As an American now living and teaching in Canada, I’ve had to learn a lot in a short period of time. I’m teaching a self-contained 3rd + 4th grade class this year, which means I’m teaching Social Studies, and the American Education system doesn’t really give us all that much about our neighbors to the […]
Image via Pixabay If you’ve been following my posts this semester, you know I’ve been working on getting my students to look at research in a different light. I wanted to make the process more real world applicable to my students, so I designed a “Teens Take Action” project with my school librarian to give […]
This year in my school district, my colleagues and I have held rich and ongoing conversations about ways to be more culturally and historically responsive in our curriculum and instruction. Within these conversations, we discovered that part of being more responsive in these matters involves valuing our students’ sense of identity in their learning. In […]
“The river’s rhythm runs through my veins. Runs through my people’s veins.” My student unmutes herself in our video conference, identifying these two lines as her favorite in Carole Lindstrom’s We Are Water Protectors. The day before, I had read the book aloud to my students, enjoying the novelty of holding the pages close to […]
Image via Pixabay In my last post, I discussed a new approach I am taking to research writing this year. Instead of the traditional essay, I opted to go with a semester-long exploration of a social justice issue through multiple angles, with a research component being one of those angles. To review, Hope Kasten, my […]
Image via Pixabay If you found yourself clicking on this article, you probably don’t need a lecture on why the traditional “research paper” is problematic and downright painful to teach. My biggest reason for wanting to ditch it? The lack of passion. The lack of passion students have about writing it, the lack of passion […]
The powerful words I think can open a world of inquiry in our classroom especially in the science and math classroom. How can you use predictions and hypothesis in your classroom to generate critical writers? Abigail shows you some moves you can make!
My kids are burning out. Every day for attendance we check in with “how are you feeling” using a scale from the “how are you on a scale of” meme and moods are clearly trending down. I’m right there with them. I’m a solid 5 on this one today. My first instinct is usually “scrap […]
“Don’t forget to cast your ballot!” “Vote!” We just passed the most important time of this year: election day. According to the New York Times, this year’s election and candidates led to heavy, and record-breaking, voter turnout, and there were many measures in place to ensure ballots were counted in time. We’ve had crazy high […]
With all the conversation and debate around “student indoctrination” and political beliefs of educators, after weeks of contemplation, I decided to put my experience out into the world to help people navigate their personal and political beliefs in the context of writing instruction. There is a certain level of vulnerability that comes with addressing our […]
