Amy’s Reflections

My nieces.... 1 month young 💜 It has been a challenging week to say the least, our lives have all changed immensely as this COV-ID19 crisis has shut down the physical world so many of us are used to interacting in daily and forcing us to re-think school in virtually (pun intended) no time in order to provide consistency and balance for everyone. We have had to redefine what balance means in our personal lives and in the world of education. In the world of education, administrators have taken a deep dive to develop a meaningful and supportive eLearning environment  tirelessly on behalf of all stakeholders. Our teachers have embraced this new reality for the most part or have come to accept that it is going to have to be for now but either way, they are deeply dedicated to finding a way to make it work for their students. Some are troubled by the new realities their families face and are seeking solutions by arguing about school schedules to try and figure out how to mana...

This month I became the aunty to the two most amazing identical twin baby girls. There are so many things that I can not wait to do with the little ladies, teach them, and see who they become. As we sat in the hospital shortly after they were born on Valentines day, my mom and the girl's other grandparents wondered about the world they would grow up in and how different it would be. The world today is so much more complex for our students and it continues to change every day. My mom started talking about the impact of social media and wondering if the girls would ever drive a car. I found myself wondering about when the education world would finally wake-up and start seriously making some changes to this outdated model that we continue to try and patch new initiatives into rather than rebuilding from scratch. I spend countless hours reading and engaging with other educators across the globe who know that the system is broken, yet year after year, I go back to the same system with t...

Over the holiday break, I resolved to take some time for myself to relax after a busy fall semester. I had started Make Learning Magical as I had read about it on Twitter and it seemed like it would be a good book to help support the Applied Arts department that made some huge progress last year under new leadership. I recommended the book to the instructional leader as part of their shared departmental goal and PLC work for this school year, as the author was a former Culinary teacher that I was hoping could really take our already fantastic Culinary classes to the next level and also perhaps provide some room for reflection and growth for all the other area's of the department as well. Our new Culinary teacher immediately went out and bought herself a copy and began reading the book, before we even had a chance to order the books. After finishing Innovate Inside the Box which really resonated with me, particularly after my dissertation work around UDL, I purchased ten copies fo...

How do you measure success? How do you reflect on a decade? The week between Christmas and New Years is always a time when you look back on past successes and failures and think forward to setting goals for the future. Lately, I have found myself at an odd crossroad. I have always been a very goal oriented person and thrive when I have goals to work towards whether they are personal wellness, fitness, travel, education and/or work related. Since defending my dissertation on October 1, I have struggled to figure out what exactly my next goal is. I have found myself over the past few months struggle to commit to anything and everything whether it be an outing with friends, doing a Crossfit competition, travel plans, future career plans, etc. So I decided this week to take some time to try and just be with a simple to-do list where my goal has been to finish one book (I am still working on this), one small task everyday on my Google Keep list, spend as much time with Moe as possible, pl...

We have been spending a lot of time with some of our new freshmen friends and I have been reflecting a lot on those discussions and some of the challenges many of them face with trying to define who they are as people and to find their interests and passions.  As we have worked toward developing a capstone project and also moving towards restorative discipline approaches (more to come on this in later posts),  I wanted to share the below  lesson  plan  idea (s) and materials as a thought for a meaningful mini- lesson  for students as we end the decade and begin a new one after the holiday break. Perhaps as an opportunity to help students reflect on their growth and time to think about how they want to define 2020 (or even the decade ahead of them and putting this last one behind them in some cases). I also know we often have trouble keeping our students focused in the final few days before the break too...I still remember those struggles.  ...