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: The Craft of Teaching
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Put yourself back in elementary school and imagine your reaction to a classmate calling you a name or hurting your feelings through action or word. Would you speak up or would you allow that hurt to fester and grow into something more significant? Would you feel listened to? And if you caused the hurt would…
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I was in the seventh grade when Miss Parker told me, “Donovan, we could put all your excess energy to good use.” And she introduced me to the sound of my own voice. In five minutes, Donovan Livingston the Student speaker at Harvard Graduate School of Education 2016 Convocation and Ed.M. candidate uses his voice…
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Play – real, unstructured brain break time – is as important to a child’s learning as academic time. So why are school leaders and decision-makers so reluctant to let go and allow more recess? I cringe whenever I hear a school leader lecture that there isn’t enough time in a school day to increase play…
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So, what would you say an unexpected by-product of ed reform might be? With loss of autonomy in what to teach when, emphasis on high-stakes standardized testing and little control over just about anything else in the educational day, teachers are leaving some districts for transfers to more affluent schools and for other careers. I…
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Ludlow Superintendent Todd Gazda posed this question in a recent Commonwealth Magazine article: What is equity? Because, as Dr. Gazda points out, current education policy tends toward equalizing education for all students with standardized curriculums proven by standardized assessment and incentivized “business systems” for implementation. Equity, like fairness, is not treating every student the same, but rather focuses on…
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As a writer and, as a teacher, I value collaboration with peers. I know that my writing is made more clear, more interesting, and more precise when I rely on a trusted “critical friend” to offer constructive feedback. And so, when the Commonwealth’s writing standards included peer revising as well as adult conferring, the inclusion of critical friends in…
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As I sat down to write about my personal opinions about PARCC and standardized testing in general, I came to the realization that a single post might not be enough. Over the course of the next week, I’ll be posting about PARCC and some of the reasons it merits the attention of anyone connected to…
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Project Learn Recently I had the pleasure of talking about education with LZ Nunn and Brittany Burgess from Project Learn, a nonprofit supporting education and educators. LZ recently accepted the challenge of becoming the ED of Project Learn. One of the topics we tossed around was grant writing, and ways Project Learn might offer support to…
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The New York Times has a good read today stating what nearly every educator in the U.S. could have predicted: indications showing the beginnings of a teacher shortage in the U.S. Read the article here. According to the author, because there aren’t enough teachers available to hire, urban districts across the U.S. – including Providence, RI right…
After An Educator's Journey 