EducatingMe

One of my great passions in education is making GIANT connections to learning. Once a year I try to go big in some way, shape or form. Going big (in my opinion) shows students that learning can be fun, but also that you care enough to make a grand gesture. Over the past 4 years, I have organized a "Court of Dreams" Thunder basketball day of math experience for my school. This includes all grade levels (PreK through 12th) separated into grade bands working on math on the Thunder basketball court. This is a fun-filled day and the Thunder Broadcast Team usually make a point to interview one or two students and make a huge deal out of it. The Thunder has grown accustomed to fulfilling Court of Dreams requests so that HS basketball teams can get the experience of playing on the court of their heros, but our school was the first to use the basketball court to do math lessons. All of the lessons are centered around basketball and every kid got to shoot baskets as well.

Teaching is messy. I love trying new things. I want to work in new ways to present or receive (from students) the same old content. In order to do this, things do not always turn out the way I hoped. I also do my very best to personalize the education process. THIS TAKES A CRAP-TON OF WORK!!! I make mistakes every single day. I am constantly revising, editing and polishing my craft. Every single year I think, "Ok, this year is going to be better." Every year I decide that I can do better and start from nearly scratch. I am overwhelmed with this mess at times. Is it that I teach every subject and every grade level? Is it that I want every one of my students to be rounded and educated AND happy? I get to keep my students from year to year. As a matter of fact, a portion of my bonus depends on whether or not my students come back next year. The pressure of this is insane and it's sloppy and always has me on my toes to improve and keep it fun and relevant. Add to th

The following is a response to a challenge from the totally amazing Noah Geisel, after he wrote a post  about finding that authentic audience for student publishing. I shared his post via a tweet touting success in this arena... and then he blasted me and asked me to share a blog post about this success. So here we go... I have been a blogger, inconsistently, for about 3 years. In this time I have had several thousand readers take time to read my thoughts as I butcher my way through the mechanics of the writing process. I write like I speak. It's hard to follow sometimes, but alas, my readers keep coming back for more. I really started having fun watching my analytics rise each week. Two years ago, I decided to answer a bloggers challenge. The blog was to answer the 5 things we should stop pretending in education. I asked 4 of my students to write an answer and I wrote one of them as well. This post received over 1000 clicks in a month. I was elated. The students were over the

I am not a superstitious person. I love being a dreamer and an idealist when it comes to education, but in all other matters, I am relatively pragmatic. Maybe, my husband tips his eyebrows as I say it. I am NOT superstitious. Yesterday an owl shows up on the back porch. Wow! How lucky to see one so close up. We were extremely cautious because this bird had very long talons and it kept snapping its beak at me like he meant business if I got too close. Upon close inspection, I could tell this owl was hurt, so before doing anything else I called the Tulsa Zoo to find out proper protocol on handling and fixing up this poor thing. The Zoo's Ornithologis t warned me to be careful, but that they would take it in if we could get it to them. I threw a towel over the owl's head and body and carefully pick up the animal. We stuffed it into a box and rush to the zoo. Once inside we had to fill out some paperwork then the man rushed off with the owl. The girls got 1,000 knowledge and he

Ok, long story, but I think this is one that absolutely needs to be told. There are a couple of things we need to look at here, educationally speaking. First Issue: On Tuesday this week, I realized a student that I suggested start with Epic and specifically be in my class because i had his brother too, could actually NOT be placed under me because he had an IEP. Due to intense bullying and medical issues that kept him from attending, therefore making him truant two years in a row, he needed a break from the world of traditional schooling. Most of you, my friends in the brick and mortar world, do not understand why this would be an issue at all. A student within the special education system who are on IEPs are placed in Reg Ed classes all the time. It is considered the least restrictive environment.  However, in the virtual world, which are the laws I must abide by, this is not allowed. I was informed it was a logistics thing. That if there is "Direct Instruction" it MUST c

Teamwork leave you thinking bad thoughts? I found a Twitter post the other day where a guy was talking about teamwork being work but worth it. I thought that his tweet was adept, but I couldn't help but have a bad taste in my mouth when I think about teams, teamwork, or group work. In college, I was always the one pushing my team through and making sure everyone pulled their weight and ultimately finishing up the slackers work and making it look consistent. People that know me, KNOW that I am a procrastinator, so it was a big deal for someone to push it out further than me.   In grade school we were placed in pods and had group work...again, I would tend to back off of my ideas for the greater good of just moving with the team and getting the job done. As I read through his first post and then the next on teamwork, I kept thinking I don't agree, but then into the thirst post, I started thinking about the only team I ever fully felt worked and worked well together. It was

I was texting with a friend last night and this morning. It felt like it could easily belong here on the blog as a reflection piece. So here is MY side... I always ask even without words that you unload on me. You gotta get that stuff out.   Babe, I moved schools a lot too. There are times that it sucks, but the new start was helpful many times too. None of it matters if you are trying to make a better life for your family.   I had to take a serious look at my life and job a couple years ago. I was climbing a ladder and loving it. I love being busy. I love being the most knowledgeable person in the room about something. I loved teaching adults. But my own kids were suffering. I worked at home WITH them but was completely unavailable.   I was worried about it looking like I was demoting. I was worried that I wouldn’t be a part of the “in crowd” anymore. I was worried I would be on an island. Guess what…all of those things are in a little way true and happened, but my

