EducatingMe

In 2016 I did not set goals for myself. I felt like I wasn't up for setting some lofty version of my self to try to live up to. I wanted to relax last year and just focus on the work in front of me. I had no time for additional goals. Well, then life hit. I had back surgery in January. I was the right decision at the time. I feel so much better these days, but it did not come without loss. I was told I could no longer be a runner anymore. Or a mountain biker, that I was a walker now. I was a swimmer. For those of you that know me, that was a major hit to my hobbies.  In March I attended the most amazing Ed Conference I have ever been to. SXSWEdu is the conference Educators must try to get to at some point in their career. It opened my eyes to the new landscape education is cultivating. This conference showed me that the moving and shaking in education was not happening in administrators offices. It was happening in the classrooms. This was a huge hit to my psyche. I always ...

Up front I should tell you, I am a hot mess. I have all of these thoughts and feeling inside of my head that I cannot express without screaming or crying. I just found out some real Deliverance type $h!+ that happened in the family tree and I cannot make heads or tails of it. I will dramatize the names and relationships to protect those that wish to continue to remain blameless and clueless. Beth was an 8 yr old kid. Her father like any red blooded back woods freak had high aspirations of being a Grand Wizard for the KKK.  Beth being only a child with no mother at home (because the mother selfishly left the home leaving backwoods dad to raise 5 kids) loved her father. The father here, who selfishly loved to hate black people, decided that, to make it anywhere in this sick twisted world of his daughters had to be passed around to the other twisted sickos (that hated all non-white/christian persons) for fun little romp of sexual pleasuring for themselves. You might be asking at thi...

Hi, my name is Erin and I am a bully. Why the heck can I teach other peoples kids all day long and with the patience of Job, but when it comes to my own children's learning, I reduce myself to tactics that were used against me when I was a child? Those tactics made me angry, mad, sad, defeated, not smart enough. In the act of bullying that is not what I remember. When I am working through the math problems or reading activities and am met with questioning eyes and frustrated glances...all I can see is that some days she reads with ease and some days she is stubborn as hell and for got the sound the B makes. Some days her mental math capabilities are beyond the 1st grade expectations and other days I ask what comes after 46 and tears fill her eyes. My 4th grader can do this to me too...typically I bring both of them to tears once a month though on different days. All the while I am standing over them shouting that she remembered this yesterday. I did this today. I typically ke...

For those of you that haven't seen the iconic movie, Planes, Trains and Automobiles , I will give you the short version. Guy meets guy on a plane...connection flight is cancelled so the two travel across country together running into bad luck all along the way. While Anne and I knew each other (kinda) before adventuring on this modern day adventure, the same kind of bad luck kept creeping its head around every corner. We tried to document much of the chaos and fun on the Facebook page -  https://www.facebook.com/ErinandAnne/?fref=ts We arrived in Denver around 10:30 PM to the AirBNB we reserved weeks earlier. Upon arrival the host was heavily intoxicated and the details from the description on the website did NOT match the house. Long story short, we politely shook hands and told him we would just get a hotel for the night. Little did we know that Denver was sold out. Folks, I mean for real. After calling the list of hotels we Googled the the next two hours and arguing with ...

WARNING!!! I have no idea how many obscenities will be thrown around in this post. I am a good gal but came from a down-home-say-it-how-you-like-up-bringing... My good ol' buddy Tyler Bridges was so great to point out to me today some of the great pieces of legislation that came of of this session while I was so focused on the education bills. I cannot be in all subjects at all times, so thank you Tyler. Thanks for highlighting some of the real gems. Ok, what? What the hell is this horse hocks? Daggers? Sword canes? Who the hell is so worried about this and petitioning and lobbying about the need of this that it was necessary to pass this bill this year? I am kind of serious here. Please if you are one of these people step out. Let me in on what I am missing and why it is so imperative that 2016 was the year this needed amended? Let me tell you who is stoked about this newly amended law. My 9 year old daughter Tatum who does have a dagger. She is so into the FAIRY TAIL W...

I was in a conversation with a gal the other day and she was asking me questions about why Oklahoma is in such a bind when it comes to education. She went on to say she passes by several schools on her drive and they are adding on or building up the school. Her question was - how do we have money to build and not the money to pay teachers? I had to explain to her that unlike personal banking accounts where she can decide if she has a vacation fund or pay the bills fund or buying a new pair of shoes fund. In the financial world that the education system must live in, you cannot take from the vacation fund to pay your bills. If you have a vacation fund, you go on vacation and let the water and electric get shut off. You buy the shoes and let the house go to repo. She was pretty upset at that point. She (the lay-person) was not informed as to how the situation worked.   As a typical human being with typical senses (who may have also survived the single semester of persona...

