Category Archives: Education

A Window and a Mirror

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Books, Education

My journey to bring in contemporary literature from a different perspective than the monolithic racial identity of authors dominating our curriculum turned out to be more of a whirlwind than I expected: I submitted the book for District approval back in September, gained my principal’s support to purchase copies of the novel, and received official District approval in time to integrate the book into my sequence in November.

Now it is December, and already my seniors have wrapped up their final projects from our reading of There There by Tommy Orange.

In part because of the accelerated nature of my school’s schedule, we tore through the novel at breakneck pace, engaging in regular discussion and frequent journal writing. Like any time teaching new content, there were hits and misses. My overall mission was two-fold: One, expose students to a work of literary merit that offered voices and perspectives otherwise not present in their school experience, and two, examine the craft and structure of the novel itself in order to consider different approaches to storytelling.

My students’ responses were interesting. As with any book I’ve tried to teach, there is always a subset of kids who see themselves as “bad readers” and whose default position is to approach with skepticism and negativity. This identity is often quite crystallized by the time the reach me as 17-, 18-, or 19-year-old high school seniors. I’ve yet to find the right way to reach every student with a given text, but the boundaries of who connects and who doesn’t shift in interesting ways.

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The Value of Their Voices

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Education, Life in the Classroom, Social Issues, Teacher Leadership, Uncategorized | , , ,

How much do you value student voice? By the term “student voice” I am referring to the values, beliefs, opinions, and perspectives of the students in our classrooms. I think we all instinctively understand that student voice is important, but do we value it so much that we intentionally make room for it? Do we value it as much as we value teacher voice in the classroom?

This year, I am focusing on creating relationships that promote social emotional learning. I have become increasingly aware of what students are saying, and, consequently, of what teachers are saying about their students. Although I am finding the student voices in my classroom to be informative and invigorating to the learning environment, it is clear that some educators are often frustrated with what students have to say.

Personally, I find joy in my classroom listening to the voices of my students. Every day I learn something new. Every day I laugh. My students bring life to my classroom and they fill my days with their varied perspectives, diverse backgrounds, interesting opinions and wild imaginations. My walls display their work. My units shift and change with their contributions and preferences. Every time I read a novel with a class, I see it through different eyes and hear it through different voices. Every time I give them a controversial topic to discuss, I hear a new perspective and learn a little more about their generation and our community. Continue reading →

Creating a Stress-Free Classroom for Learning

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Education

About a month ago I switched in-district teaching positions.  I left a classroom of fabulous 6th graders in elementary for 7th-grade math on a cart. As I observed the various classes I was to inherit, one thing was evident; students didn’t have a stable learning environment.  I witnessed displays of behavior not conducive to learning, students disengaged while the teacher instructed, and frustrated student faces.

During these days of observation, I kept asking myself two things. 

1. Why did I leave my 6th graders?  

2. How do I begin to create a stable and safe environment of learning for my new students? 

I previously wrote a blog that discusses how I discover what my students deal with in their lives outside of school and how I use that data to shape lessons and academic practice.  However, here it was the tail end of October and students were deep in their current math unit. I felt I was going to have to begin teaching with a triage approach.  

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(In)adequate yearly progress: Being basic and how to grow from it

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Education, Education Policy, Elementary, Life in the Classroom

Whether you are one year or ten years into your teaching career, you will be observed and evaluated on your teaching practices. These observations and evaluations are one way we as educators know how we are impacting student learning and receive feedback on our practice. 

My first year of teaching, I was rated “Basic” in every domain I was evaluated on, including my student growth. I accepted this evaluation despite my disappointment because it was, after all, my first year. As I entered year two, I remember thinking, “I know it’s still going to be so hard, but at least I won’t be completely blindsided.”

October rolled around and I was feeling good about how things were going. Nothing was perfect, but I was leaps and bounds ahead in my practice compared to this time last year. For example, my first observation and evaluation of this school year came in mid-October, and I was excited for my administrator to come into my classroom and see how much I had improved.

Fast forward to my post-observation meeting and a score of “Basic” in every domain. 

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The Care and Feeding of the Twice Exceptional Child, Part Two

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Education


While I’ve had 2E students in my gifted classes going back into the 1980s, the numbers of 2E students in Highly Capable classrooms are increasing as identification processes become better. In addition, we’ve seen an increase in the severity of the second identification, which can make it more difficult for the student to function in a self-contained, accelerated, academic, Highly-Capable classroom. Nevertheless, once students are identified and placed in my class, it’s my job to work with other staff to make sure their needs are met.

