It was 2:45 pm on March 13 when I received the news that I would be immediately transitioning to distance learning starting Monday.  There was no time to say goodbye to my students or prepare them for the next few months.  I spent the weekend scrambling to figure out how to modify my instruction and, for me, how to keep teaching SEL. SEL stands for social and emotional learning. It’s the process through which students learn to understand and manage their thoughts and emotions, set and create action steps to achieve goals, learn to show empathy for others and self-compassi ..read more

         More teachers are having to incorporate technology into their classrooms.  Digital notebooks and Digital readings are a great way to introduce the topic and have students review but they can present some challenges.  Here are the five most frequently asked question I receive from teachers using these lessons. #1: Moving the pieces and writing on the slides     The main question I get asked is how to drag the pieces and write in the text boxes.  In order to do this you need to be in edit mode.   If you are in presentation ..read more

         Google is a huge name in education for many reasons.  While many schools are using Google Apps for Education and having their LMS be Google Classroom, it is not the only LMS out there.  LMS stands for learning management system.  It's the way you assign tasks to your students. I will take you through the steps of sharing your digital lessons from your Google Drive to some of the top LMS sites out there. * Google Drive to Google Classroom - Although these both start with the word Google, they are not the same thing.  Google Drive is like your giant folder.  It is where y ..read more

     My nephew's school district is shut down for two weeks due a COVID-19 virus outbreak that affected four of the schools in the district and my sister's school just followed.  Their school districts have decided to do e-learning for the next two weeks while they deep clean all of the schools. E-learning is a method designed to deliver the education online.  If your school is thinking about doing e-learning there are some logistics that need to be thought through. What platform will be used? How will students learn the information? How will students practice the information? How will you che ..read more

     A couple years ago I went on a journey to discover myself again.  I was going through a major life change and I had lost track of who I was, what made me happy, what I was passionate about, and what I wanted out of life.  While on this journey I read many books on self improvement, law of attraction, and teaching philosophies.  One book that really stood out was the Success Principals by Jack Canfield.  I started to incorporate some of his principals into my morning routine on school days and I have seen a drastic change.  I am happier at work, my days are filled with more positivity, a ..read more

     Have you ever done whole class direct instruction with a presentation like Google slides or powerpoint?  Have you noticed that some students finish really fast with writing down the information from the slide while others take a lot longer.  It's hard to wait for every student to finish writing down the information before moving on because the ones that finished early are now trying to entertain themselves.  If you are lucky they are just drawing pictures on their notes.  However, sometimes they decide to see who can make a field goal with paper footballs or throw objects across the ro ..read more

         Using videos as a way to teach instruction is nothing new.  Teachers have been teaching students through videos for a long time.   With new technology and more students having access to technology at home, now is the perfect time to start using videos in a more engaging way and not just a filler for time.  There is a movement that was started around 2011-2012 called flipped learning.  The idea is that students learn the information on their own time and at their own pace through watching a video and class time is spent now on reinforcing and applying the concept.  I jumped on board th ..read more

        We all know how important feedback is for our students.  Feedback that describes what a student is doing well and the changes they need to make help them learn and improve.  However, feedback is not just for our students.  Teachers can benefit from it as well.    Usually, the only feedback we receive of our teaching comes from our administrators who drop in for a minutes every once in a while or they might stay to see one lesson that we spent hours crafting to show off our best self.  But this is not real feedback.  They don't see the real us.   If you want honest feedback about ho ..read more