Welcome to My Closet

I am an elementary teacher in Northcentral Pennsylvania with a passion for exploring the depths of education. I hear over and over that there are many paths to excellence when it comes to classroom teaching, and I love to explore them all!

Relentless Restlessness

For this post, I was asked to write about what I learned today and to answer these simple questions: Who am I? What do I do? What do I love? For the questions, my answers for the first two are quite simple. My name is …

Effective Leaders Take Risks

If leaders are not willing to take risks, then the cultural mindset will not build for innovative practices to thrive. Professional Development experiences need to be more of an exemplar that helps to set expectations for our classroom learning. In order to do this, leaders …

Open Education ResourceWarehouses

Open Education Resources (OER) is where libraries of resources exist that are not copyrighted. They are warehouses of great standards-based lesson plans available to be used and modified, so long as not for commercial use (Creative Commons). I think it is great that these sources …

What Type of Teacher am I?

I have always shied away from leadership. I’ve always been a follower, or nudged ideas into the hands of those I knew were, or perceived to be, leaders, hoping my anticipated results could magically come to fruition. Reading segments of George Couros’s book, The Innovator’s …

Shared Vision

The second year in my current district, I joined a team created by the new superintendent geared toward refocusing the district on 21st century teaching and learning. One of our first tasks was to revise the old Mission statement and to create a common vision …

On Where I’ve Been…

I have always been a goal-focused person, in both my personal and professional life, though I have come to find it works more effectively for the professional world. Although I know how important it is to reflect, I know I am guilty of not doing …

Communication and Collaboration

An initiative I would love to see school-wide is the use of blog communication between parents, staff, and students – eventually, even with the community and the world. But where to start? To answer this question, I had to do some self-reflecting and some research. …

The Long Road to Relationships

Building relationships in my district was difficult at first. I teach in a rural community, within a very small 1-building district (k-12). I was told on the side by my mentor that I was being referred to as “the flatlander,” and students, parents, and teachers will take …

Gettin’ Gritty

I would say that my grit has been ingrained in me from childhood. My father use to say, “If you can’t do something right, don’t do it at all.” It both inspired me to work harder in everything that I did, but also scared me …