Travelers who visits the Musée d’Orsay in Paris will not be disappointed. It’s absolutely one of my favorite European museums. These art works by Caillebotte and Degas are just some of the treasured masterpieces that you will see here. The Floor Scrapers demand the viewer’s attention…showing a dramatic perspective. Look at the splayed stripes of the wooden …
Chartres Cathedral: now and then
Les trois femmes: my mother, daughter and I traveled to Chartres, France and visited Chartres Cathedral. The night before we drove from Paris to Chartres, we watched the movie that was filmed in Chartres called Cash / Gold Brick about a French adventure of a very handsome man who works in a perfume factory owned …
Matisse: Le Madras rouge
It was my first time visiting Philadelphia and I was there for the ISTE (International Society for Technology). My mom and daughter had come to Philly to make it a little vacation. There was a little window of time that I had off during lunch and my mom said, “Let’s go to the Barnes Museum.” …
ISTE inspiration for EdTech and teaching teachers
When I stress and feel nervous, I quote Eleanor Roosevelt. “You must do the things you think you cannot do. People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.” Her words remind me that it’s normal to be scared but pushing through and jumping in will make …
Girl Scout Gold Award: Melanoma Prevention
This is the happy face of a proud Girl Scout earning her Gold Award. My daughter, Zooey, spent a good part of the year working on her final Girl Scout project for her Gold Award. Zooey’s project focused on the education of skin care awareness and melanoma prevention, the disease that we lost my dad …
Advice from an elementary teacher about summer learning
Next year will mark my twenty-fifth year to be an elementary teacher. Parents ask me a lot of questions about how to keep their child learning during the summer. The best thing is to of course enjoy summertime and get in all the family time that school schedules get in the way of. Here are …
Advice from an elementary teacher about summer learningRead More
Dancing at Ivybrook Academy
My dear friend Kris surprised me with a question…”could you come dance at my school for career day?” Of course I said yes! When I grew up, I always said that I wanted to be a ballerina. I’m an educator with a dancer’s heart. The best audiences are always children. I was delighted and can’t …
The importance of having friends at work
Working with my closest friends makes my job a joy. Laughing together every single day makes me excited to get to work. I look forward to the coffee talk, lunch together and celebrating each other’s birthdays. When we have dull professional developments, it’s nice to have someone to look at and make faces. My work …
Beautiful Birthday Books for Children
Celebrating a child’s birthday with their peers brings so much joy. I’m on my twenty-fourth year of being an elementary teacher. For many of those years, we celebrated birthdays with cupcakes. What most elementary teachers do now is much more meaningful than cupcakes. We celebrate with a book. Parents choose a book, wrap it like …
Merge Cube
I’ve been working on my masters at ASU in learning design and technologies. I worked on an applied project and an evaluation in research. I was inspired to research and create an eLearning course on “An Introduction to Merge Cube.” It’s easily accessible and a lot of fun. I’m pushing it out to elementary teachers because it’s the teachers that need to …
Social Emotional Learning
I’m in my twenty-fourth year of being an elementary teacher and my passion has always been fostering a caring community. There is so much that can be gained from teaching young children social emotional learning. They need help learning how to navigate relationships, social awareness, and self-management which are all essential SEL tools to carry …
Wishing you a rosy school year
We’re back in school and if you try REALLY hard you can find the sweetness…my own kids are so happy to be back. My first grade students come to school with BIG smiles excited to learn in-person. Teachers are happy to teach at school and not virtually. It’s true that the soul is healed by …