Recent Posts

Making The Leap From Classroom To Admin (And How To Find A New Balance)

Making the Leap From Classroom to Admin (And How to Find a New Balance)

For five years, I was a teacher. Nearly everyone in our country can envision what (they think) a teacher does - even if it’s just from their experience in school. Naturally, it was easy to explain to people what my job entailed, whether that be to a Lyft driver, on a first date or to my family when I was home for holidays. At the start of this year, I entered a new role: Director of Personalized Learning. This role encapsulates a lot of things I really love, like using technology purposefully, re-thinking the teacher’s role in the classroom and…

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Teaching Students About #MeToo

Teaching Students about #MeToo

We know that teaching students about some current events topics can be difficult and even uncomfortable. But we also know that a curriculum grounded in current events gives students a foundation of knowledge to navigate complex issues and become global citizens. That’s why we created the Week in Rap and #FlocabFriday. We want to make it easier for teachers to have vital and challenging conversations about any news story. This is especially important with an issue as sensitive and expansive as #MeToo. #MeToo, as a movement, is about bravery and awareness. But teachers are not immune to the trauma at…

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How Hip-Hop Can Transform Our Classrooms

How Hip-Hop Can Transform Our Classrooms

For February’s #FlocabChat, we talked about hip-hop’s ability to transform classrooms and enhance lesson plans. While we covered a lot in our discussion, we wanted to break it down even further, as the benefits of using hip-hop within education are endless. A quick shout out to MC Educator Joquetta Johnson, our fearless discussion leader and hip-hop ed advocate! Her questions were thought-provoking and prompted a great conversation. If you missed the chat, we’ve compiled all of it here.

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How To Talk To Your Students About Fake News

How to Talk to Your Students About Fake News

Our students are growing up in a time where even traditional media sources can publish stories without definitively verifying the information. And once something is online, viewed and shared, it’s hard to rescind. The sharing of fabricated or murky stories is amplified by everyone with a social media account and the ability to publish. Many people are willing to publish outlandish news and images in an attempt to try to go viral. This happens frequently during natural disasters; for example the same shark has been spotted swimming down the freeway of every recent flood. So by this point, we should…

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Using Hip-Hop To Bring Social Awareness Into The Art Room

Using Hip-Hop to Bring Social Awareness into the Art Room

“They say I gotta learn, but nobody’s here to teach me. If they can’t understand it, how can they reach me?” - Coolio As an art instructor in the south, I try to reach my students where they’re at, using what they love. At our school in Knoxville, Tennessee, we have a big population of students who love rap music. So when I came across Flocabulary at an Arts Integration Conference some years back, I couldn’t help but feel it would be well-received. I want my students to have a direct connection to and an interest in what they learn, and…

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