Random awesomeness
By Angela Watson
There were a record number of comments to the Why Great Teachers Quit book giveaway post. The topic really hit a nerve with readers and the discussion in the comments was both thought-provoking and a bit emotional. Thanks to all of you for sharing your experiences. The giveaway winner was selected using an online random number generator. The winning number is: #51, Erica! please email me with your mailing address and I’ll send your copy out.
The U. of Wisconsin-Eau Claire will be using The Cornerstone book as a classroom management course textbook beginning this summer!
Centennial School District (IN) has begun a 3 year plan to train teachers district-wide with The Cornerstone book and webinar!
The Cornerstone website was awarded the honor of eCollege Finder’s Top 50 Academic Educators. Check out the full list of award winners–you’ll find some great new blogs and resources!
Many of you are aware that I serve as the Educational Editor for BrainPOP Jr., and part of my role is to oversee the development of lesson plans on BrainPOP Educators. I wanted to let you know that we’re now giving away Moby t-shirts to the top three lesson plan submissions every month! If you’re a fan of BrainPOP, please share your lessons that include the creative use of BrainPOP resources. Use the submission form here–I’ll contact you if your lesson plan is accepted and published, and let you know if you’re one of the 3 monthly t-shirt winners!
This coming weekend, I’ll be attending the 2011 ASCD Conference in San Francisco. If you’re there and you’d like to meet up, send me an email, Facebook, or Twitter message! At last year’s conference in San Antonio, I had a fabulous time meeting up with book/website fans and would love to do the same in California! This is my first time in the bay area and I’m really excited about both networking and seeing the city.
As I’ve done for the past two years, I’ll be live-blogging many of the ASCD conference sessions. That means multiple blog posts from March 26-28 (Saturday-Monday.) If you’re interested, follow me on Twitter for updates about the session topics I’m covering. If you’re not interested, ignore the blog next weekend and my semi-regular posting schedule will resume afterward. I encourage you to check out the live blog, though, because it’s really cool–you can attend the conference virtually, typing your questions and comments and watching them appear in the live blog feed as I summarize what’s being said in the session.
Have a wonderful week, everyone!
Angela Watson
Founder and Writer
Sign up to get new Truth for Teachers articles in your inbox
Discussion
Leave a Reply
OR
Join our
community
of educators
If you are a teacher who is interested in contributing to the Truth for Teachers website, please click here for more information.
Congrats on your book being used as a textbook! How awesome 🙂 And I’m jealous that you’re going to the ASCD conference – I’ll be looking forward to your blog posts about them!
Thanks, Sarah! 🙂
Hi dear Angela, this is Ligia (from Brazil, the one you sent a copy of your book to), remember?
I´m just writing to say that we are using your book as a textbook on training our bilingual teachers down here as well. It´s been awesome!
It´s just so sad that you are this far away from us, otherwise we could arrange a conference with some of other bilingual schools we have down here…
Oh well… We are just happy with the book, tough.
Thank you sooo much, you have no idea how helpful your book has been to us!
May the Lord bless you more and more each day,
Ligia
Hi, Ligia! I remember you well! So cool to hear that the book has been useful. Thanks so much for the kind words and encouragement. Many blessings to you, as well. 🙂
Angela,
I am a middle school teacher who has started a website to inspire teachers. I was interested in the article you wrote about “Why Good Teachers Quit”. I think that too often we get wrapped up in our standards and all of the annoyances. One thing that we all forget is that those annoyances still exist in other careers. We have sacrificed enrichment and depth of understanding for shallow understanding of more material. For some reason we think that we “have” to do that or else something awful will happen to us. I don’t know how it is in other states but all of the state tests are 85% reading tests (even the math test) and only about 15% content.
I am also interested in the ranking of “Top 50 Academic Educators” award. Is that something that I would have to submit an application to be considered for or does the organization search throughout the internet to see who they should award this honor to? I have multiple blogs on my site including tutorials that teach teachers how to make foldables for their students. I am excited to see all that you are doing for education.
In response to Ligia’s post, I don’t know if the two of you can connect through Skype but it is a way I am starting to connect my students and staff with folks from all over the country and world. One of my blogs is called a Tech Blog. Skpye is one of the pieces of technology that I have an article about to encourage teachers to connect their class with authors, professors, and other professionals. My website is http://www.ideasforteachers.org.
One of the things I have enjoyed about my searches on the internet since the development of my site is the fact that so many other teachers have similar concerns as well as similar desires to encourage and inspire other educators. I think that the more we can collaborate with each other, whether it is blog to blog, e-mail to e-mail, or facebook to facebook, the more we will accomplish. We need to not see other teachers as threats but as a support system and their sites are places to draw encouragement. Thanks so much.