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The traditional seder discusses four children — The Wise Son, The Wicked Son, The Simple One, and The One Who Doesn’t Know How to Ask. Since entering the classroom, I’ve had my own thoughts about each of these children, and their manifestations in my own classroom. (more…)

Last week, during a break from my graduate school education policy classes, I had the opportunity to visit my old school and spend some time with my students from the last two years of my teaching. It was a great day. The excitement and joy of the kids were truly overwhelming.
At the end of the (more…)

Much of my coursework and my thinking over the past eight weeks, since I started graduate school, has focused on leadership. This shouldn’t surprise me, since one of my courses has the word leadership in its title. Still, I find this theme reappearing in my Education Sector Non-Profits class as well as the course on (more…)

Last week, during my first week at Harvard’s Graduate School of Education, I went “course shopping.” This is a time when practically all the professors give 40-minute explanations or previews of their courses so that students can make decisions about their schedule. As someone who thought I had my schedule all figured out at the (more…)

I can still remember a conversation I had with my child psychology professor during my first week of pre-service training for Teaching Fellows in June 2007. She asked me about my plans for teaching, and I responded without hesitation, “I’m only going to do this for two years. Then I’m planning to move on to (more…)

It always seemed strange to me that one could be granted tenure after only three years of teaching. As we all know, most teachers are still in the process of learning and establishing themselves as professionals in the midst of their third year. So, to give someone tenure before this third year has even finished (more…)

This year was surprising in a lot of ways. When the year began, I felt immediately behind and a little out of sync. This was in part because I started the year with 10 more students than the year before, but I wouldn’t put all the blame on that change. It wasn’t just the number of (more…)

I wasn’t surprised when I came back from my end-of-the-year meeting with my principal, and found my students, as per usual, had gone wild in my absence. My few troublemakers never miss an opportunity to, you know, make trouble the second I’m out of the classroom. Still, I was surprised to find the teacher who (more…)

My first year of teaching was a constant struggle. Classroom management was my biggest problem, but I struggled with many of the other fundamentals of teaching. While I often look back at that first year as a personal failure, I know that I ended the year a much more effective teacher than I began. This (more…)

Another round of state testing is behind us, and after years of supervising the tests, I still can’t believe how mentally exhausting it can be just to walk around and watch my students take them. I proctor third-graders designated as English language learners, so I’m watching over some of our grade’s most struggling students. This (more…)