This is really nothing more than a quick shout out to my new friend Josh Flores I absolutely love when worlds come together. In the past couple of years, I have kinda run in the same circle as the #OklaEd staple in Josh Danger Flores. For those of you that don't know him to well because maybe your circles haven't collided, he is a beer drinking, blog and podcasting sonofvagun with a love of coffee and education. We have tweeted back and forth and narrowly missed each other at conferences (actually, I did sit in for like 15 minutes of his Evernote presentation at Recharge in Clinton last summer). Today however, we sat down to get to know each other the only way two people really can...with microphones shoved in our faces for an actually listened to podcast. Joking aside, he was great. We shared the love of a few different things, namely professional development, coffee and teaching. I was at ease the whole time. Josh had a way of not letting it feel like we only knew e...

Where the do you think anxiety comes from?   If you look up the causes of test anxiety on the internet, Google suggests answers from all over the map. One thing that most of these answers have in common is that anxiety is MANUFACTURED and manifests itself in the brain. I am not suggesting anything like - people with anxiety are kooks - because I have dental anxiety. I do freak out when I am sitting in the dentist's chair with my mouth wide open looking up at the blinding lights. I am sure some of you just probably had your own little experience as I said that. BUT I am seeing my Facebook and Twitter light up with every person's child having test anxiety. I get that there are probably several out there that get an honest to goodness feeling in their gut before sitting for a large test...but oh my freaking freak!...how many chapter and unit tests have they taken before this day or 5 in April? How many spelling tests? How many quizzes? Why the deuce are these kids freaking...

So, I started my #oklaed journey around 2 years ago. My friend Anne Beck invited me to EdCamp Tulsa, hosted by Jenks PS. My very first session was a Twitter 101. I was already on the Twitter, but I was fumbling. Tobias Brown, aka Doc Brown, split the room in half and taught the fresh fish how to set up an account, whilst walking the new-tos through what it means to chat and how to be a little more specific with your Twitters. It was game on from that day forward. Sitting in the Mountains enjoying a Sunday evening #Oklaed chat Scott, is the guy who sent out the challenge to write about what we thought #oklaed meant to us. In his 3/22 (today) The Drive, he talked about the growth a teacher could get out of take a video of themselves teaching and sharing. Well, I don't teach these days, so my blog posts are my way of doing just that...putting myself out there...being vulnerable to the criticism and the hits that might come my way.  I can write up a blog post of my thoughts and...

I know I still have to fill you in on SXSW day #3, but my husband had a few words that resulted from a conversation with several teens yesterday. Rules were made to be broken. If there is one common saying that infuriates me to the point of blood boil, it is this one. A philosopher that I am quite fond of, Os Guiness, tells us that the best way to show a person that their belief is a fallacy is to encourage them to follow it to the end. This means, to get a little stuffy here, to use deductive reasoning to follow premises to their logical and necessary conclusions. Rules were made to be broken. Am I safe to reword this phrase a couple different ways for the sake of clarity? -The reason rules are made is so that they can be broken. -A rule is made for the purpose of being broken. -The purpose of a rule is for it to be broken. If we are in disagreement that all these statements are the same, then I suppose I’m attacking a straw man. But if they are the same, if you ca...

Anyone happening on this post because of the SXSWedu title, please know I am no writer... So this post Im writing much later than last night and under a completely different disposition. Today was a bit less inspiring. Great...but less yesterday. But one thing today did have over yesterday was an experience. There are many links in this post here; feel free to click on them. But especially the video I made today. Here's the rundown. But there is no possible way I can articulate the awesomeness (in my mind) of each of these things. But I'll give it a try. Todays sessions were todays sessions. The morning was filled with a little Scratch.mit.com learning. I made a dance video in about 30 minutes. It looks like it, but I have never created in this fashion before. If you watch this video , first click the green flag and then I think you have to click the space bar to get it to start. And its a continuous loop, so shut it off whenever you get sick of me. Which will likely...

