Reflecting as a life-long learner. Currently a 5/6 Social Studies teacher working on inspiring students to be agents of change. Working on equity, proficiencies, and creating a space where all students feel welcomed and engaged.
Middle level students always have plenty to say. They have strong opinions! The middle grade years is where they really begin to form thoughts, opinions and take a stance. It's important for us facilitators to guide them on how to develop these ideas, and defend them with research. We need to help them use their voice and learn how to appropriately communicate with their communities. We shouldn't be in the business of telling them what to think, we need to help them develop their thoughts into actionable change.
Remote learning shouldn't change that. At least that was the goal my Humanities co-teacher Joy Peterson and I set for our students as we began an argument writing unit a few weeks after we all were sent home to learn. We needed to plan a unit from start to finish to be done remotely and we really wanted to create something that promoted engagement and didn't introduce a lot of new "content" but allow students to strengthen skills we had worked on already. So we created an argument writing unit around the idea of... Remote Learning! We wanted students to really find their voice and tell their story.
We worked through a series of proficiency targets for this unit. Students used: Claim, Evidence, Analysis & Reasoning, and Big Ideas to work through their story. We started with this graphic organizer to help them organizer their work. We have been using this ClEAR graphic organizer during the year (Cl=Claim, E=Evidence, AR=Analysis&Reasoning). To help students decide on which side of remote learning they fell on (it's good vs. not good) we used another graphic organizer tool we worked with students on during the course of the year called a "snow globe". We created two snow globes for this unit where we asked students to do their "greats vs. gripes" of remote learning. Students used a universal list of "Big Ideas" to help them draw on themes and we use the same list all year to help the see connections among themes across different units. The phrases around the outside come from the "Big Ideas" list. Here are a couple of examples:
Once students developed their opinion we had them develop a full 5 paragraph essay around their thoughts and use a hierarchy of needs to help add depth to their argument. They used the other snow globe they did to develop a counter-argument in their piece. We also worked through some advanced writing skills by having students write hooks and we did a lesson on using transition words as well.
Once the writing piece was put together, it was time for the final 2 steps- pick an audience and put the final touches on it! Students were so excited to be able to use their writing piece to connect with some of the major stakeholders in Vermont education. We did an "editing camp" where students met with 1 of the 4 teachers in groups of 5 or 6 and we looked over their writing to add any tweaks. We helped them format their writing as a business letter email as well. We had numerous students send their letter to Dan French, Vermont Secretary of Education. Here's one example:
May 20, 2020
Dan French Agency of Education 1 National Life Drive, Davis 5 Montpelier, VT 05602
Dear Secretary French:
"Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today." -Malcolm X.
I believe that remote learning is unjust because it requires the use of technology and not everyone has access to it. It also makes people feel isolated and lonely because they can’t see their friends.
Because of remote learning, I can’t see my friends. Even though we text regularly and I see them on google meets, it would be nice to see them face to face. I work better when I am around other kids and talking things through with them because they motivate and encourage me to do my best work.
I am relying heavily on technology for google meets, docs, and school assignments. Sometimes, technology doesn’t work, or it’s really glitchy. That makes it hard to get the information I need.
Another reason I dislike remote learning is there’s not a lot of stability. Sometimes I finish school at 2, other times at 3. This can make days feel longer and disorganized. This makes it hard to do my best work because I need structure in my school days.
I think the most important aspect of remote learning is responsibility. I think this because remote learning includes a lot of calls with teachers, so you need to be responsible and remember to attend those meetings and pay attention during them. You also have to know how to take responsibility for your actions. If you miss a call or forget to do work, you have to take responsibility and talk to your teacher. Being responsible also means doing what you’re supposed to do with devices. Remote learning includes using a lot of devices so you need to make sure you’re doing school work when you’re supposed to, not watching YouTube.
I understand that there are some things about remote learning that are good. Like getting to wear comfy clothes and set your own schedule. In addition, remote learning makes you a better, stronger, and more tech-savvy person! On the whole, remote learning isn’t too bad, but although there are some great aspects, I can’t wait to go back to school!
In conclusion, remote learning has been challenging in many ways. Technology has tried our patience, and we all miss interacting with people face to face. I hope you will consider these issues before making a final decision about 2020/2021’s school year.
