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: The Craft of Teaching

  • Defining “Good” and “Bad” Teaching

    Since when does a nationally recognized newspaper purport expertise on what makes an effective teacher? Since this morning, April 19, 2011 when the Boston Globe published an uncredited editorial entitled: Ed Commissioner’s Plan for Teacher Evaluation Gets It Right. Apparently all that is necessary for teacher evaluations is some evidence of the following: Effective teachers routinely…

  • Busted…. and giving it up

    There is nothing like returning from a sick day to the chaos that has gone on in a classroom. Oh I know there are wonderful substitutes out there – and I’ve actually had the pleasure of experiencing one or two of them – but lately, whenever I’ve had to be out, it hasn’t been a…

  • Teaching Report Writing

    Too often, I find the curriculum focus in writing is disconnected and segmented from the rest of the curriculum. Perhaps that is a hazard of attempting to cram in so many genres of writing – all urgently needed – into one school year. Is it any wonder that, from time to time, a genre of…

  • It’s the Vocabulary, Part 2

    I marvel at the quickness with which second language learners pick up on the structure of English. Most of my kids give new constructs a try without too much fear of seeming like they don’t know what they’re doing.  As an aside — and as an Italian/French language” studier”, I wish I could be more…

  • Letting Go

    One of my New Year’s Resolutions – the list is really long! – is to try not to be such a control freak about what we do in the classroom. I’m letting go of the idea that I need to be at school before 6:30 am (our school begins at 8:30) and that I can’t…

  • Redirection

    It came to me as a sleep-filled message. One of my current charges is a real behavioral headache. This child has witnessed more trauma than anyone should, let alone anyone who is just 9 years old. And, as you might expect, the child has many behavioral tics that get in the way of his —…

  • A Thanksgiving Tale

    It’s really easy for me to get wrapped around the axel over lack of parental support in a school where poverty is pervasive. I’ve had 3 teacher assistant team meetings for one child so far this year. The parent never attends and never responds to the meeting invitations. This parent continually writes nasty notes about…

  • When All Else Fails….

    We’ve been learning how to round numbers…. rounding in the tens and hundreds, and – dare I say it – even in the thousands. This morning, I revisited rounding with my third graders and from the reaction, a few of them even seemed to “get” it. However one of my students was really struggling to…

  • Visualize This

    Our strategy focus at this time in the year is making a visualization. Have you ever stopped to think about how useful this strategy really is? For my money, it seeps into just about every area of the third grade curriculum. In Word Study, we ask the kids to Look-Say-Cover-Write-Check.  In other words, look at…

  • It’s the vocabulary, stupid

    Well, not just the vocabulary, but for my urban kids, that surely is a major factor.  This week, our writing focus – visualizing a text – was driven by a poem written by Carmen Lagos Signes: Pumpkins in the cornfields, Gold among the brown, Leaves of rust and scarlet, Trembling slowly down; Birds that travel…