Alright, someone told me right before the opening keynote this morning that by the end of the day my mind would be absolutely blown. I was all like, "Yeah, ok, Ive been to conferences before" And he was all, "But you've never been to SXSWedu" And the I was all like, "Ok, we'll see" Ya'll, wow! This place is like Edcamp meets ISTE meets TED talks. The ideas. and then I get ideas. And then I think that the Ministry of Education would not approve of my ideas. So the opening keynote was Temple Grandin . I had never heard of her before today. She is #amazeballs people. She is a 68 yr old woman that is on the spectrum and also works with the beef industry and more...designing cattle runs to the processing plants. She speaks about her autism and how we should make these kiddos great at their one (or more) thing. Here is a link to her TED talk from 2010. I did not grab a video of her today, but you will see in this video why I instant...

Travis Barnes, aka, the hubs, has guest blogged for me before. I challenged him last month in a bloggers challenge. And because he won't get his own blog - here he is taking over mine. What has been your ONE biggest struggle during this school year? My ONE biggest struggle this year has been keeping a positive attitude about the school’s administration. When I started with this school the environment and culture was small and personable - it’s now big and mighty; bureaucratic and formal. This has left me feeling disenfranchised, and I’ve used that word more this year than ever before.   Share TWO accomplishments that you are proud of from this school year. In contrast with my struggle, I have managed to form an even closer relationship with my students and their families. Every year they feel more like my extended family and my confidence in knowing their goals, ambitions and learning styles is even higher. I’m proud of my “Double Platinum ‘A’ Teacher” stat...

What could you do with $106 million dollars?  State Dept be like...cut funding to the kids so we can M ake It Rain . The state of Oklahoma send out another memo saying that there would be another hit to education .  Are you serious?  I am wondering if the state of Oklahoma would like to or be willing to account for where they would like to put that $106 million dollars, an accounting for or a reckoning of the shortfall to the children and families of Oklahoma. I understand being in the hole. I do. I was once a reckless youth that while in college I overspent in my checking account. I paid the overdraft fees and then then learned a lesson. The lesson I learned was that you don’t spend money that you don’t have.  I expect there is much more to running the state’s checkbook than that. And they are trying to do the fiscally responsible thing right now, they ARE trying to cut spending .  But here is the deal…because there is always a deal. You ...

Fully Functioning Human Being  and the quest for the meaning of life. In this little trip of education, I have taken a path down Educational Psychology. In this trek we talk about many of the greats; Maslow, Locke, Erikson, Bloom. All of these names have so much to say about the way we teach, motivate, and demonstrate. In the quest for an A, I am always looking for a different voice saying more. I have landed on Scott Barry Kauffman . You should read his stuff. He is a modern day Ed Psyc guy that, in my opinion, is evolving the way we should approach education. Due to insane back problems that lead to surgery 2 weeks ago, I had to drop my semester and "rest". But my dedicated readers know, that really doesn't "happen". I am always looking into this, trying out that...helping to plan another edcamp . I just love being involved. Well, a tweet from Kauffman caught my eye this morning. He linked an article that he had read ... I wasn't even through ...

I’ve mentored quite a few people in the last couple years. These mentees either know they’re in over their head and know they need help. Or they didn't realize they were sinking because the ice burg hit three weeks ago. No matter which category my new friends fall into, they have no idea  what to ask me so they could start the process of change . In a mentoring relationship, it’s generally the responsibility of the mentee to take the initiative–not the mentor’s. In my current role (there are three of us), we are trying to stay proactive in our approach to leading this year. All Epic Charter Schools first year teachers have one of the three of us to connect with, learn the ropes, and grab tips and tricks for their approach to everything. A sounding board if nothing else to all thing Epic and EDU. Our non-first-years, get the opportunity (their choice) for monthly meet-ups to new tools and approaches to education. We basically do the research for them so the teachers can remai...

Alright, I have been tagged to be apart of the 5, 4, 3, 2, 1 Challenge. Originally posted by Anthony . I think that Scott , who called me out, probably looked at my recent post history - the fan that he is - and desired to read more of my off the cuff - lacking the educational background - too many commas, 'cuz that's actually the way I speak - style of writing.  Sidebar - I have thought about deleting this whole blog many times due to the fact I am not a writer. I'm a conversationalist   I’m sure that’s it. But alas, here goes... What has been your ONE biggest struggle during this school year? This school year in particular I have struggled with my ever changing job title/description. The year started out like last year, but I was sinking. I have a teaching background but my current job which I had become very good at, had evolved over the last two years into a largely systems background. The biggest struggle was wanting to know everything about everything when ...