About this Blog
a Teach for America science teacher in St. Louis
Donate Now I admit that the text messaging and quick-fire emails in my life has allowed me to adjust to a significantly truncated style of communication in order to get through my days. But this week I was reminded three times the value of taking time to write. Retired and traveling
read more »Donate Now I love DonorsChoose.org. If you’ve never visited the site, please do. It allows anyone to directly impact a classroom of their choosing. Right now, DonorsChoose is running a blogger challenge. One of my projects was chosen by the popular blog TechCrunch to be featured in their challenge. This is certainly very exciting news.…
read more »As I’m packing my bags tonight to fly out for my aunt’s memorial service, I’m drawn to writing once more. This time, amidst my feelings of loss and shock, because I feel lucky. I am so lucky to have people in my life that are connected to me through friendship or shared purpose with what…
read more »Today I understand what it feels like to be part of a statistic. As a teacher, I saw people turn my students into faceless numbers. They talk about them in a way that evokes no passion and calls to mind no important memories. Today I understand what it feels like to be part of a…
read more »I’ve recently been into the glorious land of DonorsChoose for the first time. This is a site where you can write proposals for things one might need in the classroom. When I returned from my summer travels, my digital camera had transformed itself into a paperweight. So, I wrote a proposal. And it got funded!…
read more »Sometimes the best lessons are the ones you have to keep learning at a high cost. Apparently, I have yet to learn to use the save button in its various incarnations in the many programs I use in order to prevent losing my work. It’s nice that at least it happens when I do my…
read more »While trying to spice up a lesson on the metric system and how to make metric conversions using the Metric Shuffle (using the popular song Cupid Shuffle as inspiration), I manufactured these half-original jokes. Q: What do you get when you put ten cards together? A: One dekacards. Q: If I had one million microphones,…
read more »As a science teacher, I feel it is my duty to promote environmentally friendly initiatives. I think this one is great for two reasons: (1) there is less wasted paper, (2) there is less junk-mail in my mailbox. A site called Catalog Choice is trying to help you get rid of all those unwanted catalogs.…
read more »The hardest part about becoming an excellent teacher is constantly feeling like an un-excellent teacher. I don’t need to walk around admitting this to people, but this internal struggle bears down upon my spirit. In all honesty, I will never wake up completely content with the job I’m doing.
read more »I have a great idea for a post. I do. But for some reason I’m avoiding writing. I am busy. I was sick. I have other things to do… I don’t know why I’m not putting my words down. But now you know, I’m alive.
read more »I’ve decided my ultimate classroom would come with anti-theft protection. I can only imagine the pleasure I’d get as that buzzer at the door sounded and some nondescript voice calmly asked, “Please return to the teacher’s desk for further inspection.” Finally putting an end to kids’ petty pilfering would be nice. But the real reason…
read more »On the last day of school, as we were waving goodbye to the kids, I thought about how it seemed anti-climactic. I didn’t have expectations for things to be different, it’s just that they got on the buses and were gone. That was it. The year was over. Done. No frills or brass-band. Teaching ninth…
read more »The below email was forwarded to the entire staff of my school by someone at the school. Someone sent this using school property while at work getting paid for his or her public-sector job.
read more »No matter what happened today, my day was complete. I have such the ear-to-ear grin that I was able to snap a picture of the aforementioned bulletin board in Mr. Analogy’s room. You really need to click on the picture to see what is written under the words “THE ONE.” Oh this is too good.…
read more »If you receive posts from this blog via RssFwd, Facebook, or other feed service, then you likely don’t get the pictures or movies. You will need to click the link at the bottom that says “Source:” in order to visit the original page.
read more »I write about my experiences partly because it is therapeutic and partly because it saves me from sending those annoying update emails to family and friends who don’t want them. Through the magic of internet statistics, I know that quite a few people I don’t know also are reading. As of this week, I can…
read more »Twas the end of exams and all through the halls, not a student was stirring, not one at all. At 10:45, the bells they weren’t ringing, but the buses were here, the students near screaming. And then all at once, in a flood of fury and glee, they sprinted on foot to their yellow-domed party.…
read more »I find myself always wanting to remind myself of something important in the future. I’ve stumbled upon an amazing tool to do just this… FutureMe.org. Basically, you write an email now that gets sent to you in the future. Pure genious. I’ll have to remind myself to use this. Oh wait, I can just write…
read more »After my long weekend (three days) of my long first week (five days), I returned to work today. That’s a good first step. My first surprise today was the number of new students who decided to come to school. Maybe they missed the memo, advertisements on the radio, billboards, letters home, newspaper articles, etc., informing…
read more »Dateline ran an hour special tonight on first-year teachers. Their main character was Monica Groves, a Teach for America teacher in Atlanta. This story was interesting to me for two reasons: I’m starting my first day on Monday!! I will be facing the same challenges of motivating my students toward making significant academic gains. I…
read more »This is the beginning of my blog, obviously, but it’s also the beginning of my two years living in St. Louis and my two years working as a teacher here. I wanted to have the satisfaction of posting first on the site, but I’m going to have to cut it off at that. It’s a…
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