Yes, I believe it’s vital for a teacher to cultivate a positive relationship with students who don’t have positive relationships outside of school. No, I don’t believe that a positive relationship automatically makes the student a better learner without quality instruction.

Seems more and more like the “I’ll live with mean tweets as long as gas is cheap” crowd really just wanted the mean tweets.

If your standards for classroom behavior include the word “…unless,” they are not standards. They’re a wish list. Reword them so that everyone can meet them with the appropriate supports.

An elementary student liked my shoes this morning. I like his, too.

“Some kids just can’t be allowed in the classroom with their typical peers.” Unless the adults believe they belong there, and are willing to provide the support that is needed. Ruby Bridges Elementary can’t exist, in some people’s minds. But it does. allofus-themovie.com

2 things I heard in the makerspace today: Student: “I’m really proud of what I made. I actually understand all of this.” Teacher: “This is the hardest you guys have worked on something all year.” Why am I supposed to doubt this work’s meaningfulness???

Maybe part of why classroom discipline is so low now because we did a good job teaching kids to resist bullying, and the bullying tactics we used to use to keep classrooms quiet and orderly don’t work anymore?

Everyone in the room is a person, and deserves to be treated with dignity, as a human being. Not an inconvenience or an annoyance. Not a trespasser. They may have a lot to learn about being part of the room. But they belong there.

It’s easy to have all the answers in education when you only want the classroom to include the students who are easy to teach.

Noticing a trend. Educators who pooh-pooh teachers building relationships with their students, only have students who already have plenty of healthy supportive relationships outside of school and would do fine in life without their teachers.

Labeling my child “disruptive” when she was never violent or loud, just so the school could remove her from a gen ed classroom (instead of adding supports) and have her make zero academic progress in 7+ years was NOT the right move. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t now.

Very grateful right now for the emergency hot sauce in my desk.

Tech Guy Tips: Never walk down a hallway without tech equipment in your hands. People will think you have nothing to do and can stop you to comework on something right then. (They’ll still stop you, but it’s easier to say you’re working on another problem at that moment.)

The measure of how effective a school is should be something other the annual salaries of the graduates who would have done just fine without the school anyway.

"I cannot do all the good that the world needs, but the world needs all the good that I can do." — Jana Stanfield xitter.cf/janastanfield

Teaching a student about check-writing and counting back cash change because “they are important daily living skills” while never mentioning how to use a debit or credit card strikes me as not keeping up with the times.

Book draft manuscript: 17,000 words so far. Album of originals: Tracks chosen, no recording done. The end of summer has been piles of interruptions and emergencies. I need to schedule a little regular time to get back to creating.

Dear Ohio public educators, In “Extended Standards,” the word “extended” means “in addition to,” not “instead of.” I.e., the Extended Standards don’t REPLACE what students ought to learn, they add scaffolding without diluting the standards.

How much longer will it be before families have their kids take an Uber to school, to separate their family from the Joneses? Driving your kid to school isn’t the flex it once was.

First group of freshmen in the Makerspace today and yesterday. Moving to “I tried something. It didn’t work. I adjusted and tried something else. And I realized I didn’t have enough time for all I planned to do,” is a GIGANTIC leap that will serve them well on future projects.