Today, I told fifth graders in my tech class that their homeroom teacher (Ms. Flynn) decided she wanted to be greedy. Normally very kind and happy, Ms. Flynn had changed overnight into a mean, grumpy tyrant. She was going to start taking Flynn Bucks (her positive reward system) away from the students. She was going […]
50 Things I’ve Learned about Teaching
By Lisa on January 31, 2013 | 1 Response
I have been working in education for the past eight years, and I look back and see how I’ve developed my own (very strong) beliefs about teaching and learning. Many of these have been inspired by things I’ve learned through ed-tech conferences, teaching my own classes, reading, and being surrounded by great teachers on Twitter. […]
Worksheets & Dinner: An Analogy
By Lisa on December 24, 2012 | Leave a response
I have been having several discussions with my colleagues about the methodologies seen in many schools. While I was busily making preparations for dinner today, a great analogy came into my head. Why do I work so hard to prepare a lovely, nutritiously balanced meal for my family? Because I care. The same can be […]
Media Center – My Classroom
By Lisa on August 30, 2012 | Leave a response
Ideally, I’d have a 1:1 laptop program at my school, but we did just move, update, and double the size of our former computer lab. The new location had to have major cleaning, painting, and electrical work done to it in order to house it all. This former art room is a second-story corner room, […]
Today was a good day. I started teaching at 8:00am, and I saw half of the 5th grade class for 50 minutes. Today, we created Glogster posters. The students had to become residents of the original thirteen colonies and convince others not to follow or participate in the Stamp Act of 1765. My requirements were […]
Twitter as Professional Development
By Lisa on March 12, 2012 | Leave a response
I’ve had a user account on Twitter for several years (since 2009), but it wasn’t until December of 2011 that I started actively reading and tweeting. I think what got me back onto Twitter was the DreamForce (#DF11) cloud conference I attended in August. The genius CEO of Salesforce, Marc Benioff, discussed the importance of […]
2nd Graders & Friendly Letters
I have to admit that our current second graders are wonderful. They follow directions, they are eager to learn, and they are simply a bunch of sweet kids. I was a little leery about introducing email to these young scholars, but after I finished the lesson, I realized I had nothing to worry about. We […]
My First EdCamp
By Lisa on February 27, 2012 | 3 Responses
My very good friend Shyra and I decided we’d trek ourselves down to CSUFresno to attend our first EdCamp. EdCampCV was headed by Alice Keeler (@alicekeeler) on February 25, 2012. For those of you who don’t know what EdCamp is, there’s a great video on the EdCampCV website that explains it. EdCamp is not your […]
EdTech Professional Development
Like many private schools, our school has one teacher for each grade level. Collaboration between teachers of the same grades is difficult, if not impossible for most of us; thus, professional development becomes an important part of our collaboration, learning, and growth. When you mention professional development to people, most people’s eyes will glaze over, […]
For the past few years, I have been doing a very special project with the eighth graders at our school. It covers curriculum in religion, social studies, language arts, science, and math – and it even uses technology throughout the lesson. For those in non-parochial schools, the religious aspect can be left out of it […]