The Rookery

About two weeks ago, I listened to a remembrance of a front line worker who had died of Covid 19.  Yves-Emmanuel Segui was a pharmacist in Yonkers, New York.  Originally certified as a pharmacist in the Ivory Coast, Mr. Sequi had worked very hard to both learn English and pass…

So, we're one week in to summer and I just walked into my living room to find two children sprawled out on the floor, their screen time exhausted and their day stretching before them.  What to do? This is an unusual summer (understatement, I know).  We are coming off of…

It was strange talking to the Herons about George Floyd last Tuesday. We've had hard conversations about race in the past year but we've always been together in the meeting area for them. These faces that are usually so immediate when we are in a conversation were isolated in their…

My very favorite moment as a teacher is when the room is a maelstrom of varied, intense activity and I am utterly tangential to it.  The students know what they are about.  They have made their plans, they have learned their stuff.  They are on a mission.  Sure, they need…

At the end of three weeks, it feels like things have settled in.  I am so impressed with the Herons – they are approaching this with energy and good humor.  I love seeing them every day.  We have completed our first culminating event and we're ramping up for our on-line projects. …

I'm trying not to look at calendars – the amount of change in the past month is overwhelming.  It is humbling and exhausting to be trying to bring our Heron classroom online.  As a first year teacher, you often spend more hours planning than you do teaching and I've found…

My colleague Molly started this document the first night we found out that distance learning was a possibility.  We know how hard it can be.  We're doing it, too.  We wanted to share some tips from our collective years of working with kids (both yours and our own.) Please feel…

The bus pulling away on Tuesday. I kept a brave face on Tuesday until almost the end of the day.  But it was really hard to watch the bus pull away and know how fundamentally things could be changing in the weeks ahead.  As teachers, our days are filled with…

  Dan pointing out the effect of photosynthesis. Tuesday's STEM day was a great chance for the Herons to learn about a broad swath of fields – the afternoon afforded us a chance to dive more deeply (quite literally) into a single field.  Dan Hernandez came to teach the Herons…

The Herons at the entrance to the ropes course. As a teacher, I preach constantly about the need for failure as a part of the learning cycle. "If it's not hard, you're not learning." "When you mess up and fix it the learning sticks more than if you just get…