Our Blog: The Standard

The students in my International Baccalaureate Literature and Performance class recently read “The Bean Eaters,” a poem by Gwendolyn Brooks about an elderly, very ordinary married couple who share meager meals and memories: They eat beans mostly, this old yellow pair. Dinner is a casual affair. Plain chipware on a plain and creaking wood, Tin flatware. Two who are Mostly Good. Two who have lived their day, But keep on putting on their clothes And putting things away. And remembering . . . Remembering, with twinklings and twinges, As they lean over the beans in their rented back room that…

Hip-hop artist and educator, Olmeca, wrote a poem called, “They Migrate, We Graduate.” Those four words accurately captured so many of our experiences as Latinx, bicultural-bilingual-binational students and now, just as importantly, as teachers. Our families, just like our students’ families, prioritized our future possibilities and opportunities over many times, their own comfort. When I see my students, I see myself. When I see their families, I see my family. Representation matters. Latinx students make up approximately 30% of our national student population and in many areas across the country, they make up greater than 50% of the population. The…

Fall is in the air and school playgrounds are hubs of activity where teams are formed and games are played. Imagine one hundred children lined up ready and excited to play. Immediately sixty are benched, and only forty are allowed to play. We would never allow this on the playground; however, this is what is occurring daily in Literacy instruction. This scenario mirrors our Early Literacy scores, which show that while forty percent of fourth-graders score proficient, barely twenty percent of historically or underserved Black and Hispanic do. Team Literate vs Team illiterate; this inequity impacts lives and silence voices.…

Like many National Board Certified Teachers, I am proud to say that I serve in multiple teacher leadership roles in my school and within our district. My most demanding responsibility is serving as the leader of our school’s brand new Literacy Committee. Our school-wide instructional goal for the 2018-19 school year was to increase the number of grade-level readers in our building. And we did – increasing from 2.7% of students reading at grade level to 21.3%. This accomplishment took a lot of blood, sweat, and tears; our team was allotted 25 paid hours throughout the year to analyze data,…

Since achieving National Board certification in adolescent social studies several years ago, I have felt a need to continue to educate myself and lead in my specific passion — religious literacy. One religious community that continues to face alarming amounts of discrimination in and out of the classroom is the American Muslim population. This summer I was fortunate enough to be selected by the Institute for Social Policy and Understanding to serve as one of their educators. ISPU conducts objective, solution-seeking research that empowers American Muslims to develop their community and fully contribute to democracy and pluralism in the United…

Intrinsic Motivation. As a human, I feel it within my soul. I know the things I feel motivated to complete and the people I feel motivated to please. I have it —and I’m sure you do to—but how did we get here? How long did it take? Certainly we all found ours at different paces and for different reasons, but is there a faster way? As teachers, intrinsic motivation feels like an elusive goal. When I say the words in my head in this context, it’s in this eerie voice—almost like a fortune teller (or Professor Trelawney for my fellow…

“What is my purpose?” This is a question I seem to ask myself frequently, and if you are honest with yourself, I’m willing to bet it is a question you’ve often found yourself asking as well. While my answer is consistent, the certainty of that answer seems to change throughout the seasons. My purpose is to teach. This may seem simple, but keep reading. I’ve come to learn that there are three types of educators in any building. The first type I call the “professor.” This person has an expert knowledge of his/her content and is an expert in the…

It all started the day I received a rejection letter for a job that, at the time, I was sure was my “dream job”.  My husband encouraged me to complete this fellowship application that I had been pushing off and, as per usual, talking myself out of. I thought he was absolutely crazy. The application consisted of five essays. I was sure I didn’t have a chance at the fellowship, and I had just two days to complete it. I started typing. Flash forward a week or two,  I am en route to Albany, New York to present at a…

“Unless someone like you cares a whole awful lot, nothing is going to get better.  It’s not,” is a familiar quote from Dr. Seuss’s The Lorax. The summer before I was a fifth grader, I was swimming at the beach when a loggerhead sea turtle surfaced beside me sparking my passion for protecting the sea turtles of North Carolina. This is a passion I have continued to pursue over the past 25 years.  We must teach our children to care about big ideas that matter. It is these childhood passions, developed as young learners, that will carry through to adulthood..…

Ten years ago, after earning the maximum professional development credits and reaching the highest class in our teacher pay-scale, I began to wonder if there was more for me. How could teachers in my situation afford the cost of continued professional development without financial incentive? To think that my current path, my growth as a teacher, might stop there, made me uneasy. How would I continue to grow so I could provide the best for my students? Becoming an administrator did not appeal to me at the time, but building leadership skills did. So I began  volunteering to take on…