Rosie is whispering while her classmate is presenting their final project. I’ve told this class a hundred times that we need to be quiet while our peers are speaking and yet there’s Rosie, whispering away. I feel my temperature rising and I’m already getting mildly upset thinking about the hallway conversation Rosie and I are going to have, AGAIN, about her talking in class. Why does she always, always do this? Why does it make me feel like such a bad teacher, who can’t even get one student to pay attention?

…and why am I so mad at Rosie but totally forgetting about the other student she’s whispering with?

Publication day, money, and the final details

It’s time to write!

All about contracts.

Developing your book idea and starting the process.

Your student is breaking stuff. Not idly breaking stuff, like accidentally snapping a pencil or shredding a piece of paper with fidgeting hands. I mean tearing apart your carefully composed bulletin board, knocking your framed poster to the floor and shattering the glass, red-in-the-face and not responding to anyone’s words kind of breaking stuff.

One thing that is for certain in an uncertain time: crises will happen this school year. Personally, locally, nationally, and globally, disasters large and small will occur. There will be gun violence, unjust action from lawmakers, death and grief, and conflict. This is not pessimism talking, it’s reality.

I regularly hear the phrase “I’m not a therapist/counselor/social worker” in discussions of trauma-informed education and social-emotional learning. This is most often uttered by stressed-out teachers who are rightfully tired of new expectations being placed on their jobs. Indeed, it’s hard to process any implication that teachers should be doing more in a society that underfunds and harshly criticizes schools and teachers,

If I had to pick a motto that guides my academic learning, it might be this “If you love something, critique the hell out of it.” I think trauma-informed education is incredibly powerful and I’m a huge advocate. But loving trauma-informed education, for me, comes with a healthy dose of critique and critical exploration. Any time educators take on a new model or paradigm, we need to do so with a clear understanding of its potential pitfalls. I love this question I first learned from Chris Lehmann: “what is the worst consequence of my best idea?”

The first year that I took on a leadership role at my old school, I stopped eating lunch.

As the school year gets underway this fall, many teachers are wondering how to address the mental health repercussions of the past two years. How can we show up for our students with care at the center? How should we start to get a sense of the magnitude of trauma?

The fall is fast approaching. Despite the lack of clarity about what school is going to look like, teachers are starting to prepare. One of the topics I’ve seen come up in teacher conversations: whether or not to use the pandemic as a teaching moment in our classrooms. Should you create math lessons using data about case numbers in different states, for example? Should students write pandemic journals? Would it be appropriate to do a unit on the 1918 pandemic flu?

Scrolling TikTok the other day, I saw a fantastic post by comedian and veteran Patrick Loller. In it, Loller draws parallels between their experience as a veteran struggling to reintegrate to civilian life and people struggling to adjust to “post-pandemic” life. Some of the key points in the TikTok:

The anniversary of the “lasts” will start to roll by during the second week of March. The last time I taught in person. The last time I sat in a room with teachers. The last meal at a restaurant with loved ones. I picture lights in the windows of a tall building, turning off one by one until the whole thing is dark. Mid-March will mark one year since COVID-19’s impacts cascaded in the United States, isolating most of us at home as the world seemed to shut down.

For those unfamiliar: PBIS, or Positive Behavioral Interventions and Supports, is a framework intended to support student behavior in schools. According to the website PBIS.org, which is the US Department of Education PBIS website, PBIS is “a way to support everyone – especially students with disabilities – to create the kinds of schools where all students are successful.”

Are you thinking of implementing mindfulness, breathing, yoga or other wellness-focused social-emotional learning in your classroom? These practices can be powerful ways to develop self-awareness and wellness tools for life, but beware: these practices can also be unhelpful or even harmful, too. As with any new practice, we educators should think critically about mindfulness, breathing, yoga, or wellness practices before implementing them. Here are some of my favorite resources to help with this critical analysis: