By Sierra Downs The First Year “Genghis Khan was a pretty good guy, actually.” This concluding remark to a student essay written during my first year of teaching has haunted me for years. I had just begun teaching history at the middle school level and had high expectations for my classroom–I wanted to encourage my students to ask big questions, consider lofty ideas, and allow the subject to shape the way that they saw themselves […]
Tag: Professional Growth
The Middle Season: Thriving All the Way Through Change
By Anna Surratt The Middle Season In my last post, I offered encouragement to school leaders endeavoring on change initiatives at the beginning of the school year. While I hope that the encouragement from that post inspired a strong start to the school year, I know very personally that we are in a much different season as we head into the second semester of school. In this Harvard Business Review article, Rosabeth Moss Kanter calls […]
What To Do When You’re Not Loving It
By Meredith Frey The McDonald’s arches beam bright as I drive to school, beautifully framed in front of the rising sunshine. I wonder to myself, like the McDonald’s slogan, what do I do when I am not loving it? What do I do when teaching becomes hard, and I am already thinking about heading home during my drive to work. What do I do when my heart yearns to be back in my cozy bed, […]
A F.E.W. Just Words
By Bing Parks A RAP LESSON My students’ favorite music genre is rap. We will analyze the messages in rap lyrics and discuss the impact of the rapper’s diction. Sometimes the students wonder why we are spending so much time on the lyrics and ask if they could just listen to the song and move on. They argue that they are just words, after all. So, one day I told them I was the best […]
Replace Yourself: The surprising call that K-12 school leaders and fraternity guys have in common
I was in a fraternity in college. Yes, I’m aware that in 2023 that statement comes with a lot of baggage. However, for all the beauty – fellowship, service, and philanthropy – and the real brokenness I witnessed in Greek life, my fraternity was my first, authentic classroom for leadership lessons, and no experience was more instructive than recruitment. The recruitment process, also known as “Rush,” may be the most revealing undertaking of any fraternity […]