Ariel Robinson, NBCT, Author at NBPTS | Shaping the profession that shapes America's future. - NBPTS | Shaping the profession that shapes America's future.

Ariel Robinson has been teaching for the past eight years in Western North Carolina. She has been teaching for the past four years at The School of Inquiry and Life Sciences at Asheville in the heart of the North Carolina mountains. Before that, she taught in Madison County Schools on the outskirts of Western North Carolina. She is a graduate of UNC-Asheville and Western Carolina University, and she earned her National Board Certification in 2013.

“Ms. Robinson, why do we need to know this?”

Ariel Robinson, NBCTOctober 21, 2016

How many teachers hear this phrase on a day-to-day basis? When I first started teaching, I was thrown into a classroom with little more than a pacing guide and a projector to keep my head afloat. I was 23, a neophyte, and barely able to stay ahead of my students during instruction. I found that this question became more recurrent as I continued teaching. Many students severely criticized the curriculum, often noting that it “didn’t matter” to their lives and their goals. Why should they learn grammar and punctuation if all they will ever have to write is a maintenance…