A classroom reflection for the soft edge of June There are two and a half weeks left of school.That sentence alone makes me feel two completely opposite things at once. First: relief. Like a window cracked open in a hot room.This has been a good year—but a hard one. The kind of hard that requires … [Read more…]
I’m still buzzing. Not metaphorically.Not poetically.I mean it in the most literal, adrenaline-charged, wide-eyed, still-reeling-from-it way. Because today, something extraordinary happened. Today, I watched second graders hold bees in their hands.Real bees.No stingers (they were drones — we learned this ahead of time), but still… bees.And they were calm. Confident. Brave. Because we’d been preparing … [Read more…]
Messy, Joyful, Human: A Field Guide to What Learning Can Be I’ve always been curious about how we can do better for every learner in the room. I’ve long been passionate about creating learning spaces where students feel seen, valued, and empowered to learn in ways that work for them. That drive—meeting the needs of … [Read more…]
A vision, a process, and a manifesto with a little fire in it What do you want your classroom to look like? That’s the question that kicked it all off — the first spark in a school-wide effort to build a shared vision for Universal Design for Learning (UDL). I was part of a team … [Read more…]
Lately I was confronted with question:“How will you know if what you’re doing has an impact?” Not in the test score, benchmark data, pie-chart kinda way.But in the real evidence, paint-a-picture way.The kid energy way.The kind of knowing that lives in your gut, in your chest, in the corners of your classroom. Because honestly? Sometimes … [Read more…]
Empowering learners means providing them with structured freedom—a balance between independence and support. It’s not just about what students learn, but how they learn and how they develop the skills to apply their learning in new contexts. Student agency is at the heart of this. When students have a voice in their learning and the … [Read more…]
Closed for business. Sort of. Kid: “Ms. Rebecca, my shoe broke!”Me: “What are your ideas to fix it?” Kid: “Ms. Rebecca, Petie bumped into me and didn’t say excuse me!”Me: “What would you like to do about that?” Kid: “Ms. Rebecca, I don’t know how to solve this problem.”Me: “Where could you go for help?” … [Read more…]
For me, building relationships with students isn’t a single action—it’s a commitment to fostering both a strong classroom community and meaningful individual connections. I believe that when students feel a sense of belonging in the group, it opens the door for deeper, personal relationships to form. A Classroom Where Every Student Belongs As I build … [Read more…]
At my best, I am a relentless learner, fueled by curiosity and the drive to empower students to think, question, and create. I have been that teacher who dives headfirst into professional learning communities, who absorbs research like a sponge, who takes risks in the classroom because I believe in innovation. But if I’m being … [Read more…]
We Are Story Keepers! I know this project is a risk. It’s more open-ended than anything my students have done before. It’s going to be messy (literally and figuratively). It’s going to be chaotic (hopefully productively). But it’s a risk worth taking because this is the kind of learning that matters—the kind that builds skills … [Read more…]