General

So, yes I know, the title to this post is very negative.  But it’s very true.  STAAR (or the state-exam for Texas) is crazy.  Now, honestly I’m all for testing.  I think our students should be tested for what they know and have learned that school year, but WAY too much emphasis is put on…

So last week was my Spring Break.  Instead of enjoying my Spring Break relaxing like most people, I spent my Spring Break traveling to San Diego, California. In about Early February I had gotten a notification that I was selected by the National School Board Association as one of their “20 to Watch”.  They choose…

This week has been the best week of my professional career.  I have never had as much fun or been as impressed with my students as I was this week!! So, about a month and a half ago I had an idea.  I’ve always seen teachers and schools that do science fairs. I love watching…

This week was fun! On Monday we went over the benchmark that we had taken from the previous week.  After adjusting the scores to match the pass rates of the STAAR Test (our State Standardized Test) we ended up with having 84.7% passing!  That was great!  Way better than my last year Spring Benchmark scores….

So life has been extra crazy lately and I have been trying desperately to update this blog!  Whew!  So here goes…. Last week was….interesting… Monday we didn’t have school.  On Tuesday I worked with the students setting goals, and calming any nerves in preparation for their Spring Benchmark that was to take place on Wednesday. So on…

Let me preface this post by saying that I was only at my campus on Monday, because Tuesday through Friday I was at TCEA (my state’s Technology Conference) and Saturday I attended my Region IV Math Conference.  You can read about my trip to those by following this link http://texasprincipal.org/index.php/texas-principals-education-help-support-team/entry/go-learn-tcea-and-region-iv But on Monday my students…

Another amazing week.  The week started out with some pretty incredible Skype activities (which you can read about in my previous post). In addition to Skyping with a class from Sweden and Olympic Gold Medalist Steve Mesler, our class was also fortunate enough to Skype with a college student from Venezuela. Now, I’ve had several…

Today was such an “epic” day in our class using Skype that I couldn’t wait til the end of the week to Blog about it! http://education.skype.com is a website I’ve found this year that I LOVE.  It allows teachers to find other educators or businesses who want to Skype and let’s them partner up.  So…

We had a lot of fun this week! We were off from school on Monday, so our Flip Classroom picked back up on Tuesday. For Tuesday-Thursday we began working on Probability and Predictions.  The kids loved this lesson because I prefaced it by telling them we were going to see who had a future in…

Had a blast this week! This week was filled with many exciting things…I was asked to write a chapter or two in a new Flipped Classroom book coming out in August, I’m THIS close to getting my children’s book published, I have another Flipped Classroom Webinar coming up in February (http://www.eventbrite.com/event/5249898588)and more!Anyway, back to class…

I had such a blast this week! The kids came back on Tuesday and I could not have been more excited.  You see, one of my New Years Resolutions was to dress more professionally at school.  BUT I still needed to have some of my personality in it.  How was I dressing before?  Well I…

Another interesting week! So this week we took our first semester Math Benchmark.  I was VERY nervous, for several reasons…  – it was the exact same Benchmark as last fall, with only 2-3 questions increased for vigor. – it would be a REAL tell of how my students are doing with their first year of the…