It launched today. A superfluous program that even the idea of would have never been needed if North Carolina had not done so much damage to the teaching profession in the last eight years. It's called Teach North Carolina. Remember back in May when the state superintendent printed up a lot of glossy fliers for … Continue reading What TeachNC Really Does Is Show How Badly NC Has Treated Its Teachers

The fact that many teachers in this state (and others) have set up Amazon Wishlists is a strong indication of the NCGA's unwillingness to fully fund public schools. When Mark Johnson announced last school year that he wanted to use ClassWallet to “allow” teachers to “control” their supply purchases and give a private company the … Continue reading This Teacher’s “Amazon Wishlist” For The NCGA

We need our poets. Whether composed with rhyme or meter, or to music, or if it is just on paper in free verse for someone to interpret through cadence, we need their words. We need words put together to frame an emotion, an event, a doubt, a success, a life event, or something that never … Continue reading Sorry Trump Administration, You Don’t Get To Rewrite Great Poetry

Calendar flexibility is an issue that received much more attention in this last school year, and for good reasons. By 2017, North Carolina was one of only one of 14 states that had state laws that governed school calendars. The graphic below is from the Feb. 2017 Final Report to the Joint Legislative Program Evaluation Oversight Committee … Continue reading Reclaiming Calendar Flexibility: Doing What’s Right For Students

If Rep. Craig Horn could literally step back and truly listen to what he says in this article in the Carolina Journal, then he just might have an idea of what it is like to be the public school system in North Carolina for the past eight years. Rep. Craig Horn, R-Union, said the financial … Continue reading Irony Makes The World Go ‘Round: “Budget impasse frustrates preparation for financial literacy course requirement”

I am the proud parent of  two children. One is a highly intelligent and academically driven young lady who looks like her mother. The other one is what some in the educational field might call “special.” He looks like his mother as well. Specifically, that child has Down Syndrome and is on the autism spectrum … Continue reading Being a Teacher Who Lives With a “Special -Needs” Child

  Toni Morrison passed this past week. She was the first African-American woman to win the Nobel Prize for Literature and what she did (and still does) for this white, upper middle class male teacher is something that I will always value as a life-long student: she made me understand that I don't understand. And … Continue reading Before We Challenge Books, We Should Be Challenged By Them – In Defense of Being Uncomfortable And What Toni Morrison Taught Me

One of the best ways to gather a pulse of what is happening in the public education world of North Carolina is to follow the Twitter feeds of educational journalists, researchers, writers, teachers, and bloggers. That includes following Greg Flynn. Today he tweeted: Full credit where credit is due. His tweet is the impetus for … Continue reading iStation’s “Red Cape” & The Handmaid’s Tale

Our public schools are better than many lawmakers portray them to be - lawmakers who have never spent time as educators. A lot better. And the problem is not the schools. The problem is the lawmaking body that controls the narrative of how schools are performing. With the constant dialogue that “we must improve schools” … Continue reading Our Public Schools Are Better Than The North Carolina General Assembly Wants You to Believe