Start with a Question

While I am a fierce advocate for free speech online, I'm also an educator who works every day in my own school community – and by writing on this blog – to spread awareness among students and teachers about how to practice positive and helpful digital citizenship online. Since my passion and my work bring me back to cyberbullying quite often, it has become clear that certain groups of young people are targeted more often than others. 52% of LGBTQ youth between the ages of 11 and 22 reported having been the targets of cyberbullying several times ( Blumenfeld and Cooper, 2012 ) 55.5% of LGBTQ students across the United States felt unsafe at school based on their sexual identity ( GLSEN, National School Climate Survey, 2015 ) This data makes it clear that our students who identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning (LGBTQ) youth are particularly vulnerable to bullying, discrimination, and abuse. The way we use digital tools to communicate also makes them vul...

It is not uncommon for educators to bristle a bit when asked whether they engage students in "authentic" learning. Without providing more context for the term, some might think they are being accused of developing and delivering lessons that are not genuine, or are fake. In education, authenticity means much more than genuine over fake. According to the Buck Institute for Education : In education, the concept has to do with how “real-world” the learning or the task is. Authenticity increases student motivation and learning. A project can be authentic in several ways, often in combination. It can have an authentic context, such as when students solve problems like those faced by people in the world outside of school (e.g., entrepreneurs developing a business plan, engineers designing a bridge, or advisors to the President recommending policy). It can involve the use of real-world processes, tasks and tools, and performance standards, such as when students plan an experimenta...

Throughout the month of August, shiny brand new teachers have been preparing their classrooms, reviewing curriculum, planning welcome activities, and tossing and turning the night before that big day. (OK, let's be honest, veteran teachers are doing these things too. But first year teachers' hearts are beating a little faster.) Everyone wants these newbies to be successful: the administrators and colleagues who were on their hiring committees, the students who enter their classrooms, the parents of those young learners, and all of us who want them to breathe new life into our education system. Where We Are Sadly, recent research shows that new teacher retention is poor. Nashville, Tennessee l oses half of its new teachers within 3 to 5 years . Even worse, in Oakland, California schools 70% of new teachers leave within 5 years . The top recommendation for retaining these teachers is to build meaningful and sustainable mentorships . Most schools and districts have mentor progr...

This article from the Atlantic appeared multiple times in my Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter feeds last week. The author is a professor of psychology and experienced researcher with a focus on generational differences. Her title claims that smartphones are destroying the post-Millennial generation. This paragraph is perhaps the clincher: "Even when a seismic event—a war, a technological leap, a free concert in the mud—plays an outsize role in shaping a group of young people, no single factor ever defines a generation. Parenting styles continue to change, as do school curricula and culture, and these things matter. But the twin rise of the smartphone and social media has caused an earthquake of a magnitude we’ve not seen in a very long time, if ever. There is compelling evidence that the devices we’ve placed in young people’s hands are having profound effects on their lives—and making them seriously unhappy." My concern is that the author, although certainly qualifi...

Each afternoon during the last school year, my daughter's 2nd grade teacher sent a few cell phone photos and a 2-3 sentence explanation of what they showed. It probably took her no more than 5 minutes to snap the shots of her students, type up the words, and hit send. About once per week I would dash off a few sentences in response thanking her for the photos or letting her know what my daughter had said about school that day. These seemingly mundane quick interactions helped me build an everyday relationship with my child's teacher. The benefits of building that relationship went far beyond a teacher fulfilling her contractual obligations to communicate student progress. There are 5 specific scenarios that come to mind in which her quick photos and messages created a lasting benefit for my daughter and for my husband and I as her parents: It made it easier and more natural for me too reach out to her one night early in the year when my daughter left her homework at schoo...

"I use the term beautiful work  broadly: ...Always, in all subjects, there is a quest in my classroom for beauty, for quality, and we critique all that we do for its level of care, craftsmanship, and value." - Ron Berger quoted from Buck Institute Recently a colleague of mine, a grade 7/8 math teacher, emailed me with his reflections from reading a book he borrowed from the bookshelf in my office. After a discussion about homework quality and quantity with his colleagues during the final professional learning day of the school year, he stopped by my office to share his thoughts about what makes student work worthwhile. I handed him An Ethic Of Excellence by Ron Berger and encouraged him to read it and dig a little deeper into those thoughts. About a month and a half into summer, he emailed me with his thoughts: "Beautiful work is the idea that schoolwork is about the process of producing something beautiful. In that process learners learn the lesson. It i...

Often when administrators are asked about the current state of education technology in their school or district, they make declarative statements: We are 1-to-1. We use Google Classroom. We adopted Microsoft 365. We have a makerspace. I've learned that those are unfinished statements. The sentiment they express is not the vision or leadership that educators and learners need. I'm shifting my perspective. Here's why. The "roll-out" of new devices or tools is often the first edtech goal an administrator has for her district, but it should not – it cannot – be the last. A roll-out is all about strategy and planning. Once equipment, software, and programs are in place, the work has just begun. How will student learning be affected? The statements above should look more like these: We are working toward... We are excited about... Our plan is to... We have started to... Each of these 4 statements should be finished with phrases that include the wo...