See Sarah Blog.

The #MeToo hashtag hurts. So many women around me have been harassed. So many women I respect and admire have been attacked. So many women I don't even know have shared harrowing stories, both of one-time events and daily occurrences. My heart hurts for these women and for our culture as a whole. My heart hurts for my son, who is little and learning confusing things - from us, about respect, and from others about degradation. My heart hurts for the good men I know who have either made mistakes, or not stopped their friends, or who were honestly oblivious to the scope of harassment going on around them. As wrong as it is, it hurts me in another way too. And maybe you won't understand. You might judge. But I want to you to listen. I can't say #MeToo. I've never been a victim of someone's malicious sexual advances. No one has ever made me feel unsafe in this way. I've gone back over my formative years with curiosity - am I repressing something? Did I consid...

This whole post might be off, but I don't think so. | Source  Everyone has a Thing in education they just can't abide. I've worked with teachers who disagree with numbering students or allowing bathroom breaks outside of lunch and recess. There's the much maligned clip chart. I personally lose my stuffing when teachers keep students out of Music because they're missing work in class. But there's something else that's creeping up right behind that as my number one classroom no-no. Attention Getters. You know, the Power Teaching "Class" - "Yes" or the sing-songy call and response, "One, two, three. Eyes on me!" - "One, two, eyes on you!" There's a million of them, as many as there are really great teachers who use them. I certainly don't want to disparage the teachers who rely on them. Teachers use what works for them, and we're all individuals, right? Well, yes. Of course. But my problem is t...

I'm a committed NPR listener. There's been, well, a lot of news lately,  and many things that I've been trying to reconcile in my head. I always feel like I can turn to the radio to help me understand and make sense of the world around me. This morning on my drive to work, there was an interview regarding the Las Vegas shooting and gun control. It was with a conservative talk show personality out of Phoenix, Chris Buskirk, and the meat of his interview with host Rachel Martin was that conservatives and liberals are not even having the same conversation on this topic. That stopped me cold. How true. I live in one of the most conservative states in America, and I have friends and family who are as Republican as you can get. (Of course, I have friends and family who share my liberal views and others who have very nuanced opinions. There are Libertarians and Anarchists and folks of all stripes in my circles - forgive the digression, but I just have to put out there that...

Columbine was an awakening. I was a senior in high school. Nearly done. Ready for college and future, and suddenly, my peers were looking at friends of mine - people we'd all known forever, but who favored boots and trenchcoats, loud music and facial piercings as The Other. My friends cared. They'd never tell you because they were Teflon-bulletproof-fuckyou people, but they were hurt that people they'd Red Rovered with and been to the skating rink birthday parties of, suddenly moved to the other side of the hall and eyed their backpacks suspiciously. The horrors ran together afterwords. I'll admit to being shocked but numbed to another  school shooting, another active shooter, another lockdown. Until Sandy Hook. By then, I wasn't just a teacher, I was a mom. It was a deeper slice, because these weren't older children, children struggling at the brink of adulthood, these were the faces I see every day. Their ages and the circumstances made th...

I had the best first week of school. This isn't hyperbole. I really believe I had the best first week of school I've had since my very first year when I really didn't know any better. And you know, maybe it's kind of the same thing - I'm in a new place. It's shiny and exciting. The kids and I don't know what to expect from each other yet. I haven't offended any staff members or parents yet. But it's more than that too. I was trying to explain it to some friends who still teach where I used to, and I was doing a terrible job of it. I'd said it was "like the expectations are equally as high, but maybe more grade level appropriate?" and flapped around vaguely. The girls knitted their brows and nodded, clucking that they sort of knew what I meant. I tried telling my husband, who is also a teacher, that it had "more of that feeling of elementary school, you know, like how it feels when you're a student and you feel cared for and...

I'm an Idaho-sized Edulebrity, and I think I'm uncomfortable with it. This week, I'm presenting at and attending a large conference. People are recognizing me from other state or regional conferences I've presented at. I've reached a thousand followers on Twitter. (which feels like an insane amount) This tweet happened: I'm completely flummoxed. Not because I don't think I have great things to say - I mean, let's be honest, I'd totally  follow me - but because I'm not *doing* anything to get noticed. Yes. I'm active on Twitter. Yes. I blog pretty consistently about things happening both in my classroom and my real, human life. Yes. I present at conferences in memorable ways with useful content. But I'm not doing that because I want to get picked up by a publisher or (sweet Cheez-its, no) be considered a "Thought Leader." I'm not out hustling and promoting my brand . Enter this morning's keynote. The author of Br...

We all have them about each other - about who we are as people, about what our jobs entail, what our families are like - sometimes for better and sometimes for worse. It seems that the more we are able to share those misconceptions with other people, and through that, gain support and acceptance for the skewed way we view each other, the less we care about correcting them. I've talked before about how in Idaho, if you hold a K-8 All Subjects Certificate, you are legally "highly qualified" to teach all  subjects in grades kindergarten through eight. Period. The end. Your college coursework is deemed enough to prepare you for any and all of those positions. I can't even begin to cover the countless flaws I see in this system. But I can bring your attention to two specific specialty areas covered in that certificate that are not what they seem. PE. Technology. (You thought I was going to say Music, didn't you? Pshaw. That would be so obvious. Hang in here ...