Back to writing. I really love podcasting as a medium to express what I think. I hate to write. It is time-consuming and I always find mistakes after I hit publish. I am never sure if what I have to say is worth someone's time to read it. I have become complacent. I have not written in a while, but the #oklaed chat from Sunday evening (July 9th) was all about telling your story. I thought it might be a good piece to bring me back into the medium in which I ruin regularly. I also find my vocabulary limits my ability to get across my true feelings, but what the hell. So my story...where do I start. I do not want this post to thrown shade on any person or persons from my life, but mine is not your typical teacher story. I have alluded to getting into this line of work for the summers off, folks that's the truth. Here's the short version... I hated school growing up. I was labeled LD and thrown into remedial math classes from 4th grade on. This label defined me. To my peers

The end of the year came and passed. So I can keep myself accountable, this is my theme for next school year, I am going to post my summer to-do list here. In between these nonpaying side jobs I have this summer, (it seems once the word gets out that you are "off work for a few months, you become a hot commodity) I have made a few goals for my summer. I plan to read several books. The first was Kim Bearden's Crash Course. I started this book last year but put it away when I made myself insanely busy building a curriculum. I loved how she used her students' stories to learn some great life lessons that she then shares with the world. It is a very quick read if you are looking for inspiration as well as so great pointers for ways to teach some of your same old content. The plan from here is fiction, then non-fiction and repeat. Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos is up next. Do you want a book review for each book? I am redesigning the inside of my van so the hubs can build it

To say Sunday night's #oklaed Twitter chat was very upsetting would be putting it lightly. Question 2: To which I answer: A2: 1.)Fatherless Boys, 2.)Parents uninvolved in education, 3.)Bad choices I was not citing resources here. This is my opinion. But there are many sources out there that I could have used to back up my response. We were asked what we thought contributed to the School to Prison Pipeline. Nobody took issue with my response #1 and #3 in the tweet. But I was called out and blasted for being “accusitory” with my “lack of compassion” and “lack of empathy” for my second contributing factor. I said that lack of parental involvement in education was a factor, i.e. parents of students getting into trouble at school and thus being suspended are overwhelmingly less involved in their child's education. Is this matter here being contested as a fact? From this moment and the next 20 minutes, I could hardly stay involved in the actual chat at hand.

Ladies and Gentelmen, There has never been a more perfect match for me than my husband Travis Barnes. No, he didn't hijack my laptop. I am truly saying this. The guy is my senior editor. I will let posts fly through the publishing process without him (like this one, because ehe will hate the piece). These unedited version will be many flaws to them, misspellings, un-conjugated, structurally unsound sentences. I am NOT a linguist. He knows the in's and outs of language and is just good at getting his point across. I am a full on Brian Regan stand-up act when I speak or write. So I hand my latest email over to Trav to be edited. He and I watched a lot of Phineus and Ferb when the girls were younger, so I call him my smart-i-nator. He can change my words from Brian Regan to C.S.Lewis...from 4th grade to grad school. I told him today that i was quitting. He makes me feel so dumb so often when he edits my work. He told me to shut up. That if anyone felt dumb it would be h

I found a new group on the Twitters the other day. It was a group of people talking about complex systems. On a deeper dive a ran into this article about  Teams . Yaneer Bar-Nam identifies teams as a largely useful necessity in the future of the world. I thought that his insights were adept, but I could't help but have a bad taste in my mouth when I think about teams, teamwork, or group work. In college, I was always the one pushing my team through and making sure everyone pulled their weight and ultimately finishing up the slackers work and making it look consistent. In grade school we were placed in pods and had group work...again, I would tend to back off of my ideas for the greater good of just moving with the team and getting the job done. As I read through his first post, I kept thinking I don't agree, but then into the thirst post, I started thinking about the only team I ever fully felt worked and worked well together. It was my team. I have said in the past, but I wi

Watch it #oklaed. Our youth are watching you. You are their educators. Some of the things I saw intelligent, witty, and honorable people saying yesterday on social media were not intelligent, witty or honorable. If you have an opinion that's fine. If you want to protest thats fine, but please make sure you are keeping your cool and being smart. Stay classy in all you do. Even if you oppose  and despise that fact America must face for the next four years, keep your head. You are smarter than that and you are charged with making sure the youth is following your example. Say you just became the principal of a new building. You wanted that job because in your opinion, and lets face it many of the people in the neighborhood too, you see the school falling apart and its running down your city. You want to get in there and change up the culture. You get the job only to find your teachers are throwing toilet paper down the hallways and flooding the toilets because they wanted someone els

For all of my readers out there that are red headed and also step children, please know I aim not to offend you. This colloquialism is commonly used and means:   With  red  hair being rare, a  child  born to non  red headed  parents was often assumed to be the  child  of an affair. Thus was treated badly.  Many of you know I work for a charter, a virtual charter at that. I and all enrolled at or working for Epic must therefore be passed over, like the colloquialism suggests, when it comes to anything that matters to anyone. EXCEPT, hello! We matter too. Anyone that attends or works for this school matters like other teachers and students across the state. Just because we are different doesn't mean we are less. Every teacher working for the state of Oklahoma this year just got a survey from the OK Dept of Ed...even Epic teachers. It is a survey that wants to know about teaching methods and all sorts of other things. The first question asks the teacher to choose a county. I chose