Sincerely,
We had letters sent to our district Superintendent, Elaine Pinckney and Jeff Evans, our district Director of Learning and Innovation. Other letters went to our building principals, community members, family members and even one to our local newspaper as a letter to the editor.
What made this unit really come full circle was that every adult that received an email from a student responded. Dan French wrote each student back, as did our central office staff and principals. Students were so pleased that their voices were heard and really showed them that they can make an impact. During remote learning we had every single student complete this writing piece. Every. Single. Student. They want to engage, they want to be heard. When we give them the structure and tools it's time to get out of the way and watch them shine.
Crack. Splash. Gasp. That’s the response to ice giving way and being plunged into the frigid water. The body’s natural reaction is to panic, flail and draw in air as fast as possible. One has little time to plan a way out and must rely on instincts and training. That was about how my body responded when the Governor announced face to face schooling would be canceled for the remainder of the school year. What do I do now? How can I still be a teacher? How do I care for, and support these students that I won’t see again?
Much like making it out of the ice-cold water, the next step is to avoid system failure. When a person has made it to shore the first step is stopping the body from going into shock from hypothermia. When the body begins to go into shock it shuts down extremities and only focuses on running the essential organs. Once again that was the metaphor I faced, my team faced and school systems in general had to grapple with in rapid time. What are the “essential organs” of what we do? What must we focus on to keep the system going?
Relationships
My first answer is relationships. In the middle level, relationships are essential to the success of the student. Relationships have been at the heart of middle level best practice for years. My team and I have been doing daily advisory this year with a variety of activities for each day. Monday is relationship day, Tuesday is trivia, Wednesday is a check in survey, Thursday is a restorative circle and Friday is games. When the face to face schooling stopped, we started meeting with our homerooms on the very first Monday. We let kids know how much we missed them and also told them we would stick to our normal advisory routines as much as possible. My team has been running remote daily advisory now for 5 weeks and we have kept attendance records, we average around 95% engagement every day. Our school sent out a survey to families as well and the overwhelming response was how much the families and students liked advisory keeping going. We have done so many other things to interact with students (office hours, live classes, etc.) and nothing has seen the engagement that our daily advisories provide. By taking attendance we are able to follow up via email to students who we do not see and report back to the school on any student we don’t see for a few days. Luckily that has been a very small percentage to date. Students thrive when they feel connected. They are eager to see their peers every morning and many join early or stay late just to have informal conversations with each other. We have noticed many students connecting that had not previously been in peer groups while at face to face school.
Routine
Maintaining routine has been equally important. In times of trauma the response we hear as professionals is to keep routine. Keep things predictable. There is no question that the cancelling of face to face school has been a traumatic event. Traumatic for us all, teachers, families and students alike. So keeping a routine became something that was a necessity and our best response for our students. We kept advisory days the same, adapting of course, for what was needed to be done remotely. We kept other things the same as well. In ELA, students blog on Mondays, and they still do. We converted our schedule this year to a double block format and since we have been on remote learning, we have kept our daily tasks as double blocks- math and science on one day, humanities on the other. Every Thursday we have students send emails home about what they have been doing at school that week and since we have been remote, students have still been sending their emails, except now they send them to their parents and to their homeroom teacher. Not a lot of students are reaching out for tech support or specifics of what is expected because they are doing tasks and using platforms that they are familiar with and have been using all along. This has also helped with the stress levels of the families for the very same reasons.
A look at our weekly grid
Reflection
Having students reflect daily has become our link between our commitment to relationships and routine. I was having a meeting with Scott Thompson from the Tarrant Institute as our Governor announced the change in how school would happen. We had an idea the announcement was coming, but I remember looking at Scott right after the announcement and saying, “Now what? How can I keep connecting with them and asking them to learn new things?” And in his normal way, he said “I think I may have something.” What he produced was a reflection document that he had worked on with another school in Vermont as they too were preparing for remote learning. The document was grounded in a list of activities and experiences that students could choose from and then at the end of their learning day would reflect on all they had done. I absolutely loved it. And in the true Vermont education (#vted) way I was told to adapt and use in any way I saw fit. I brought the document back to my team and we all agreed this was a very manageable way to document learning. Each of us took responsibility for our homeroom group of students. We build our learning for the week on the top of the document, with links to videos, and resources where appropriate. Students can link to office hours, morning meetings and other classes from the document grid as well. Students go in at the end of their learning day and check off the boxes of tasks they completed and include a written and/or photographic reflection of evidence.
