@msespo
Gifted specialist working with and for all students. VA Gilder-Lehrman TOY '09. Co-conspirator who still gets it wrong. I'm the annoying one asking hard questions. she/her If my mouth doesn't say it, my face definitely will. https://msespo.substack.com
You sound a lot like my admin, to be honest. I'd follow her to the ends of the Earth. It's a lot of heavy lifting & you'd need to be in a place where admin will take the push-back in the spirit in which it's intended.
You'd be a great admin & it's likely the emotional price is entirely too high.
The worst, though, is when they talk about how the curriculum has all of the research to back it up. Though the research is never done with kids who look like ours do.
Targeted reading & math groups to improve student achievement for historically marginalized groups. Created them, am writing the curriculum for them & meeting w/students weekly & checking in.
Monitoring & incentivizing district-required intervention reading program.
It is March.
I am TIRED.
Optional staff book club: Cultivating Genius. FABULOUS. Today is our last meeting. I organized & coordinated it.
Progress monitoring this week: Made all of the copies for both grades. Administering 6th grade comprehension PMs.
Current situation: We have the 6th gr Oratorical Fest on Fri. I'm coordinating judges & covering HR for practice.
Solve Like a Girl Tournament coming up in April. Practices started yesterday. I'm coordinating practices & day of logistics.
School mentor program: Working individually w/4 students.
Sometimes, in your math group, a student asks, "WWIII has started. Why are we even here?"
You have to make space for kids who are worried and afraid. I didn't have any answers, but I let them talk and answered the questions I could.
Well. I made it to 10:12. 🤣
Two similar, but definitely different, shoes.
Welp. It’s March and I’m a teacher. Daylight Saving Time got me this morning.
Now, can I make it through the day without the kids noticing? 🤣
The fact that Kristi Noem was removed and Pete Hegseth was not should tell white women everything they need to know about their relationship to power.
It won’t, but it should.
Notebook page with “identity” in the middle, surrounded by questions, ideas, and texts to go with the unit.
It’s that time of year where I start thinking about next year. It can be really hard to tweak existing pre-packaged curriculum to make it work for our students but every year we get a little closer.
This is teacher specific, but in fourth grade I set up a subtraction problem wrong (4-9 instead of 9-4). I’d been called on so it was whole class humiliation as my teacher told me negative numbers weren’t a thing and I couldn’t do that.
Fourth grade was in the 70s, but it stuck with me.
You should join us!
Blue bubble: I have a middle school certification. Just saying.
When you have a fabulous principal, take the risk & follow them wherever they go. It’s worth it.
The text I sent 5 minutes after she announced she was leaving our elementary school w/o knowing which of the middle schools she was going to. Turns out it was to the one that was closing. No regrets.
And then they announce that your principal is going to become the principal of newly reconfigured middle school and your whole life just became eleventy million times better.
When the district originally scheduled today as a mental health day, but due to snow it's now a rescheduled PD day and it's going to be in the 70s and sunny.
anyone in education who supports this needs to leave right now and not look back
Gen Z women seem at least twice as likely to think men like this would not make a good partner. Somehow it will be women’s fault that these men can’t find what they’re looking for.
Sincerely. Whatever changes they make, I know they’re doing it for monetary reasons not because it’s right.
They’ve tossed trust away and I don’t see them getting it back. I miss my regular runs, but Costco is almost as much fun.
One year I had a third grader say to a friend, "Why are you even asking? You know she's only going to ask another question!"
In sixth grade a student once made me a sign on a stick that said, "What do the directions say?"
I'm not going to do it for you, but I'll surely help you figure it out.
This was my answer when I'd be asked how many sentences needed to be in a paragraph. Wait. It's still my answer because they're still asking.
I don’t know that Kamala Harris would have been better about Israel.
I feel pretty certain that she would have been better about so many other things that, if she started a war with Iran, we’d collectively have energy enough to be shocked and outraged.
The sun shining on a small gray round table with muffin, an iced tea, an open book, a closed notebook and sunglasses.
Today the weather is going to be beautiful. I’ve set up with a book, some iced tea, a blueberry muffin, a book on the Plantagenets and a brand new journal for note-taking. As I’m going to do a deliberate deep dive on medieval England.
And, to quote @heymrsbond.com this morning: What the fuck?
I always tell the teachers that I work with if I'm not working as hard as they are, I'm not doing my job. You want something made, you want to look at something differently, you need someone to make differentiated materials - I'm your person.
I'm late to this, but I'm going to say that there are people who leave the classroom who make a conscious effort not to forget what it's like in the classroom. No one is perfect, but if you go into w/the mindset that your job is to make a teacher's job easier, it helps.
Would love to start some nonfiction middle school book clubs and/or paired book clubs w/fiction & nonfiction on similar topics or themes.
The school has a small pot of money for this, so I'd love suggestions.
Last week, my mother took me and my kids to see the school where, 60 years ago, she was among the first wave of Black students to integrate a previously all-White school. We wanted to remind my kids that Black history is not just famous people in textbooks, it is often the people right next to you.
I am so excited for you!
We print a K-12 art & literary anthology every year. The deadline to submit for each school is Monday, naturally I'm still at work on Friday at 6 pm still working on it.
I want to ask permission to share one of the pieces here, but let me tell you something - the kids aren't here for the bullshit.
Yay! I’m glad. This is exactly what I save my Amazon points for.
