I teach 5th and 6th grade STEM in the lovely Pacific Northwest in a small, rural town called Chimacum. My goal is to help students discover that all learning is life-long and that 21st century tools can be used for work as well as fun.
Jul 08
Ever since I heard about 20% Time projects, Genius Hour, and Passion Projects I wanted to provide those opportunities to my students. The idea behind giving students class time to work on topics that truly interest them aligns with my views of education and schooling. While I do believe that kids should be exposed to …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/07/08/20-time-reflections/
Jul 08
This past school year I implemented a 20% Time/Genius Hour year-long project with my 8th graders. I’ll be sharing my reflections in a later post but for now I need to share three amazing presentations that came from the project. Students worked on their projects every Friday and their one requirement was to share the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/07/08/a-students-history-of-animation/
Jul 08
This past school year I implemented a 20% Time/Genius Hour year-long project with my 8th graders. I’ll be sharing my reflections in a later post but for now I need to share three amazing presentations that came from the project. Students worked on their projects every Friday and their one requirement was to share the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/07/08/a-student-in-drag/
Jul 08
This past school year I implemented a 20% Time/Genius Hour year-long project with my 8th graders. I’ll be sharing my reflections in a later post but for now I need to share three amazing presentations that came from the project. Students worked on their projects every Friday and their one requirement was to share the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/07/08/a-students-fbi-dream/
Jul 08
This September Chimacum School District will consist of a grades K through 2 primary school, a grades 3 through 6 elementary school, and a grades 7 through 12 jr and sr high school. In order to accommodate fewer students the middle school was consolidated into the elementary and the high school. I wrote about the …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/07/08/goodbye-to-chimacum-middle-school/
Apr 07
Ever since our district made the decision to reconfigure our main campus from a grades 3-5 Elementary, a grades 6-8 Middle School, and a grades 9-12 High School to a grades 3-6 Elementary and a grades 7-12 Jr/Sr High School I have been thinking a lot about next year. The reconfiguration forces me to choose …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/04/07/a-student-comment-has-me-thinking/
Mar 11
Teaching the engineering and design process is all the rage in the classroom right now. We focus heavily on helping students identify a problem, conceptualize a solution that fits within given parameters, help them test their model, and then encourage them to modify their design based on the results. These are all very important skills …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/03/11/guest-post-communication-an-important-part-of-engineering-challenges-in-the-classroom/
Mar 04
I Tweeted out the sessions and workshops I attended at this year’s NCCE Conference so I could keep track of all I did so I put them together into a Wakelet. Here’s what I went to (the Keynotes were both amazing even though I shared a lot of pics from the 1st Keynote):
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/03/04/this-years-ncce-ncce19/
Feb 09
My school district, Chimacum School District (CSD), has been experiencing an unprecedented decline in enrollment for the past bunch of years. When I started teaching at Chimacum Middle School (CMS) in 1997 there were about 370 students in grades 6 through 8. We had four classes at each grade level with approximately 120 students at …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/02/09/im-drawing-a-blank/
Jan 30
For years I’ve been wanting to give my students 20% of their class time to work on projects that matter to them. Call it Genius Hour or Passion Projects or 20% Time, it’s something I’ve been wanting to offer my students, but I never did. “How can I prepare kids for state exams if I …
Permanent link to this article: https://educatoral.com/wordpress/2019/01/30/genius-hour-is-as-cool-as-i-thought/
I'm a Curipod Ambassador! :)
I've presented at NCCE
2016, 2017, 2019, 2022,
2023, 2024, and 2025!
I presented at WSTA 2015!
