A few weeks ago, I was able to go to the 2017 AMLE Conference in Philadelphia (along with our entire middle school staff - how cool is that??). I learned A LOT. It was inspiring, thought-provoking, and overwhelming in terms of the amount of information I was processing. After taking some time to digest, here …
Tag: Reflection
PBL Basics #1: Challenging Problems & Questions
Note: This series of posts is inspired by Larmer, Mergendoller, and Boss's (2015) recently released book, Setting the Standard for Project Based Learning. It is a great book for anyone looking to get into or learn more about project/inquiry based learning. These posts are just a small sample of the pedagogical tools you will find inside. A full …
Continue reading PBL Basics #1: Challenging Problems & Questions
What Bloom Would Say About My Curriculum
Now that the school year is coming to a close, I'm starting to reflect on the year as a whole, what I will keep the same and what I'll change. This year was a big step forward for me in terms of curriculum development. I created a standards-based curriculum in which I analyzed the learning …
Memorization in Moderation
In grad school, we focused a lot of attention on what Paulo Friere - one of the all-stars of educational philosophy - calls the "banking model" of education and, specifically, how to avoid treating students like "empty vessels" within which we as teachers simply disperse knowledge. With this mindset, I entered my first year of …
Some Words to Remember as a First Year Teacher
A little over a year ago, I remember sitting in one of my first ever grad school classes. We were discussing with our professor what it's like when you first start teaching. To paraphrase one of the main points from that discussion, he told us that our first year, we would not be good teachers. Yes, you read …
Continue reading Some Words to Remember as a First Year Teacher
Learning and Teaching in the Modern Age 