HC who get speech services. This is more common than you might think. Combine speech issues with typically high rates of introversion, anxiety, and perfectionism in the gifted population, and you might understand why I work so hard on public speaking skills with all my students.

According to his third and fourth grade teachers, a child I’ll call Lisa never spoke in class. The September she entered my fifth-grade class, I had the students read an article on introversion, and then I asked the students to define introversion. Lisa put her hand up, stammered for a bit, and finally blurted out, “I am an introvert.”

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An Example of Privilege

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy, Social Issues | ,

When I teach about privilege in my classroom, I’m careful to frame it not as an “easier life,” but rather, a life that more closely matches the life of the deciders.

We talk about it in terms of “proximity to power.” As we discuss issues of race, gender, sexual orientation, citizenship, ability, wealth (the list persists), we identify how society unconsciously arranges each of these on an axis. At the convergence of these axes is the “position of power.” Furthest from the convergence are marginalized identities. We talk about this as “social location.”

I am careful to clarify that when we place identities on these axes, we are not making value judgments. Rather, we are making observations based on data. For example, on the race axis we consider which race in our country occupies governmental policymaking seats, CEO positions, media mogul platforms, and socially powerful positions. That race is predominantly white, and disproportionate to that race’s representation in our society. Take gender identity, sexual orientation, sex assigned at birth, (and on down the list) and we get a map of social locations with proximity to power.

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Knowing Your Students Helps Create an Equitable Classroom

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Education

Seeing students for who they are and where they come from, as well as providing each student with an equitable distribution of educational supports or resources that allow the student to feel safe and secure, is social justice in education.  In order for teachers to provide equitable educational opportunities, it’s important to become aware of each student’s background.  

To be clear;  this is not understanding how the student has done academically or behaviorally in their educational career, but truly knowing the student’s life circumstances outside of the classroom.

Getting to know students on the surface level is no longer enough.  It doesn’t allow for an equitable classroom. It is important for teachers to create a methodical approach to getting to know their students as to not yield an inequitable or unconscious biased environment. Here’s a strategy I’ve found useful: 

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WARNS of Trouble…

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Assessment, Education, Education Policy

Peace and quiet. Ahhh…I looked out at my students as they were silently reading and took a mental survey of what I know about this group of 6th-8thgraders. Who are these young people?

In my room, at least 60% are in homes where I know drugs and alcohol are playing a role in the family environment and nearly 80% are coming from homes where poverty has a firm hold. One in four are being raised by widows. Quietly they all read, lost in worlds of adventures far from the starkness of their real lives. 

It is not hard to see where almost every single one of my students faces a daily challenge in which they must use some kind of coping mechanism just to show up at school. I am actually quite surprised that truancy is a rarity in my classroom. However, I have had to become familiar with the new laws surrounding truancy this year. 

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Baby/Bathwater

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Current Affairs, Education, Education Policy | ,

The recommendation from the New York City School District’s “School Diversity Advisory Group” has sparked a national conversation, one that’s erupted right here in the Seattle Public School District. The NYC advisory group claimed that the best way to desegregate NYC schools was to eliminate most gifted programs. In their reply, the National Association for Gifted Children pointed out that NYC’s history of using a single test “actually exacerbated under-identification.”

Denise Juneau, the new superintendent at the Seattle Public Schools, is also pushing to phase out selective programs for advanced kids although she’s currently being blocked by two school board directors.

Juneau called the HC classes “educational redlining.”

Let’s all agree that the demographics of most gifted or Highly Capable programs in the nation—or in Washington state—don’t closely match the demographics of the districts at large. For example, in Seattle, the stats look like this:

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What is Social Justice?

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Education, Elementary, Life in the Classroom, Professional Development, Social Issues

Educators are aware of 21st-century skills required for students such as critical thinking, creativity, collaboration, communication, technology literacy, flexibility, leadership, and social skills. However, what about 21st-century skills educators must possess? 

Often this school of thought is overshadowed by the concentrated focus on student learning.  Current educators need to develop, practice, and implement skills like social justice pedagogy, intersectionality, culturally responsive teaching, and implicit bias.  Developing new skills will take time and mental reconfiguration of what teaching has become in the 21st century, but where to begin? Social justice would be a great starting point.

Social justice can be defined as seeing students for who they are and where they come from, as well as providing each student with an equitable distribution of educational supports or resources that allow the student to feel safe and secure.  At times it may seem easier to emphasize what social justice is not.  

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