We as teachers go in through Google Classroom and leave comments and ask questions to keep the dialogue going. Students that do not do the reflection for a particular day get an email from their homeroom teacher. The email is not punitive in tone, but rather a welfare check-in. We ask how they are doing, did they forget to do the reflection, is there anything we can do to help? If a student misses a second day of reflecting within a given 5 day week we email again and “cc” the family as well. We ask similar questions but include a reminder that we are hoping to see the reflection done regularly. This second step seems to have a pretty immediate response. Families appreciate the reminder and it keeps the loop closed in terms of accountability. In terms of work flow the reflection document keeps things simple for everyone. Students are able to record their learning on one document, and teachers are able to provide meaningful feedback to a smaller set of students. For example, I’m responding daily to 20 student reflections as opposed to 80 student responses for an assigned Humanities task. This also helps reinforce our relationships with our homeroom students. We know them best, we know when they could provide a more detailed writeup, or when it writeup with a small level of detail is their best independent work. It allows us to get more meaningful feedback when sending those reminder emails. If a student has had a rough day, they will tell us as their homeroom teacher. They know we care and we are not trying to punish them, but we want to see them succeed in this challenging time of learning. Students and families know we are not “grading” any of these reflections, yet we see close to 80-85% of these completed on a daily basis.
I cannot imagine operating with traditional grades at a time like this. I am not sure how it would be possible to collect enough authentic work to give a letter or number grade. Thankfully, I work in a school district that has shifted to a proficiency-based approach to looking at student work. What a difference that has made in terms of making remote learning work. As part of the daily reflection, on Friday’s, students complete a self-assessment on one of our “Habits of Learning” targets. My team created this so that students could understand what we expect for work quality. We have been using this target for 2 years now, so when we introduced it as part of our reflection and remote learning plan it was easy to adapt and something students have had no problem working through. They simply look back on their reflections and work from the week, click the appropriate boxes below each level of the target and see where they land. From there they write a few sentences about something they did that they are most proud of and another few sentences setting a goal for next week.
Weekly goal setting is something they have done in their Thursday email home and with their Personal Learning Plans as well. Again, adapting successful routines to make meaningful reflection happen in a different setting. We are using similar models as well in our curricular courses. We are seeing students be able to advance their thinking in content areas without the external motivator of grades. They want meaningful tasks and meaningful feedback during the learning process more than a letter or number at the end. The convergence of these 3 Rs- Relationships, Routine and Reflection- has allowed our students to adjust successfully to remote learning. The level of detail in their daily learning reflections and the survey responses from families has given us the feedback that we made the correct choices. I am especially proud how quickly we pivoted, but I understand that it was because we only needed to adapt our systems rather than creating something brand new. One thing that has been reinforced to me during all of this is that my students crave relationships, they want more to connect with me and their peers than anything else we do. The content is in the back seat until their need for relationship is met. Once that is established, the content can be achieved through routine and reflection. It is a great reminder and opportunity to reset as a whole system as we have conversations about what face to face school will look like when the time comes. It is an opportunity to finally fix the plane while it is grounded, as opposed to what is commonplace- fixing the plane while we are still flying it. Remote learning is an opportunity to focus on the “essential organs” of what the middle level does best so that when we come out of the icy water and begin to warm up we are healthier and stronger. We know middle school is not a building, it is a set of beliefs and universal strategies that meet the needs of the middle level learner. When we employ these beliefs, we can teach middle school when it really is not in a building. So be safe, and be well. Know that feeling will return to those extremities. We have made our way out of the initial cold plunge and are starting to warm up to this remote learning thing. I begin each workday by listening to my favorite Coldplay song, “Everyday Life”, and the lyrics ring true now more than ever. “What in the world are we going to do? Look at what everybody’s going through. What kind of world do you want it to be? Am I the future or the history?... Got to keep dancing when the lights go out. Hold tight for everyday life.”
Intentionality matters (I may have just made up the first word). The Humanities Unit that I just finished co-teaching with Joy Peterson was eye opening. Westward Expansion could be a dry, boring unit largely focused on memorizing trivial facts. However, the approach Joy and I took was to focus on the learning targets. What skills did we really want students to know at the end of our unit? Memorizing the dates of the Lewis & Clark expedition, no? Being able to look at topics like that, along with, the Trail of Tears, the Goldrush, Manifest Destiny, and the Vermont experience of the 19th Century and take away big ideas and themes of human interaction, most definitely!
