Never heard of it? Well, here is what you should know: National Board Certification is an advanced credentialing program with standards for what teachers should know and be able to do. Teachers are certified after passing a four part rigorous assessment. Candidates have to be licensed to teach with three or more years of classroom… Continue reading The Journey Through National Board Candidacy Part I

I had actually started writing this blog a while ago, but put it aside due to a personal health crisis. Now in the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, I have finished writing it and the blog seems a perfect fit for what all parents of elementary school age kids are having to live right now…… Continue reading Raising Children: What I’ve Learned From A Past Generation.

Dress codes which prohibit girls from wearing short shorts, spaghetti strap tops and just plain “show too much skin” are becoming a thing of the past.  More and more students and parents in school districts throughout the United States are raising red flags and signing petitions urging school districts to change their dress code policies.… Continue reading School Dress Codes:A Thing of The Past?

What truly makes a school a great place to learn? Don’t even waste your time looking at the Department of Education’s California Dashboard (The Department of Education’s system for grading schools. This replaced the old API system)… and it tells you nothing really! I work at a middle school that has seen a tremendous amount… Continue reading What REALLY Makes A School an Amazing Place to Learn?

  Mommy swap groups, yard sale groups, kids’ stuff, garage sale groups…you want it, the Facebook Marketplace probably has it. It might be used, but with the cost of new retail items increasing beyond the budgets of many individuals and families, the resale shopping craze is growing fast. For a parent, it’s a blessing. Why… Continue reading It’s Back To School Shopping! I Have a Parent Challenge: Buy Used and Save The Difference.

Blah, Blah, Blah… Yes, I love blogging…even if nobody cares about what I have to say. Ha! Ha! Actually, I now have a few subscribers! Maybe this will grow over time. Even if it doesn’t, I enjoy writing about parenting and education. I love researching too! So not only do I get to write, I… Continue reading A Secret Desire Unleashed! Can You Guess What It Is?

STEM workshops, STEM classes, STEM schools and even the toy industry is now capitalizing on this. AGHHHH! I first started hearing about STEM around 2012 while teaching music at my current middle school. STEM has actually been around since president Dwight D. Eisenhower created NASA.  Shortly after that, President Kennedy pushed for innovation in the… Continue reading It’s STEAM Not STEM!

“Close your Chromebooks all the way please, I need your attention up front,” I tell my class of thirty seven band students who had been studying for a music vocabulary test on a computer web site called “Quizlet.” “We need to go over a few words together, so I need your eyes front.” I look… Continue reading Technology in Schools: Is It Too Much?

So what did kids do with themselves before TV? Seriously, how in the world did they entertain themselves without driving their parents nuts! How did mom ever get the cooking done? Oh how I’d love to hop into a time machine to see how parents managed their world before TV was invented! Our son Matthew… Continue reading Our Parent Experiment: The TV is “Broken.”