After An Educator's Journey
Out of the classroom & into the universe
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Once upon a time, I taught 2nd, 3rd, and 4th graders. Now I’m retired and working on new ventures.
Category: Braindroppings
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For 30 years, I was a teacher in both private and public elementary schools. I certainly was not a perfect teacher, and I made more than my share of missteps, especially in interactions with students. Experience can be an exacting teacher, however. One of the most important and useful lessons I learned was that for…
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If a picture is worth a 1000 words, this one, courtesy of Colin Jones of Mass Budget is one of the most compelling reasons why we need to implement the Foundation Budget update (S.2525) which is currently languishing in Committee. Communities with greater wealth have the luxury of adding to the grossly under-calculated “what it costs…
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Senator Charles Shumer and Representative Nancy Pelosi have published their collective ideas supporting public education. Their 5-point proposal can be found in this USA Today article. I read their ideas with great interest, particularly as recent Democratic administration proposals have not been very supportive of Public Schools and the 90% of students who attend them.…
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It’s budget time once again in Lowell and if you thought last year’s budget was a squeaker, wait until you see this year’s edition. I do not envy the Superintendents across Massachusetts. This is a pretty ugly time to try to keep programming viable when Foundation Budget calculations are 25 years out of date and…
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LEJA, a local grassroots collaborative of teachers, parents, students and community allies is hard at work here in Lowell to advocate for consistency in recess allocation across all elementary and middle schools in Lowell. One would think, logically, that fair and equitable recess would be a given, but it is not. Recess time is a…
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I was in Boston this past weekend to be an ally for the student organizers of March for Our Lives, Boston. I feel as if my generation of Boomers has dropped the ball. Or maybe we never picked up the ball because when we were students in school, worry about an “active” shooter, one with…
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Did you happen upon KQED’s interview with San Francisco educator, Michael Essien, principal of MLK Middle School? If not, here’s the report which includes an audio of the story. So many of us in education feel the pressure to keep teaching the prescribed curriculum even when our students, our kids, are telegraphing their emotional response…
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Some years ago, I enrolled in an Italian language class at Boston Language Institute. The class met for 3 hours – no break – several times each week. The instructor only spoke my “new” language, Italian, for the entirety of the three hours. We had some written materials, some listening resources, but mainly we were…
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What will it take to break through the glass ceiling of education leadership in Massachusetts? The answer to that is still to be uncovered. On Monday, the Board of Education met to make a final candidate selection for Massachusetts’ next Commissioner of Education. There were three candidates: Penny Schwinn, Angelica Infante-Green, and Jeffrey Riley. Two…
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