Joanna Schimizzi, NBCT

I’ll bet you have an idea. It’s been itching in your brain. Keeping you up at night more than a newborn baby. This idea is not one of those maybe I’ll try this in class tomorrow kinds of ideas. More like one of those massive, life-consuming, I’m so scared ideas. But it’s also one of those Eureka! I think I can change the world ideas. However, you’ve been letting it scare you. I’ll bet you’ve pushed this idea aside. You’ve told yourself that it’s unrealistic. But it keeps hiding in a corner of your brain, creeping up at random moments.…

This school year, I want to challenge you to ban certain words from your vernacular. We each have our own set of words and phrases that are taboo in our classroom, like “stupid” or “I can’t”, but this year I want to challenge you to stop using the word “parents”. This may sound like a strange request – don’t we want parents to be engaged in our classrooms and schools? Absolutely, but I want to challenge you to realize that many of our students live in settings where “parents” are not the only figures who are important to their success.…

It’s summer and the school year has ended… we had kindergarten graduation, high school graduations and college graduations. At this point, you know your students so well, maybe you can even picture what they’ll be doing when they’re adults. So, close your eyes and picture your class. Which of your students do you see having “executive” skills? No, I’m not talking about students who will end up as our future CEOs, COOs or CFOs. The reason I bring this term up is because I recently learned more about the neuroscience of “executive function” at the Teaching & Learning Conference, and…

When educators take back education legislation Every Student Succeeds Act. The name leads us to wish for a world in which every student experiences a classroom designed specifically to help them overcome every obstacle that they’ve been dealt. As professional educators, we don’t want to be jaded, but it sounds a bit “Hollywood.” Think of those movies that depict the difficulties of being a teacher, but then the ending ties everything up in a beautiful red bow. Every student succeeding sounds a bit like every student being “above average” – mathematically impossible! And a new piece of legislation? Don’t teachers…

As the holiday season approaches and the holiday goodies start to appear (yay candy corn!), we should all stop to think… Have I been working on my CORE? If I held up a mirror, what would I see? Are you excited for caramel apples and pumpkin spice lattes? Are you already planning your Thanksgiving Feast? While fall is full of wonderful treats, some of us might be thinking about our CORES! Maybe you think I mean your CORE abdominal muscles… or maybe I’m talking about the Common Core and diving deeply into math and literacy standards. For me, this year…

Editor’s Note:  Joanna Schimizzi, NBCT, is a biology teacher in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina. The views expressed in this blog are her own. Is your classroom a headphones-free zone? Headphones-free zone!! When students walk into my classroom, they know they should never ask if they can listen to headphones while they are working. My position was always that we were doing cognitively complex work in my class, and I had read the research on multi-tasking versus switching – like this NPR story that cites the research of a professor of neuroscience at MIT. Turns out that what we…

Editor’s Note:  Joanna Schimizzi, NBCT, is a biology teacher in the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School District in North Carolina. The views expressed in this blog are her own. When the NCAA basketball tournament comes each spring, my husband becomes a March Madness fanatic, but I recently realized that there’s something I’ve become obsessed with: encouraging other teachers to begin the National Board Certification journey. Unlike March Madness, where there are 67 losers and only one winner, all NBCTs can be successful, which is a win for all of our students as well. I’m at a new school this year, and many of the…