It’s that time of the year again. The closing of another year, time spent celebrating with friends and family and often a time when we pause and reflect on many things. During Thanksgiving we harken back to the celebratory feast in Plymouth Colony and give thanks for all we have. In a month or so,…
A little over a month ago, fate brought me and Jonathan Leung from University of Pennsylvania together at a PhilaSoupevent. I was sitting next to Jonathan at the event and when I found out he was a Computer Science major, I began to share the details of an exciting project I’ve been working on. We…
On Saturday, I had the wonderful opportunity of leading a workshop on Digital Citizenship at the National Liberty Museum here in Philadelphia. One of the most important conversations to have at the start of the day is about the meaning and importance of citizenship in general. We spent the morning coming up with a common…
This past summer, with the help of my brilliant friend, Kristen Swanson, I took my Technology Curriculum to a place I had never imagined it could go. As a computer lab teacher, there has never been an easy to follow, mapped out path for instruction. As such, over the last 5 years I created a…
The more I read about school reform here in Philadelphia, the more it feels like an episode of the Food Network show, Restaurant Impossible. For those who have never seen it, picture a professional restauranteur swooping in to turnaround a failing restaurant with his years of experience and no-nonsense attitude. The changes that the host,…
I recently attended the annual ISTE conference in San Diego to participate on a panel about new teacher mentoring using technology moderated by my colleague, Lisa Dabbs. As I considered my responses to some of the panelist questions, I remembered a conversation I had at the Sunday night networking event for the conference with a…
This week’s City Paper cover story, Money Talks by Daniel Denvir, has gathered a lot of attention. The article explores the financial reach of the William Penn Foundation in the current reform plans being discussed for the school district. While a lot of the facts in the article were nothing new to me, a few…
In their inspiring book, Walk Out Walk On, Deborah Frieze and Meg Wheatley take their readers on a journey across the world, engaging with various groups of people working together to build agency where there isn’t any and growing self-reliant communities that defy stereotypes. So many of their stories are reminiscent of the work that…
This year my 2nd graders completed a research project about African American Athletes using videos from History.com and a public Google Docs presentation. The students worked in self-selected pairs and picked an athlete’s name out of a ‘hat’ (it was actually a plastic beach bucket!). Over the next few weeks, they listened to the videos…
Across the country, many teachers are arriving to work to find banners that say “We Appreciate You,” continental breakfasts laid out in the staff lounge, and “Thank You” cards placed in their mailboxes. I’ll be honest, I’ve never really been ‘into’ Teacher Appreciation Week. Don’t get me wrong, I appreciate being appreciated. What I don’t…
