Tag Archives: education

Real Talk for New Teachers: Tools for a Sustainable Career OUT NOW

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This is me as a new teacher (yes, we actually had chalk boards then!) back in 2000. I had a lot to learn about how to manage my life as a new public school educator.

Now, 25 years later, Penny Bishop and I have a book out today just for new and beginning teachers called Real Talk for New Teachers: Tools for a Sustainable Career (with Routledge). We deeply hope it helps educators build a humane and sustainable career in teaching. The book is loaded with advice from veteran teachers, new research on how to fight burnout, and opportunities for reflection and building your own personalized plan. I wish I had this book back then, would have saved me many a sleepless night and helped me to enjoy more of my life.


You can find it at your local indie, the publisher, or online retailer. We’d be so honored if you shared this with your educator circles, mentor program leaders, principals, and new teachers. Please reach out if you are interested in reviewing the book or want to review a copy for your course or school.

Happy summer, teachers, you did it!

PS- I am pretty sure I still have these pants. And they are back in style. 🙂

New Article out in Middle Grades Review: Self-Directed Learning and Service Learning in Middle Grades

I’m excited to share that our new scholarly article has been published today in the academic journal the Middle Grades Review: Self-Directed Learning and Service Learning in Middle Grades: What are the Connections and Implications?

This one is a long time coming. I learned a great deal from Rachel Mark’s research on self direction, which inspired this article analyzing the connections between self-direction and service learning. Especially after the pandemic, and in the social media/attention economy, self direction in students is a challenge. After looking at the literature, it is clear that educators can build students’ self direction by engaging in intentional service learning that gives students independence, scaffolding, motivation, and communication skills to thrive. This article also shares a new framework that highlights the connections between these two concepts and approaches. I hope it is helpful to educators.

Let me know what you think!

June 2022

I look back at my last post, featuring a temp of -17, while sitting on my porch. The green surrounding me is radiating, ringing with bird songs. It is hard to believe, each season, that this miraculous, drastic change occurs, yet it does. Vermonters pour into the streets when spring finally comes. We say hi to everyone. We wear shorts when it is far too cold still. We buy flowers for the garden. We feel like me might just be okay. And our spring was long and cold and wet so it felt especially incredible (almost too hot, even) when we were graced with warmer temperatures.

And then we had another wave of Covid, but this time, whatever! Nobody cared. No mask mandates, policies where you don’t have to be negative to come to school, you can still come with symptoms. All the big events, unmasked. Anyone who hadn’t gotten sick did. So much for that spring feeling. It seems that living right now is the constant flow between joy, beauty, and illness, worry.

Then ongoing terror and horror and violence and the loss of sweet babies. The school shootings in Buffalo and Uvalde, Texas. This news took my legs out from me, it gutted and enraged me. It could be any of us, any of our kids. And these kids are OUR kids. There are no other people’s children. We cannot continue like this. We need to organize.

Join Moms Demand Action.

Call your representatives.

Demand action.

I have done all of these things and it is not enough.

It doesn’t have to be this way. Ask my friends in New Zealand and Australia, and most recently, Canada. I can’t say much more than this. I don’t have the words. I have a lot of thoughts about what society has asked of teachers during the Covid pandemic, and in the unending wake of gun violence. But right now, my thoughts are not yet organized. They will be.

For now, I am going to make it through the last week of school, celebrate my scholars and how far they have come. I’m going to keep looking at the leaves and the hummingbirds, keep my perch on the porch when I can.

Sending love and abundant June sunshine your way.