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You’re Doing The Best You Can…And That’s Enough
My first year teaching middle school was …well, let’s just say it wasn’t pretty. I had spent my teacher prep program determined I was going to be a high school English teacher. Students would love discussing literature as much as I did, and would turn in glorious essays filled with thematic connections, thoughtful historical references,
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Designer or Design Thinker?
Innovation is when something new is created and implemented that adds value. Inventions happen every day, and every year inventions find their way into our classroom. It’s only when an invention adds value that they become an innovation. A lot of times we get caught up in the invention, or the idea. I call this
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Digital Detox Part 2
I’m starting to podcast my blog posts, so if you’d rather listen than read, check me out on Anchor, or any other podcast medium, under #CageFreeThinking. They aren’t polished and professional… just me talking.) Okay, so I’m still working on the digital detox, and with mixed results. I think releasing the grip on the phone
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Digital Detox
For Christmas, my daughter bought me a deck of cards. But they aren’t your ordinary cards. These are Digital Detox cards. On each one there is an idea of a way to be less reliant on digital technology. I knew I was having issues with my tech reliance, but getting those cards from my daughter
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The Backwards Brain Bicycle
A couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post about the Good Habits book I had just finished reading. This week, I’d like to share a fun video I watched on the Backwards Brain Bicycle. We’ve heard the phrase, “It’s just like riding a bike” but what happens when the rules of riding the bike
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Discovering the Power of the Squiggly Line
When I was little, my dad was on the road a lot for work. So when he was home, we’d often go out to dinner so my mom could take a break from cooking. The best restaurants were the ones with plain, paper placemats because those were the ones in which creativity could flourish. My
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Willpower Alone Won’t Make that Goal Happen
We spend a shocking 43 percent of our day doing things without thinking about them. That means that almost half of our actions aren’t conscious choices but the result of our non-conscious mind nudging our body to act along learned behaviors. – Good Habits, Bad Habits inside book inside flap
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I Do Not Think that Tweet Means What You Think It Means…
If you’ve been on Facebook for any decent amount of time lately, you’ve probably seen this post: It seems like every so often, this coupon, or other fake ones from Southwest, Disney, etc., make the rounds online. The scam encourages people to click on a link and follow a few simple steps to claim their
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Look Both Ways Before Accepting Information as Truth
When I say the term “information literacy” what comes to mind? For most, they think of research … perhaps for an academic paper or maybe to double check the facts during a presidential debate. But information literacy is sooo much more than that. The United States National Forum on Information Literacy defines information literacy as
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Let Them Speak
I attended a student panel on eSports. Six high schoolers had given up their time to come talk to educators about gaming and eSports leagues. Within five minutes, the questions had shifted away from students and were directed at the adults. Questions like: What about the violence? What about the hardware needs? What protocols need
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Don’t Wait for the Postmortem to See if You’re Sick
“Educators have long complained that end-of-year, “summative” assessments are not useful because the results are not available until fall when their students have moved on to the next grade.” (Is this the end of end-of-year testing? Education Dive) Okay… I’m not a high stakes (I mean “end-of-year”) testing fan either, but … Summative assessments are
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Function and Agency
I spent a year digging deeply into the concept of student agency with teacher teams. We tried to define what agency looked like for a particular grade level, and then how to use that definition to create a classroom culture that provided opportunities for students to develop and exhibit agency. Lately, as I work on
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Laura K Spencer, Ed.D. 