4 Ways Board Certification Prepared Me For Motherhood
My journey to Board certification was the second hardest and most humbling thing I have ever completed. The first? Committing to and seeing through the international adoption process. Both took multiple years. Both required lots of steps, checklists, standards, guidelines, late night, and early morning reflection. Both involved healthy amounts of self-doubt and discernment. Both…
Rise: Recognize, Inspire, Sustain, Empower
When I teach the word “palpable,” I explain to my students that sometimes the energy is so strong in a room that you can feel it. Last month, after a long day of school, I walked into the ballroom at the Marriott Harborcenter in Buffalo, New York and there was an electricity that energized me…
Knowledge of Students
Life is all about connections. Early in my teaching career, I prided myself in connecting with my students. I thought I could relate to them easily, and that I truly understood who they were. Our proximity of age did not produce the disconnect that many veteran teachers experienced. Yet, as I think back to two…
Why Educators Must Build a Safe Environment for Our Students
On September 11 of my senior year in high school, I was in my ceramics class working on a project when I heard that an airplane crashed into one of the twin towers in New York. When the class ended, I rushed over to Mr. Hunt’s classroom, where we usually met for our student government…
Staying Close to Home to Increase Impact
I am a product of Donaldsonville, Louisiana. That’s where I went to school, it’s where I played football and basketball and it’s where I learned about life’s ups and downs. It’s still my mother’s home. I have spent 12 of my 17 years as an educator in Donaldsonville including serving now, as the principal at…
Seeing the Intersections: The National Board and LDC
The National Board for Professional Teaching Standards and the Literacy Design Collaborative (LDC) have teamed up to build a new course for all LDC CoreTools users to “Differentiate for All Students.” This is a natural collaboration due to the symbiotic relationship that exists between quality teaching and the LDC tools and resources. The National Board’s…
Social Media for Teachers
If you’re not yet using social media to connect with students, parents and other teachers, you’re missing out! Read on to find out simple ways to use social media to celebrate students, inform parents and the community, connect with other teachers and generally up your game! What Apps? Each app has a specific audience and…
My Opportunity to Meet the Press
Standing on a name card behind the set, microphone in hand, waiting to be announced to go on stage in front of a live and internet streaming audience, I turned to ask the moderator: “I wonder if this is what it is like to go on Meet the Press?” Recently I was asked to speak…
I see Ms. Mason When I #PictureATeacher
What did I want to be when I grew up? When I was little, my answer was a dentist or an astronaut. But, I was a child of the 1960s, a turbulent time to be a young African American girl in the south. There were neighborhoods I couldn’t live in and places I couldn’t eat.…
Appreciate the Teaching Profession by Securing its Future
It’s Teacher Appreciation Week, and teachers deserve it. Teachers deserve bagel breakfasts, flowers, and Starbucks gift cards. Teachers deserve higher pay, sane teaching loads, and technology that works. They deserve copy paper. Teacher Appreciation Week is a great time to give teachers these things. It’s also a good time to consider how to recruit and…
