No teacher training ever covered teaching during a pandemic. Since Covid closed schools mid-March 2020, we’ve had to adapt on the fly. Overnight. Constantly. Repeatedly. My district’s students and staff endured nearly a dozen “first” days of school as our schedules continuously changed, gradually increasing remote instruction time, gradually welcoming more student cohorts into the …
(First in a series on teaching media literacy…) I’ve been told I’m weird. I love teaching writing. (Grading writing, not so much. But that’s a topic for another post.) I particularly love teaching research writing. Forget all the formatting and college prep stuff–though that’s part of it, yes, and important–what I love about it is …
September 8, I returned to my classroom for only the second time since Covid closed my district mid-March. The first time occurred early June, when my colleagues and I returned to help empty student lockers and reunite their contents with the kids who’d been abruptly forced to abandon them. Administration allowed us a few minutes …
On my first first-day of school, I was four and my mother walked me down Torresdale Avenue to the playground preschool where I would learn how to color and paint and cut with big girl scissors. Skills I needed along with sharing and taking turns, as I already knew how to read and write and …
“Lesson Plans” was inspired in part by a series of conversations among my colleagues in various disciplines. Months before Covid-19, remote learning, and our country’s long overdue reckoning with systemic racism, we shared our difficulties about having enough time to plan and teach our core classes effectively, let alone fulfill an ever-increasing list of duties …
My Name was Supposed to be Elizabeth Ann 