Expectations
Thankful for the Mountains We Climb
By Guest Blogger on November 22nd, 2016
2016 is an incredible time to be a teacher.
I am grateful for each and every day I get to work alongside the best of the best in education.
While expectations are high, standards seem impossible to meet, and the everyday trials and struggles we face seem endless, this time in our country and our world is truly an incredible time to be a teacher. We have so much more access to research about how and why we learn. We have clearer pictures of our brains and all they can accomplish.
We might be up against some very difficult mountains to climb, but the teachers that have gone before us have never been as well equipped as we are today.
As a teacher I’ve always been fascinated with the brain – how it operates so much more than just our physical bodies. Each and every day, new research is published confirming something I think teachers have always known. Continue reading
“She’s on our team?!” A Lesson from the Last Pick
By Darcey Addo on August 1st, 2014
As a child, I was always the last one picked for team sports. I hated the days in gym class when we had to corral up against the chain link fence like criminals in a police ID line awaiting one of the peer captains to call our name and form teams.
It didn’t matter if we played kickball, whiffle ball, Red Rover, or dodge ball – my name was always the last one called. I couldn’t hit the ball, never made it through the human chain of people, and I wasn’t fast enough to make it to the base without being tagged. Someone from the team who got stuck with me invariably would whine, “She’s on our team?” Each time it was a bit more demoralizing than the time before. Add to my lack of natural aptitude was the fact that I never played an organized team sport outside school, so my opportunities to improve upon my lack of natural ability were non-existent.
Losing Functionality: The Signs of Burnout
By Guest Blogger on June 10th, 2014
Over recent weeks my wife and I have been trying to sell our house. In an effort to have it sell faster, we purchased a dozen of these air-freshener warmer devices that you plug into your wall. If you haven’t used one, the way it works is that you plug it in and slide a glass jar of freshener into the warmer and set the dial to the level of scent that you want (from low to high). After two days of having the fresheners plugged in, I noticed that the smell wasn’t as tropical as it once was. I checked each one and all seemed to be okay. I left the fresheners plugged in for another week until I realized that there was no longer a divine smell of the tropics in the house. Upon inspection, I noticed that the glass bottles were completely empty and needed to be replaced. I had the fresheners on full blast, causing each one to deplete faster than I anticipated. Continue reading