Leadership and My Journey to Principalship

 Yes, these past few weeks I have been exposed to twitter as a professional tool. I will tell you that I am finding a lot that I love about the tool and plenty that I don't. I am from the facebook generation. I know that the two connect and can support each other, but I have not had the opportunity to connect them yet. I will say my biggest difficulty is finding the time to "twit, tweet, triggle" what's the right lingo? Haha. But when I do spend some time scrolling through the posts that I have been following, I love what I am learning. I have seen many schools recognize their staff on twitter! What a simple idea that gets shared all over. I have seen projects I would like to use in my classroom. I have seen memes that encourage me and make my day a little brighter and I have seen memes that have caused me to reflect. I do not think I have created the habit to post regularly enough to start having followers, but I can truly see the power this tool can have. I don'...

 Amplify has created this amazing podcast. If you are a teacher in any subject, you should be listening! Science of Reading - The Podcast. Today I want to discuss S4-04 Learning to Read Digitally vs in Print: Dr. Lauren Trakhman & Dr. Patricia Alexander.   This podcast goes over the research the professors from the University of Maryland on how effective our reading is digitally verses in print. My class that I am taking now is Digital Leadership. Our focus is on digital resources. Over the past decade, our schools have been offered more digital options than ever before and post-pandemic, we are now much more online than we have ever been before. I am a huge proponent of digital resources and digital text, but after listening to this podcast, I may have to rethink my use.  The research that Dr. Trakhman and Dr. Alexander performed was to determine if a student comprehended the text at the same level both digitally and print. They did much of their research using ...

 I have been learning about so many new technology tools that I can implement in my elementary classroom. I am amazed everyday by the newest programs, apps and websites that are now available in our class. Plickers , Mentimeters , Bookcreator , Canva , Poll Everywhere , Classtag , Classdojo , Jamboard ...the list goes on and on. How do you take the time to choose the right tool? When you want to be innovative and creative to help your student achievement, you can easily be overwhelmed with the options.  One idea is to have a day or a small amount of time weekly to dedicate to PD on new technology tools. Take the time to learn the tool and determine how you might want to implement it in your classroom. Take the time to do this with your team in a collaborative meeting and determine if you want to meet back to discuss the viability of the tool. This is a great way to learn together and see if that tool was worthwhile.  Learn one tool at a time so you don't feel too overwhel...

 Today is already Sept 22, 2022 and we have only been in school for 19 days... but who's counting. I come home tired, hang out with my own children and have to do it all over again in the morning. Each day I learn a little more about my class. I have 18 first graders, 17 of which are level 1-2 ELLs. I am constantly challenged on how to get my littles to stay engaged and learn how to read or add. Unfortunately, I seem to lose their attention before I get through my "engaging" lessons. I have learned quickly that 18 unengaged seven-year olds is a disaster waiting to happen. So, time for some creativity. Classdojo to the rescue. Have you heard of it? This candy on the computer has become my secret weapon. Dojo gives points for good behavior with a little bell that chimes. Pavlov's dog!! That little bell chimes and all the kids stop and get ready to do their best. At 25 points I reward them with a little squishy toy that can go into a "home" (tuperware) until di...

 Wow!  Have you ever heard the phrase, who you hang out with determines who you will become? Well, Facebook might have just proven that your online social network my also determine your wealth. Study of Facebook Friendships This article posted on TechCrunch on Aug 1, 2022 shows how Harvard economist, Raj Chetty, founded two papers that explored how your "friendships" on social media may affect your net worth. " The researchers found that people with lower incomes were more likely to improve their financial situations over time if they were connected to people with higher incomes." The article goes on to claim that those with high-SES friends show the highest upward income mobility! The researcher goes on to say that families with low-SES who connect with families with a high-SES can increase their income by 20% on the average! Talk about leveraging your social media.  How can this help our low-income schools? Can we start linking families together on social media? H...

Third Day in First Grade Talk about a technology FAIL! Today I tried to get 18 6 year olds logged into their Chromebook. I would have preferred herding cats! I started by getting them so excited to log into Prodigy Math, one of my favorite math games for students. I showed them their log-in information (printed on a sticker on the inside of their chromebook) and set up a couple of students at a time. I had the rest of my class coloring in their math sheet, and they seemed to be having fun with that. I got my first two students to my back table and asked them how to unplug their Chromebook from the charging cart and sat them down to have them log-in. Seemed easy enough. Then, I noticed that the one student started typing away letters when he needed to type in the 8-digit student number. The other student couldn't find the number zero, so there were eight letter "O"s in his student number section. I slowly helped them type in their username and password and started to get t...