So life has been…pretty busy! Obviously, I haven’t been doing a great job of keeping up with the posts like I used to. However, that is something I want to do better about, if anything just so I can have a good reason to keep paying for this website. So let’s start by going over … Continue reading Teaching and Marketing and NaNo…oh my!
Oh hey, it’s me! I definitely didn’t forget to actually write blog posts for the last 6 months, no no no no no. Okay, I did. But to be fair, life can be kind of hectic, and I do have a proven track record of being terrible with this blog. So this shouldn’t seem like … Continue reading Year-End Reflection: Teaching, Reading, and Writing
A note: this post is going to talk a lot about gun violence and death. So if that is something that is triggering for you, it is recommended you not read further. Every year I’ve been a teacher, I have the same recurring nightmare. I’m in my classroom. Maybe I’m teaching that day, maybe I’m … Continue reading As a Teacher, The Constant Threat of Gun Violence is Exhausting
Introduction GoGuardian is a digital classroom management tool that allows you to view your students’ screens as they are working in your classroom. This can be used to both ensure student productivity, safety, and allow subtle communication between teacher and student that will not disrupt their learning. How to Access Go to https://www.goguardian.com in your … Continue reading Beginner’s Guide to GoGuardian
Oh boy. Standardized testing. Every teacher’s favorite thing in the whole wide world. Not. I don’t think it comes as a surprise to find out that standardized testing is almost universally disliked by educators, students, parents, administrators…to be honest, it’s rare to actually hear someone in-person genuinely say they like testing.There’s good reason for that. … Continue reading Let’s Talk About Standardized Testing
Happy April! Spring is in full bloom, and boy howdy is it already shaping up to be a busy on. Let’s jump right in! Teaching Tech Tip: Use Flipgrid to make short informational videos If you’ve followed me at all, it probably doesn’t come as a surprise that I use Flipgrid a lot in my … Continue reading A Writr’s Report: April 2021
I know I can get pretty negative on here. Heck, my last blog post was about how education system is feeling more like an entertainment gig than an actual teaching job. And the thing is…there’s some reason for that. Ask any teacher in the United States right now. Teaching is hard, and it’s only gotten … Continue reading The Kids Are Alright
Since I did a post last week reflecting on my year in writing, I felt it appropriate to also reflect on teaching, because oof: it was a doozy. There were a lot of reasons for why this hard, and most of them were pretty obvious: COVID-19 threw a massive wrench into the entire education field. … Continue reading Teaching: A Year in Review
2020 has been an interesting balance of both good and bad. On the bad hand (do I even need to say it?), we have the global pandemic that has wrought immeasurable destruction and hardship, irreversibly changed the world of education forever, and this year my wife lost both her job and her grandmother. On a … Continue reading Balancing Writing and Teaching
Congratulations, teachers. You’ve made it. The first day of teaching. Even on a normal year, this would be a huge deal. Whether you’ve been teaching for thirty years or this is your first, the first day brings up all sorts of feelings. Excitement. Anxiety. Joy. Terror. But this is not a normal year. Many of … Continue reading Welcome to the First Day
Jacob Ryckman 