TL;DR: Navigate your self-care through the 3 ships: relationships, leadership, and partnerships. Teachers are more stressed, overwhelmed, and past the point of burnout than ever before. Implementing self-care is something that needs to be done proactively and often. When I first started on my maiden voyage into education, our school had a part-time wellness coordinator. As a stipended paraprofessional, her … Read More
Riding the Waves of Change
TL;DR: Change is inevitable. We should welcome the changes to the way we approach curriculum, instruction, and assessment. Those in the education world should research, ask good questions, and include all the various stakeholders who live and interact with the experiences on the frontlines. We need to make teaching and learning practices more accessible for students and families. The Crashing … Read More
Developing School Culture No Matter Who You Are
TL;DR: When hiring new staff, consider those who move your vision forward. Non-teaching staff members (counselors, librarians, paraprofessionals, custodians, etc.) play a big role in developing school culture. Parents and community members are vital to the building of school culture. My assistant principal is involved in a book study for a book that is based on the premise that you … Read More
How Higher Standards Fit In Our Students’ Journeys
TL;DR: Stop putting much pressure on yourself. Once you have stopped, then you can truly start. The highest standard we can have is meeting students where they are. When it comes to achieving higher standards, we must know what motivates and encourages students, and how they understand as well as process things. As we know, the past year has been … Read More
Criticism: Destructive, Constructive, or Instructive?
TL;DR: There are three main types of criticism: destructive, constructive, and instructive. Destructive criticism tears down; constructive criticism builds together, and it identifies a problem and offers solutions. Instructive criticism adds on to what someone knows. Let me start by sharing four related facts you may not know about me. I am hard-of-hearing. There are times that I literally do … Read More
