The word “anxiety” has been thrown around a lot over the last few months. Anxiety is a state of fear or apprehension about what is to come. It is the body’s response to stressful situations. For many, anxiety is high because of the pandemic alone. Not withstanding the changes in normalcy it has brought. One …
The much-awaited and long needed downpour just broke through heavy clouds, and I am staring out the window at the forming puddles, thinking about school. One week from today and we will return to a building we have not met or gathered in as a staff or school community since March 13. March 13th. The …
Hello Friends, Over the past days, which now total near weeks (a week and a half, plus one weekend, to be exact), we have not been together. This has been hard. Really hard. And over these days and weeks, your teachers, and educational assistants, and custodial staff, and bus drivers, and resource teachers and support, …
I received an interesting comment this week on my blog, with regards to my viral post on what students remember most about teachers: “This is sweet talk about how important it is to relate to students’ lives. A certain amount of that is important or you can’t reach the students. It is also critical to …
Come look at me, they cry out. Little voices calling, tiny hands reaching for my own much larger one. Watch me on the money bars, the slide, the firepole. Watch me! Notice Me! See me! A little one comes up to me, (I know not who she is), but she has a sweet innocent …
I happened to come across the now-viral video clip of a little boy being asked if he would miss his mom on the first day of school. A question to which he promptly exhibits visibly with quick tears that ‘yes,’ indeed—he will. The shot shows him running into the safe arms of his mother, with …
“The real heroes anyway aren’t the people doing things; the real heroes are the people NOTICING things, paying attention. The guy who invented the smallpox vaccine didn’t actually invent anything. He just noticed that people with cowpox didn’t get smallpox.” — Augustus Waters, in John Green’s The Fault in Our Stars We are almost there. …
It is disheartening, to say the very least, to realize yet again that the public’s perception of your work as a professional is characterized as being whiny, over-paid, indulged, lazy, self-centered and existent so as to be servile. I have spent the past number of years in deep contemplation of my teaching practice- writing, thinking, …
I sit back, watching them interact in the dramatic play center, mixing up imaginary food and having fun with the farm set and dinosaur bin. Role-playing. Make-believing. Pretending. Watch them piece together chain links with number pendants to make dog leashes for the play puppies and creating Lego masterpieces in the Math and Science center. …
It is one of those balmy, beautiful outdoor recess days that you might think would create the reality (or illusion of such) of not a care in the world being felt or expressed. You would expect to see everywhere…children running hither, thither and yon playing tag, catching butterflies, picking daisies. Strains to Pharrell’s Happy theme …
Being a Mom has rewarded me in so many ways, particularly in my understanding of things concerning parent-teacher relationships and student-teacher relationships within in a school system. Disclaimer from the get-go: I realize that one does not have to become a parent so as to teach well and make a difference. I would never want …
Last week, I was reading a couple of blogs I follow regularly. On both blogs, the women who write for them were raising important awareness around standardized testing, accompanied by its pros and cons. Both women supported a parent’s right to choose whether or not their child should be tested, and in the conversation that …
