The Pyre

Ekphrasis This poem was inspired by The Garden of Earthly Delights and day six of NaPoWritMo . I pick up the saw, fashioned to cut bark and wood, not flesh and bone. Yet it slices through my flesh and cleaves by bone-- until finally the scorched foot is extinguished. I pause for relief. But tendrils of flame worm into me, wriggling through my veins, squirming into my organs. My bones contort; my fevered brain recoils. I again pick up the saw.

Yesterday, Kansas Governor Laura Kelly , alongside Commissioner of Education Randy Watson and Kansas NEA President Mark Farr , announced that school buildings would be shut down for the rest of the school year , but learning would continue.  Like many educators, I was equally parts shocked and sad. Now that I've had some time to process the announcement, I am looking forward to hearing from the KSDE Continuous Learning Taskforce of educators , including Olathe's John Allison and Amy Hillman . This is an opportunity for us all to rethink what learning looks like in Kansas. It's a time of great possibility--one in which our most vulnerable students must be in the front of our minds. Today, rethinking what learning and teaching looks like for me as an educator in ways I have never done before isn't enough. I've always been a "doer" in my professional life so my first step into this uncharted territory is this amateur-style youtube video . It's not fan

KTOY 2018 Team at Newman University In a district, seven-seat Dodge Caravan, I began my KTOY 2018 Team adventure this week. Our team had scheduled most of our college and district visits, so it was time to meet face-to-face to nail down our collaborative message and delegate duties on the very big list of to-dos. Each team member brought something amazing to the table, and our planning session ended with success. Gil secured us the perfect room on the Newman University campus. Sam set our direction with a detailed agenda. Jamie and Sarah provided us all of their scheduling prowess. Jennifer kept us warm with snazzy jackets from her PTO, as well as her compassion for others. Megan gave us all of the #enthusiasm any team would ever need. Brad inspired us with our "Mission: Possible" theme. We all marveled at how close we felt with each other, despite the fact that most of us had only met one time before.  We all appreciated how our individual talents naturally dovetailed

Developing lifelong reading habits in my students has always been a goal of mine. Along the way, other educators have inspired me with their reflections on evoking lifelong reading habits, including Donalyn Miller. I read Reading in the Wild a few years ago, but what I learned from this book continues to inform my teaching today. Shortly after reading this book, I collaborated with a colleague to create a framework for developing lifelong reading habits, which I shared in this blog post . I've been honing this framework every year since its inception. I'm sure I'll never be completely satisfied, but I hope that my efforts will pay off for my students for years to come. This quarter, my students and I have been making reading goals and monitoring our progress towards those goals. While readers make all kinds of reading goals, I started simple: I asked my students to make reading goals based on pages read by mid-November and the end of the semester. Then, they went back

I'm not gonna lie to you: the day Jessica Skoglund came up to me and said, "Let's have our students make collaborative documentaries," I was more than skeptical. But if you know Jessica Skoglund, you know that she makes amazing things happen by sheer force of will. And so, I began my first deep dive into  PBL  in the summer of 2017. Throughout the summer months, members of my PLC and I collaborated to bring together students' summer reading , current events in the state, and even a documentary from our own professional development. Most importantly, we wanted to provide students an opportunity to sharpen their skills and share their thoughts on education to an authentic audience. Thus, A Whole New School was born! Ready . . . Our first challenge was making sure students had the opportunity to build their background knowledge and skill sets required to pull off mini-documentaries. Our team felt well-equipped to do this in many areas--but we lacked th

Why read? As a high school English teacher, teaching students WHY to read is just as important as HOW to read. Inspired by Penny Kittle and Kelly Gallagher , I dedicate class time to developing lifelong reading habits in class. The first habit is seeking out and self-selecting reading material. One of the most important things I can do to support this habit is model it, so I show students how I use GoodReads as a method for finding books. I use this website (or app on my phone) nearly every week. If somebody I know suggests a book that sounds interesting, I add that book to my To-Read shelf on GoodReads. I currently have 70 books on this shelf, so when I retire, I have LOTS of options for reading material! In fact, while students were using GoodReads in class, I noticed a few of them rated This is Where It Ends   by Marieke Nikamp    highly. As I asked them about the book, it captured my attention, so now, this book is on my To-Read shelf! Some students don't like Good

What did I learn? As my students learned about how to research their problem, I learned a great deal about teaching research skills. Teaching research is hard. Students link it's a linear process where people start with a question and then they find sources that will give them the answer. Instead, it's an incessantly circular process where sources give different perspectives and sometimes even more questions. On top of that, good teaching means making sure students question sources, especially those on the Internet. In the past, I've used CARRDS to teach students about assessing the accuracy of internet sources. The steps of the acronym are great, but it does seem a little repetitive and long. This year, I used CRAP instead, and I liked being able to say "Don't use CRAPpy sources." More importantly, the acronym is shorter and simpler. Most importantly, I learned that I need to model HOW to assess sources with the CRAP rubric, as well as provide students