When I reflect on my first year of teaching, I often joke that I wish I could go back to those students and apologize to them. Looking back, I didn’t know what I was doing. I probably used many instructional
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Lessons from the Lonely Garden
When I learned we were assigned to work from home in March, my anxiety about the safety of my family lessened, and was immediately replaced with mild panic over whether our school garden* would be left to die. At first
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Having A Support System Important Now More Than Ever
We were all caught off guard by the Coronavirus. When I heard we weren’t heading back to school for the rest of the year, I began to panic. Like many of you, I began asking myself: “What am I going
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Fostering and Developing Classroom Community in Our Brave New World
Teaching is about relationships and community. As Carla Shalaby says in her fabulous book Troublemakers, “It is deeply relational, human work” (p. 172). I’m struggling to hit the right notes as we consider moving to online or distance learning (aka
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Online Learning: Building Relationships in the Digital Age
This week, I began teaching an online class. I have little experience in online education. I started my undergraduate degree when AOL still used instant messaging. Online classes were rare; in fact, I think I took one biology lecture and
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