Are You Playing to Win or Playing Not to Lose?
I’ve been watching my boys play football since they were eight years old. Actually, before that, if you include flag football. And in all...
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Sep 24, 20182 min read
Whose Life Are We Preparing Our Kids For?
I had flown down to St. Louis over the weekend for the #DigCitSummit and my layover in Chicago was met with a pleasant surprise. There...
Sep 15, 20186 min read
Five Characteristics of the Divergent Teacher
The idea of divergence is occasionally envisioned as two paths diverging in the wood, perhaps thanks to our friend Robert Frost. However,...
Sep 8, 20183 min read
Am I as Perfect as that Other Educator on Social Media?
Most of us know, in our heads, how social media can skew day to day life. We talk about this in relation to how our kids need to...
Sep 1, 20184 min read
People Are More Than Their Roles
I am a Director of Innovation and Technology. That is my role title. For people who don’t know me in my “every day” position, that...
Aug 27, 20182 min read
The Beauty of a Clean Slate
When I was a teacher, I did my best to ignore the talk of students in the grades below my own. At the beginning of the year, I would be...
Aug 19, 20183 min read
Be an Upstander: When the effect we have collides with the choices we make
In my district, the district administrators (with the exception of the superintendent and the business administrator) are all housed in...
Aug 10, 20184 min read
When You Begin to Doubt the Power of Relationships
Quite a few people I know focus heavily on data and research. They’re all about if things have been tested out and if they can be...
Aug 4, 20183 min read
The Power of Mindset
As I’m working on the mindset chapter for my upcoming book, it has been bouncing around my brain how I can incorporate growth mindset and...
Jul 16, 20184 min read
The Value and Necessity of Forgiveness
I watched a video on Facebook yesterday about The Mengele Twins – a woman who was kept with her twin sister as a science experiment...
Jul 13, 20183 min read
On the Continuum of Teacher Engagement
One of the topics that I speak about in my keynotes most often is teacher engagement. I feel that the level of engagement and efficacy we...
Jul 11, 20183 min read
Is it better to be kind or right?
I am on Twitter because my friends are there. The ones who push my thinking and who I want to see what they are doing professionally...
Jul 6, 20183 min read
When Doing Nothing Causes Distrust
I believe that it is human nature to want to trust people, but it’s definitely a feeling that when broken, takes a great deal of time to...
Jul 2, 20184 min read
When The Ball Finally Drops
I was sitting in the car on my way to a doctor’s appointment this morning desperate, mentally willing my blood pressure to lower. I had a...
Jun 16, 20185 min read
Why Do Teachers Disengage?
A few months ago, I wrote a piece called The Rules of Teacher Engagement which discussed teacher engagement and what it means when...
Jun 9, 20183 min read
#ItsTime
The world is finally beginning to wake up to the issues of mental illness and the far-reaching effects that it has on everyone’s life....
Jun 4, 20182 min read
Kids These Days
I truly believe that part of being an advocate for kids is believing that all of them, no matter what, possess redeeming qualities. I...
May 24, 20182 min read
The Opportunity for Improvement: “We’ve always done it this way” isn’t a why
So many times in education I think we gravitate toward one idea or teaching strategy and hold onto it like it’s the only way to do...
May 13, 20183 min read
Who Do You Want to Mirror?
I am absolutely hooked on the book The Body Keeps Score: Brain, mind, and body in the healing of trauma by Bessel Van Der Kolk, MD. It is...
Apr 23, 20184 min read
Self-awareness & Advocacy for Educator Mental Health
Because of my upcoming book The Fire Within: Lessons from defeat that have ignited a passion for learning, I am asked a lot about...
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