Avenue4Learning

I’m a little disturbed by some behavior that I’ve seen amongst my learning network lately. I’ll be the first to admit that I can be a hot head and jump into discussions passionately… with little thinking first. That’s a character flaw I work very diligently to turn around. My sense of dismay, though, comes from [...]

That’s what it’s coming down to… class wars in our schools. With the budget cuts at the federal, state, and local levels, politicians are creating class wars in education. Our ‘illustrious’ Secretary of Education states that we in public education will have to learn to do more with less funding. This is tagged as “The [...]

I was so fortunate to facilitate a conversation at EduCon 2.3 with Kyle Pace, Yoon Soo Lim, and Elizabeth Peterson! We are four very passionate educators, and talking about Cultivating Connections through Arts Integration is obviously something about which the four of us are deeply passionate. We wrote a reflection, along with Andrew Garcia (who [...]

I’ve been thinking a lot since the Amy Chua, aka Tiger Mom, posts and  reaction articles exploded last week, including Michelle Rhee’s own response. Mostly, I’ve been trying to wrap my brain around what people consider necessary skills or necessary knowledge versus sheer talent. So, what exactly do we expect kids to know and be [...]

As a teacher and parent, I’m constantly reminded that children learn at different rates. Sometimes, it’s an issue of what is developmentally appropriate and, other times, it’s about their readiness. For some kids, there are occasions when they simply are not ready to learn something new. It might be due to some current event in [...]

As I sit and ponder what to write about education reform for National Blogging for Real Education Reform, I think back to the numerous posts I’ve written the last few years… and I don’t want to rehash the same things over and over again.  Here’s what I do want: I want parents, children, and actual [...]

I love the natural curiosity of children. Today, my nephew (who is 5 and in kindergarten) looked at his dad (my little brother), and asked him about a song they had heard this morning in church. He said, “Daddy… will you teach it to me?” He knew the words already, but he wanted to learn [...]

For the record, I’m a HUGE advocate of leveraging social media for professional development and making connections with other educators. The network that I’ve built over the last few years is so very important to me, both professionally and personally. But the keyword in that last sentence is “BUILT.” I’ve spent time building a network [...]

Did you know that there are technically only two types of voices? a child’s voice (aka unchanged) a changed voice– subdivided into male and female changed voices Voice changes start after puberty. If you’ve ever noticed the growth spurt of a child, you’ll understand why the voice change seems so awkward for most boys and [...]

I saw someone tweet this quote earlier this evening. It was attributed it to Marala Scott: “May you realize the power you have over your own life and make changes with that in mind.” As I sat around thinking about what kind of post to write for today, I kept thinking of the charge Tom [...]