Starting with what we wanted students to know helped us frame out our summative task. Students would work through a series of workshops regarding Westward Expansion in 19th Century America and create an e-book to share their major takeaways. We helped them learn how to use a graphic organizer called a Snow Globe to help them sort their learning from topic details, to big ideas, to universal truths. The skills we wanted them to demonstrate while sharing their content knowledge was: Determining Big Ideas, Presenting Information and Grammar, Usage & Mechanics (GUM). Here's the task sheet we provided students with for their summative work. It includes scales for each of the learning targets.
To help students understand the Learning Target, Big Ideas, we taught the target directly. Taking the content away to directly introduce the skill that we were really looking for mastery on. I blogged about how we did that here. The power of that direct instruction, and providing students with a tool like a snow globe to help them sort their understanding allowed them to move along the scale. It was easy for them to self-assess because they knew where to look to see the difference between the 2, 3, and 4. When building their e-book on bookcreator they could use the Big Ideas for headings on the page, or if they wanted to try for the 4 when it came to Presentation of Information, they could use their Universal Understandings as page headers. You'll notice on the task sheet that we broke the scale down for Presentation as a checklist. Making the 3 or "target" easy to hit if you followed the list with clear distinction between the different levels of how they score would be recorded.
What you'll see in the links below to actual student work is clear understanding. Not only have students mastered the content understanding of Westward Expansion, but they were able to do it in a way that demonstrated their understanding of the Big Ideas and Universal Truths associated with good learning in general, in any content area. Feast your eyes on some work that shows the power of where proficiency-based learning meets student interest and results in deep learning for all.
"We thrive on the downfall of others and then we take credit for their land."
"If you want help and gain respect from others you must do the same to them."
Two sentences, written by a 6th grader. I was blown away. These thoughts could be from the start of a high school thesis. Middle Level students are so capable of deeper thinking if we give them to tools to express themselves. The more and more I use formative tasks to teach the actual skills I want students to do, in this case understanding Big Ideas, the more and more I believe how powerful the shift to standards based learning is.
I started co-teaching a Humanities unit this week with Joy Peterson, our ELA teacher. The wall is open! (we share a folding wall) We did a very successful one last year on 18th century Vermont. This year we are doing Westward Expansion. We planned it out using a KUD (Know, Understand, Do) which really helped us sort the grain size of the learning. It allowed use to use the Ks to plan the days, Us to think about the deeper learning we were looking to see and the Ds to plan our formative and summative tasks. The Do we are assessing is "Big Ideas". To help students understand we took time actually teach the target, not just leave it until the end to provide feedback. It was powerful learning for us and the kids.
We used the story of the Tortoise and the Hare. It's important to make the lesson as universally engaging as possible. By doing that, students are able to focus on the target and the learning and not trying to develop new content understanding at the same time. To help students organize their thinking we introduced a graphic organizer called a snow globe (how timely!). The information that goes inside the snow globe is essentially the 2 on the target scale, the big ideas that go on the outside are the 3 or target and the universal understandings go at the base of the snow globe and are the 4s. We did the Tortoise and the Hare and used the snow globes before moving on to using the snow globes again when looking at diaries of people on the Oregon Trail.
The activity was so successful we are using the snow globe as a daily exit task as students move through the different workshops. They started with Lewis & Clark (and Sacagawea), next week they will look at the Trail of Tears and Vermont Life. Students will use their snow globes from this past week tomorrow to write a diary entry as a member of the Corps of Discovery. Here's the one I started the blog with. The student wrote this after listening to a podcast from the National Park Service about the Lewis & Clark expedition (Joy and I planned for a variety of learning- video, podcast, online article and book) I can't wait to see what they write!
Of course I wait until the end, but it's worth mentioning we started the unit by playing the Oregon Trail. The best day ever for me as a student who loved playing this game back in my elementary school (shout out to Chamberlin school in South Burlington).
If any readers would like to play the 90s game- here's the link and YOU'RE WELCOME! I'm very excited to see how this all continue to progress!
