Category: Blog

  • Top 12 Global Teacher Blogger Discussion: March 2016

    What are the best examples you have seen of teachers closing the gender gap in education? I wrestled with this question for a few weeks because I thought the question implied that the educational gender gap meant that male students have the upper hand. However, I think the current state of education favors female students.…

  • Joshua Katz’s TEDx Talk: Toxic Culture of Education

    Joshua Katz describes perfectly the plight of American education, the damage it does to our lower achieving students, and the super villains behind it all. “We need to pay attention to our students and who they are. . . . How can we help them be better students? . . . How can we help…

  • Friday Writing Challenge: I Miss High School

    Prompt: Something you miss I miss high school—not my teenage years but the years I spent teaching high school English. A few weeks ago, I went to the local high school with my son to see his friends play a 10-minute exhibition game as the half-time entertainment for the boys’ basketball game. As soon as I…

  • Friday Writing Challenge: 10 Interesting Facts About Myself

    This week’s prompt: Ten interesting facts about yourself. I’m a first generation American, born from Macedonian immigrants. This fact, however, is not what makes it interesting. What is interesting is what I gleaned from my family and what I have tried to pass on to my children. My parents and grandparents experienced America in a completely…

  • The Philanthropic Experience: A Student’s Perspective

    One of my current college composition student wrote a personal narrative essay that beautifully illustrates one of my ideas to reform education ( ). This is what I proposed in that post: The Philanthropic Experience For those students who don’t want to continue their formal education but aren’t ready to go out into the world…

  • Top 12 Global Teacher Blogger Discussion: February

    What are the top ten ways that administrators can help new teachers avoid burning out? Mentors: New teachers need to pair up with master teachers so that they have mentors they can turn to for help. There are so many problems and issues new teachers face their first years of teaching that it is difficult…

  • Friday Writing Challenge: My first kiss and first love

    Writing Prompt: Your first love and first kiss; if separate, discuss both My first kiss: The sun was shining through the branches and leaves. His face was luminous and shadowy at the same time. Our faces were already close. The makeshift fort had just enough room for our young bodies to sit facing each other, our…

  • Radio Interview: Inside Education with Sid Glassner

    If you missed my radio interview on Inside Education with Sid Glassner, here is the link: http://www.girardatlarge.com/2016/01/inside-education-author-introduces-the-uncommon-core/  

  • Friday Writing Challenge: A Favorite Movie

    Inside Out I know. This is a Wednesday, but when I started writing about Inside Out last Friday, I realized this movie was a post I needed to write about, not for writing practice, but to explore why it impacted me so profoundly. When I taught American Literature, I told my students that we study…

  • Top 12 Global Teacher Blogger Discussion: January

    What lessons can teachers offer to designers of software for the classroom? Software designers need to know these eight things if they are going to create a program for the classroom: Teachers and students must be able to access the program within the school, so designers need to understand the various filters and how they…