Co-written with guest bloggers Elizabeth Buchmann and Christina Bustos Tonight, we expect to hear whether our district will continue requiring masks in school or make them optional. The statewide mask mandate in K-12 schools has been revoked. Tonight we speak
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Lately I have been considering the term “learning platform.” If you are a teacher, you have likely been expected to utilize multiple learning platforms over the past decade. If you have been avoiding digital learning platforms, then you certainly have
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I try to remember to look at the small pupil of the laptop camera instead of the grid of faceless names before me as I smile, wave and say hello. I am collaborating with a colleague to teach Hamlet to
Read MoreWell, folks. We have almost made it to the end of this never-seen-before type of semester. (I am not going to use the “u” word.) As I sit at home awaiting COVID test results* and continuing to hold WebEx sessions
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For the first time ever in my career, you can walk into my classroom almost any time these days and it is silent, students sitting facing forward in their desks. District policy dictates that the desks face the front of the
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If you have been reading Stories from School Arizona (this blog), you probably sense that, as challenging as “emergency” teaching and learning was in the spring (to steal a term from Fisher, Frey and Hattie), the scene in schools this
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Since June, here is what I have seen in my dining room: (To the left in this frame, you will notice the sewing machine I took out thinking I would “remember” how to sew and make masks. Since June, I
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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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Since Arizona closed schools March 16, like my Stories from School colleagues and many other people around the world, I have experienced alternating episodes of hope, tears, escapism, distress, mental dispersal, zen, joy,
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In the light of COVID-19 concerns, the familiar juxtaposition of professional athletes’ salaries to teacher pay takes on a new context. Why is every public event I can think of cancelled in every community I know, while many districts will
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