By: Michael Matera, 6th grade Social Studies Teacher at University School of Milwaukee, Author of "Explore Like A Pirate" #XPlap and host of #WellPlayed In this short video I explore the power of gratitude. At first I thought I would talk about being grateful for things like my daughter or my family… But then I thought of taking it from a different angle. Have a listen and watch all the way to the end for some questions for you to share you thoughts on. Thank you for being part of my PLN and for watching, sharing, and subscribing. -Michael Mater
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By: DianaLyn Perkins, AKA "PerkyScience"- 10th year Middle School Science Teacher from Texas This year I began my 10th year as an educator and my first year as a digital learning coach. I have had 3 different positions now all in the same district. As I reflect on the ride, there are so many things I am thankful for. My first role as an educator was as a special education science teacher. I entered the education world as an alternative certification educator. I had been a physical science TA for 4 years in college, but that was so many years ago. I still remember two days before the kids were to come in sitting in front of my computer wondering what I was going to do with them. Just as the panic was really starting to settle in, my mentor, Sharon Pyburn, came in, walked me off my cliff and helped me plan my first lesson. She was so supportive doing all she could to help me get the resources I needed. She made a difference for me and for my kids. I co-taught with many different educators and gained valuable lessons from each one of them, but Angie Mahalic became not only a great co-teacher but also a valued friend. In addition, when I was going for my Master’s degree she was so open to every idea I brought to her, no matter how challenging or involved it was. My second role was as a 6th and 7th-grade science teacher where I taught both GenEd and GT learners. There, my principal, Laura Springer made such a difference. She gave me room to grow and explore new ways of doing things from competitions to gamification and a number of things in between. In addition, she gave me the best example of loving your learners where ever they are that I have ever been blessed to see. She knows the names of every kid in her middle school and gives hugs out daily, to both learners and educators. To read more, please visit the eduperks website hereBy: Carol McLaughlin, 25 year teaching veteran in the 2nd grade classroom from Birmingham, AL. I’ve always felt a little odd. A lone wolf. I usually don’t mind, but you rarely grow in isolation. You need others to encourage you. To push you. To inspire you. I had no idea I needed a Twitter PLN. I didn’t even know what a PLN was until 8 years ago around this time actually. I was in the last PD session before we were out for Thanksgiving holidays. To say we were all ready to go was an understatement. The PD was edcamp style and the last session was entitled, “Building a PLN.” I went to it because the others were all on academics areas and I wanted to learn something totally different. However, I had no idea this session was about to change me in so many ways. I went to the session and was introduced to Twitter. We all joined and I sent out my first tweet. I enjoyed the session but I wasn’t sure if I was going to continue using it. BUT…I was intrigued enough to give it a try. My mom had recently had knee surgery so we all had to stay the living room most of the holiday since she was still recovering. We all sat around watching holiday movies and I thought it would be a good time to explore Twitter. I have never stopped exploring Twitter from that time. I found a new idea, quote, or interesting educator every time I signed on the site. I lurked for a LONG time but finally started asking questions and interacting with other educators. I was amazed those on Twitter answered me back! I slowly started sharing a few things. I was even more amazed that other teachers started asking me questions about things I was doing in my classroom. It validated so many things I believed about education and teaching. To read more, link to Carol's blog HEREGratitude & Kindness: Appreciating & Creating a Colossal Dose Of Sunshine One Ripple at a Time11/9/2018 By: Jennifer Quattrucci, 2nd Grade Teacher, Inner City Providence, RI, #MommyTeacherFasionista I am overwhelmed with gratitude for the many blessings and opportunities I have had these past couple of months. As many of you know, I’ve taken on a new endeavor and after teaching kindergarten for 22 years, I am now an extremely grateful brand new second grade teacher. I’m in the same school so some of my students are the wonderful children I had in kindergarten two years ago. I have an energetic, inquisitive and enthusiastic group of seven and eight year olds in the inner city of Providence, Rhode Island. My second graders are always eager to come to school and love to read, write and problem solve in such thoughtful and creative ways. My students are so appreciative of each other and all we do every day. They are culturally diverse and enjoy sharing their own unique experiences with the class. We learn from each other. My school is working hard to build community among families and staff and we have a safe, respectful environment. I am grateful to be a part of the Harry Kizirian Community. Also as many of you know, I have been working hard to create special moments and experiences for my students by creating DonorsChoose projects and have been extremely fortunate to receive help from so many generous people. One that has had an enormous impact on my students is our Kindness Matters project. It involved nine different beautiful books that all carry a rich message of extending kindness towards all and was funded by Jen Corneau on behalf of Mobile Giving Page and Steve Harper, of Austin, Texas. My project goal was to be able to add books to our classroom library that were about kindness, acceptance and making the world a better place. I also wanted to use these books as part of carefully selected activities that would extend the messages within each book. Here are a few special moments that happened as a result of the project. To Read More, visit Jennifer's WebsiteBy: Suzy Lolley, Microsoft Innovative Educator Expert, Cherokee County School District, Georgia