One of the other teachers at my school just told me that I must be a horse whisperer, because when I was gone for Grandma’s funeral, my students were just crazy.  I’m not sure if it’s cause and effect or simpler correlation, but I was happy to hear that!  That’s my silver lining for the day,…

I thought Madison was Halloween-crazy, but in retrospect, that was just the UW-Madison campus…  In Chicago, everywhere I go, there is talk and decoration in preparation for the upcoming holiday.  It is strange to me, the way that some of the shop windows have cute, cuddly-looking pumpkins and scarecrows, while others look like something from…

Chicago Public Schools has a day off today, for teacher inservices.  We’re here.  So far, though, my classes have been less than half full today…  Wow.  My students’ attendance overall has been pretty good; out of my classes of 25-30 students, usually 20-25 are in class.  (The same is not true for the sophomores and…

First off, suggestions on how to find the silver lining… Between sometimes negative staff departments, frustrated students, very long hours, not enough desks for my students, and a host of other daily distractions, it has been getting harder and harder to stay positive. Normally that’s not an issue for me, but lately it has been…

I can already forsee some of my friends wondering why I chose the quote above to introduce my philosophy of education… I have been asked by a lot of people over the past few months what my Theory of Education is.  For the most part, Teach For America’s is a good one:  “One day, every…

I will start with a brief overview of what school is like at Austin Busines and Entrepreneurship Academy (ABEA).  We are a small school on the fourth floor of a once-huge school; now, the first floor is all administration, the second is Austin Polytechnical, the third floor is Austin Voice and we are on the…