In the middle school writing rotation, fiction writing came up on my unit map this year. While I have a curriculum that I regularly use to teach writing, I had a crazy idea- what if my students participated in the National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo)? NaNoWriMo is traditionally an adult-led tradition where people worldwide commit…
In March and April, the middle school students completed a racial justice unit in ELA class. One group of students read Ghost Boys by Jewell Parker Rhodes and another read Blended by Sharon M. Draper for their book clubs and discussed the books weekly. Both groups also read articles about the origins of the Black…
The middle school as a whole is reading the young reader’s edition of “The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind” this month in their student-led book clubs. This book is a memoir that tells the story of a Malawian teen living through famine in the early 2000s and his mission to learn enough about renewable energy…
Something that is relatively unique to this school is that we have multi-age classes. While I was growing up, and while completing my teaching degree, there was always a negative tone when speaking about a “split” class, like it was a bad thing. But that causes someone to think- Why would multi-age classes be a…
https://youtu.be/KExB1B47nwA
On November 18th and 19th, I went to Quaker retreat center, Pendle Hill for a retreat and training for “Educators New to Quakerism”. Thirty-three adults that work in various capacities at Quaker schools gathered together to learn the basics of Quakerism and to collaborate with one another. I’d like to share two things that I…