Social media can really skew our view of ourselves. I don’t know about you, but the more I see people’s perfect families, perfect houses, and perfect lives, it makes me feel like there’s something wrong with me. It can make my gratitude meter run a little low. However, in this month of gratitude, I want to be very intentional to be thankful for the imperfect. Three Ways I’m Still Grateful for the ImperfectSpecifically in teaching, when you have a whirling dervish of thirty students or more, there will be imperfect moments. Plenty of them. It’s time, as we celebrate Thanksgiving, to be thankful for those classroom days that don’t always work out as they should. Or the things that seem to be imperfect expectations placed upon us. The tasks that we vow we wouldn’t put on people if we were in charge. If we take time to be conscious of what the blessings behind the imperfections are, we won’t have to yearn for someone else’s happy social media life; we might just have a happier life ourselves. Imperfection #1: Others’ ExpectationsIt wasn’t the worst part of teaching, but having to write lesson plans wasn’t the best part either. When I taught at my most recent high school, we had to write very detailed lesson plans. I could get so stressed out trying to write exactly the perfect plan in case of observation and adding all the ways I was going to differentiate or substitute or color code. You get the drift. But here’s the deal and the blessings in that imperfect expectation. Now I can teach anywhere. Ask me to go to a conference and I can quickly write at least a rough draft of my plan in no time. Ask me even to teach at church, and my lesson is ready to go. I now can form an outline in my head, and lesson planning for any situation is much quicker. As a tech coach, I’m able to quickly direct teachers in their own lesson planning to add the right technology application or lesson hook or check for understanding to their lessons. If I hadn’t worked so hard in my own lesson planning, which was definitely imperfect, I would never have been able to do any of what I can do now. TO READ MORE, VISIT SUZY'S WEBSITEBy: Josh Stock, 6th grade teacher in Olathe, Kansas and host of the Kansas Moonshot Podcast. Every year hundreds of people attempt to climb 29,035 feet to the highest point in the world, the summit of Mt. Everest and every year hundreds of sherpa guides, porters and yaks make sacrifices to get them there. Without their help, most wouldn’t make it to the top alive, and many of them don’t come back. The life of a sherpa and porter comes with great risks. Most climb to provide for their families. My classes talk about all of this while we read the novel Peak by Roland Smith. At one point in the book the main character, Peak is being filmed for a documentary and the film crew doesn’t want the sherpas, porters and yaks interrupting the shot. Peak yells at the film crew. He explains that without those sherpas, porters and yaks, none of them would be able to climb Mt. Everest. They help carry the needed supplies up the mountain and help guide the climbers when things get tough. The sherpa guides help lessen the load of the climbers. After we discussed this point in the book, I asked the students: Who are your porters? Who can you not survive without? Who helps carry the burden when things get tough? TO READ MORE, VISIT THE MR. STOCK ROCKS WEBSITE!By: Adam Powley Mr. Powley is a 14 year teaching veteran and is currently the dual enrollment American History teacher at the #1 ranked high school in South Carolina. For the last several years he has transformed his classroom based on the principles of game inspired design. In the B.C. years of my marriage (that is Before Children) my wife and I rocked Guitar Hero. Neither of us play guitar but ability to pretend to be rockers, enjoy the music, and just be goofy with each other got us through some tough times. We were in the B.C. era because of infertility issues and jamming on together on a fake plastic guitar was one way for us to have what game designer Nicole Lazzaro called “Serious Fun”, or mind altering play. This silly game, with its cartoonish rockers and its Superstar Mode Power Up, was a way for us to escape and find a meaningful connection with each other. During one of our jam sessions one of our guests noticed that I picked up on new game mechanics pretty quickly and told me it was “evidence of a misspent youth”. I took this to mean that I had spent a lot of time playing video games in my childhood. There was a negative connotation to this but I wasn’t upset because I did play a lot of video games but I did a lot of other things too. Flash forward to marriage AD (Achieved Descendants)* and my new job as an 11th grade US History teacher and that misspent youth began to pay off when I joked with a colleague during lunch duty that school should be more like a role-playing game. This discussion led me on a journey towards gamification and game-inspired classroom designs and has radically improved both me and my students’ classroom experience. There are so many game inspired concepts that I am grateful for but I am extremely thankful for the notion of a reset button. TO READ THE REST OF ADAM'S POST, VISIT HIS BLOG SITEBy: Melissa Pilakowski Google Certified Educator. Teacher of 11-12+ language arts. Writer of YA literature. Lover of language & technology. Twitter: @mpilakow It’s been a stressful past two weeks. I was senior sponsor for Homecoming. We’ve had daily rehearsals for our one-act play. I’ve had observations by our local service unit and the department chair of our local college (and as much as I’d like to say that doesn’t make me nervous, it’s still an energy zapper). I may or may not have eaten an entire bag of cheese popcorn and a bag of dark chocolate chips this weekend. This was the first time this school year when I felt myself slipping under the water, where every time I crossed something off my to-do list, two more things popped up. I was simply surviving the days, dragging myself home, and procrastinating my ever-growing list. I was missing the proverbial forest for the trees–focusing only on what I had to do and forgetting about my long-term goals, my vision to help others, my commitment to my blog. Then I ran across this Facebook post: TO READ MORE, PLEASE VISIT MELISSA'S BLOG SITE |
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