Educating Workers or Leaders?

    Today’s Boston Globe carried a thought-provoking article by Renee Loth, titled “A Needed Lesson in Citizenship”.  The current emphasis on stripped down, regurgitation of facts that is necessitated by preparing students (and now teachers) to deal with high-stakes testing has quite the trickle down effect: science, critical thinking, social studies…. all of these highly needed learning…

  • Field trips are not just a day off

    The writing demands, and by that I mean the required monthly student work, in Grade 3 is driving me. We are asked to produce a student response to reading sample monthly – something that is sorely needed by my students. MCAS, soon-to-be replaced by whatever literacy testing the Core Curriculum invents, asks our students to…