As we move to a new decade, we must leave behind the old yellow-stained duplicated (ditto) workbooks and the reading textbook with four comprehension questions and one synthesis question. School competition is a fact of life, and if your high school produces several scholars that earn ACT scores that are in the 30s, your […]

My evaluator walked into the classroom and quietly took a seat in the back of the classroom. I was just gathering the paperwork for my small reading group.  I stood in front of the six students and began teaching.  The evaluator walked across the room and leaned while looking at the board.  She was looking […]

Four teachers met in a circle discussing the direction of the reading lab.  For three months, I had created lessons for the reading lab classes, using the same formula from the previous year.  Now, the 7th and 8th-grade teachers, along with the teacher leader, who is also a language arts teacher, were brainstorming how the […]

Have you ever driven to a new city without a GPS or map?  I would not suggest teaching without a “roadmap” or a lesson plan.  Recently, I was traveling three hours away, and I was riding with one of my sorority sisters, Jawana.  She is a supervisor of a satellite children’s mental facility, where she […]

On Fridays, I would check my students’ usage on the online reading program MindPlay.  Students were expected to complete two hours per week on the program.  I quickly saw that students were not completing the mandatory hours per week.  Every day, I used a timer, walked around the classroom, and watched students on GoGuardian (an […]

The bell would ring, and I would dismiss students without a clue if they understood the lesson.  I would stand in front of the class and teach or lecture most of the fifty minutes, and when the bell rang, I would say, “You’re dismissed.”  I was clueless if the students gained the information I wanted […]