Category: schoolreform
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Teaching Local History
These are my notes from Liz Davis’ presentation “Local History: Universal Truths – Exploring and enriching Hometowns at the March 24, 2025 NCMLE ‘Middle School Matters’ Conference. MY THOUGHT AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Liz teaches at Pollard Middle School in Chatham County Schools Liz grew up in Wilmington and knew very little about…
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Road to Awesome
These are my notes from Darrin Peppard’s keynote at the March 24, 2025 NCMLE ‘Middle School Matters’ Conference. MY THOUGHT AND REFLECTIONS ARE IN ALL CAPS. Darrin’s books include: “The Road to Awesome: The Journey of a Leader”: roadtoawesome.net and roadtoawesome.net/books Darrin’s most recent book with Katie Kinder is “Culture First Classrooms: Leadership, Relationships, and…
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Understanding Rising Populism, Warfare and Authoritarianism
We should not only be teaching “traditional courses” like history and social studies in our U.S. schools today, we should be explicitly studying warfare and the multitude of ways nation states as well as non-state actors wage war with each other across at least five dimensions: In extra-terrestrial space, in cyberspace, in the air, on…
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Reflections on PD Hackathon 2023
Today I’ve had an opportunity to participate, facilitate, and volunteer as a judge in our fall 2023 Hackathon at our school, Providence Day School of Charlotte, North Carolina. This is the second time I’ve been able to be part of the Hackathon, and in this post I’d like to reflect a little about some of…
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15 Things I Love About My Classroom (and teaching situation!)
I’ve been teaching and working in education since 1995. The past 3 years, as I’ve served as a media literacy teacher, instructional coach for our teachers, and (last year) an introductory Spanish teacher have been some of my best ever. Yesterday afternoon and evening, I recorded and edited a 17 minute video I titled, “15…
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Political Philosophy and Media Literacy Cornerstones
Propaganda and disinformation can have real, destructive effects in society and government. That is one of many lessons we can draw from the past week in Washington D.C., when we saw large numbers of protesters storm the United States Capitol building on January 6, 2021, in a riot which resulted in deaths, injuries, as well…
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OLTI – The Oklahoma Learning Technology Initiative
Today’s decision by the Oklahoma State School Board to keep public K-12 schools closed for the remainder of the 2019-20 academic year will have both short term and long term repercussions for students and families in our state. Virtually overnight (pun intended) all 500+ public school districts in our state are now required to move…
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Professional Development and Identity
The best professional development experiences are wonderful because they remind us of who we are: They affirm and support our evolving senses of identity in a complex world filled with mixed messages and lots of noise. In this post, I’d like to reflect briefly on professional development and identity. “The October 2019 #CUDenverLSI Design team…