Random Thoughts
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Getting Personal – A Story of Life Meets Classroom
My mom died last week. I had just finished story time with my son and was prepping a slow cooker lasagna for tomorrow’s dinner when I got the first call. 8:30 pm on a Tuesday, and it was Uncle Bill calling. There had been some kind of accident at work and she was bleeding internally.…
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Students Will Never Understand Their Place
If you listen to my podcast, you’ve probably heard that I am going to a new school this year, and in my area, students are back on campus today. I have been lucky enough in my 10 or so years teaching to have some wonderful students. My last group of students at the high school…
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My Time on A Word In Progress
After I asked him to be on my show (Episode 19), Derek Rhodenizer asked me to be on his show, A Word In Progress. This show is all about talking in absurd detail about specific words that educators throw around, but often we don’t have a solid definition of what those words really mean. Ultimately,…
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Disconnected Day
Anyone who know me, knows I’m a technophile. I’m an instructional technology coach, a constant Twitter user, and podcaster. I Snapchat most of my life, text friends, have multiple active Voxer groups, and take tons of pictures of my son. My phone is in my hand constantly. Last week, I popped into my friend’s office…
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My Time on the Personal Playlist Podcast
I had the amazing honor of being asked to be on Noa Daniel’s Personal Playlist Podcast (BTW, notice I didn’t say “recently”. Because this post is 4 months past due. Because I’m awful). While Noa is a phenomenal and inspiring educator (if you doubt me, check out Episode 23 of my show with her), her…
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I’m Done Holding My Tongue In Class
It only seems fair to start this post with an admission. I am a gun owner. In the past, I was even a member of the NRA. I was born in Georgia, have family that still lives on hunt-able land there, have gone hunting myself. I’ve made the arguments myself that people having guns makes us…
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I Know Just Enough To Fake It
I am an expert in nothing. Popular advice about building an online presence, a blog, a podcast, or even a twitter account, is to make sure you don’t present yourself as an expert in everything. I have that part down. The problem is, I don’t hit the second part of that advice, which is to…
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VoicEd Gratitude Exchange and Holiday Special
Our VoicEd Family is celebrating the holidays by doing a gift exchange, and we are giving the gift of thanks! No money, no gadgets or gizmos, just a chance to tell another VoicEd creator how great they are. 14 VoicEd Creators signed up for a name exchange, and today, names were assigned. From December 18th…
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Las Vegas Thoughts – Change We Can Make
58 people are dead in another of a myriad of senseless attacks on innocent people. And like every other time this has happened, we are all in an uproar. Gun control 2nd Amendment Freedoms Democrats Republicans Prayer Action It just goes on, and on. In circles. Sure, we want change. Most people (I would argue)…
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High School Football Fan – A Troll or a Patriot?
It’s the Friday Night Lights time of year, and among many of the “other duties as assigned” for me is being at the games to monitor students. I have the distinct honor of standing on the track and spending 3+ hours staring up at the student section of our stadium to make sure they’re not…
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The Connected Educator Back-to-School Blues
Most teachers lament returning to work. While parents are ready for their little darlings to stop harassing them every hour of every day about going to the pool or theme parks or bowling or anything but sitting on the couch so we can work, teachers have the opposite. Our summer break is over, we have…
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Lamenting the Loss of Audio
After Jennie Magiera talked so passionately during her ISTE Keynote about telling our students’ stories, and our true stories, I decided that I would make it my mission this year to do exactly that. I would wipe away all pretense from my blog, remove the glossy coating, and just be real. In the effort of…
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Teacher Appreciation Week – Just Say Thanks
As most of you should be aware, this week has been Teacher Appreciation Week. While I appreciate the nice little gifts that our administration gets us (we got new laptop sleeves this year) and the determination of PTSO and administration to make us all fat (doughnuts, bagels, and Honey Buns, oh my), these are not…
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Audiobooks: Are They Really Reading?
Despite what the title may imply, this post simply will not answer that question, partly because I don’t actually have an answer and mostly because I’m too lazy to research the answer in any way. I have had friends tell me before that they have “read that book,” and then proceed to talk about the…
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Time Travel – Or – How to Make a Blog Post with Next to no Effort
So I really don’t know what the long term purpose of this blog will be, but for today I hope to make some people laugh. I was digging around my stuff and stumbled across this post that I wrote a few years ago and laughed at it, so I thought I’d share it with all…
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New and Used Blog
Recently, I started submitting some of my work to literary agents, and it is a long, tiring, stressful process that I will most likely delve deeper into in future blog posts. For the purposes of this post, suffice-it to say that it has made me feel a little down. I realized that part of why…