MORE 'MIDDLE-SCHOOL-MONDAY' POSTS
If you’re coming back to work after a winter break, welcome! I hope it was restful. Oddly (and wonderfully), I did very little work over break. Except reading, if you count that as work. Which I don’t. Obviously. But, isn’t it dreamy that READING is technically considered part of our work? [Which is probably why […]
A Crucial Strand of PD. We have an early-release day coming up. Does your school have those? Where you get to squeeze the work of a whole school day with students into a shorter time frame and then stay for meetings and/or professional development? Just typing that out is making me a bit tired. This […]
That a school librarian has something to say about reading incentive programs is not new. I’m not here to tell you whether or not to do them—but rather to talk about the one aspect of incentive programs that I see to be particularly damaging. Several teachers I’ve known have used (and use) Book Adventure to […]
Has our libraries’ mission to fill our shelves with books that reflect our students—and the world—ever been more important? We need reflective literature and #ownvoices books for all of our students. All the time. Today, let’s talk about money. Yes, money. Because to make a commitment to filling our shelves with diverse books, reflective literature […]
You know that social media phenomenon where everyone is putting forth their best selves and as users we can come away with a warped view of how fabulous everyone else’s life is? I don’t want this blog to be like that. I don’t want to share projects and ideas that have turned out successfully and […]
A couple of weeks ago, I wrote about The Crossover by Kwame Alexander and made a case for why it should be used in every middle school language arts classroom in the country. [Not even hyperbole! But, speaking of hyperbole, there is so much beautiful and accessible figurative language in The Crossover. You know. As […]
From the publisher: Claire’s life is a joke . . . but she’s not laughing. While her friends seem to be leaping forward, she’s dancing in the same place. The mean girls at school are living up to their mean name, and there’s a boy, Ryder, who’s just as bad, if not worse. And at […]
You may not have been expecting to open a Middle School Monday blog post and read about t-shirts, yet here we are. I love casual dress days and seeing both our students and my fellow teachers displaying their interests and personalities. Seeing a math teacher and YA enthusiast wearing a shirt emblazoned with Welcome to […]
We’ve all seen the same books used over and over in some Language Arts classrooms. Many* of them (*most of them) feature white characters and/or are written by white authors. All of the arguments we know and make for authentic representation in books on our shelves are just as important for the books that are […]
I’m just going to say it: librarians are predisposed to be good at infographics. [Just bear with me through any crazy generalizations.] We’re wired to be good at information. Putting that information into an appealing, visual package—using a favorite digital tool—well, that should be simple, right? Well, in a way. We have tons of […]
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