In today’s educational landscape, there’s a strong emphasis placed on developing a student-centered curriculum. However, teacher training programs often overlook how to design student-centered materials, such as slides, assignments, and rubrics. As a result, many educators (understandably) rely on traditional methods they were exposed to while coming through the education...
Implementing a makerspace can feel overwhelming. There are a lot of hands-on learning material options available and once decisions are made about what tools you’ll be investing in, it can be difficult to know where to start on lesson and activity ideas. There are many elements to consider from how to organize and store the material, to what expectations to set for student use, and...
Often, media specialists find themselves as solitary figures in our schools, but to effectively serve all our students, we must be master connectors, not only throughout our community but also within our building, through collaborative partnerships with teachers. Collaboration also plays a pivotal role in advocating for our programs, strengthening their visibility and value within the broader...
I recently published a book with Solution Tree called Inspiring Lifelong Readers: Using Inquiry to Engage Learners in Grades 6-12. In it I share many “stories from the field” to give readers a glimpse inside my classroom as I was putting the strategies shared in the book into practice with students. I thought for this month’s blog, I would share an excerpt from the book where I discuss my...