What an AMAZING experience. Anyone interested in being inspired about what's possible in the middle grades needs to go to this conference. It's exhausting, amazing, fun all in one.
5,000 teachers, administrators and other educational leaders converged on the Gaylord Opryland in Nashville, TN over 3 days. With an 80 foot Christmas tree, indoor boat rides and everything else you could imagine inside a 9-acre hotel/convention center as a backdrop the space was as overwhelming as the conference itself.
The two keynotes were amazing! Principal Baruti Kafele and Jessica Lahey (NY Times Bestseller) set the tone each of the weekday keynotes. Their message was similar- every student can succeed, we all have the ability to be the champion for one kid that can change the trajectory of that students' life, and helping students grow as learners- make mistakes, let them learn for themselves (DON'T KEEP TYING THEIR SHOES!). All aspects of these keynotes speaks volumes to what is at the heart of Middle School learning- relationships. It takes time to make connections and know students as humans and for them to see the human aspects in us as their teachers too. Even the workshops spoke to how important this is. Kim Campbell said in her Restorative Justice session- the first 6 weeks of school, 60% of the time should be spent on Social Emotional connections, 40% on curriculum; and the rest of the year flip it- we should still be spending 40% of our school day just building relationships and connecting with our students. And guess what- it IMPROVES test scores, lowers behavior incidents, and increases attendance! As Rick Wormeli said, get them moving (when the butt goes numb, the brain goes dumb!), have fun with them, make them look forward to coming into your class everyday!
What's great about an off-campus conference is making connections with other educators from around the world (Australia, Canada educators were in attendance) and time to debrief the overload of information you take in each day. Also taking time to facetime back home helps keep a smile on your face too:
My daughter Sophie
When debriefing, it helps to have an awesome team supporting you. My whole academic team was fortunate enough to go. Simply put, they rock. I work with the best people- Joy, Amy and Michael are amazing educators! I'm not sure how the universe put us all on the same team but it did and our students are lucky to have those 3. We strive everyday to improve the lives of our students and we work at putting those relationships first. We all went to different workshops and reflected on ways to self-improve as educators and as a team. Our most immediate shift is implementing a new schedule starting in trimester 2. Guess what? We've added advisory to be 3 days a week (up from 1), added time in the 2 other days to talk with kids first thing in the morning, a weekly survey of our homeroom kids to give them a low threat way to tell us what is happening outside of Sterling and at home, and specific times to sit 1:1 with kids to just talk. I'm amazed at how willing Sterling is to make adjustments quickly when we know we can do something better for our students. We are so lucky to be supported by our admin team, Jackie Parks and Greg Marino, all the way up to central office (our district sent at least 17 people to Nashville)!
While digging into content-specific topics to much larger ones like trauma informed teaching, making advisory work, social-emotional learning and restorative justice each of us left with a to-do list of next steps. I know that we can't wait to get back to our school and district and share our learning and be change makers. It also gave us time to pause and appreciate our reality though. Vermont (shout out #VTED) is at the forefront of much of this work. #VTED educators were presenters throughout the conference, I'd estimate that at least 15 different #VTEDucators presented over the 2.5 day conference.
My conference ended with my presentation- literally the last time slot on the last day. I was honored to present with Scott Thompson of the Tarrant Institute about how schools and teams can adjust schedules to provide better opportunities for kids to learn the way we know they learn best.
While Scott and I had some initial hesitation about how many would attend the final workshop, our room filled quickly with 50 attendees (including my awesome teammates!). Scott and I even received gift bags from 2 new friends from Hawaii that came to our presentation.
What a thrill to present at the national conference, and end the week of memories with one I certainly won't forget. As tired as I am, I can't wait for #AMLE2020 in Washington, DC. Consider joining me! More coffee please!
Our Superintendent came into our school this week and asked how things were going. I greeted her and responded, "this job is hard!". Elaine is so supportive and reminded me that yes, indeed it is, and that we are in the longest stretch of the school year without time off. It's a long time between the end of August and the last week of November and only have 1 day off. Stamina hasn't yet been developed in our students so signs of fatigue creep in. Like when at home, when I'm tired or my family is, it's hard to stay positive, the house gets a little messier and you often end up working hard to break even, to stay afloat. We're seeing signs of this at school too- students are struggling to stay positive with each other, at times being downright unkind, they talk about being stressed by assignments- even though we haven't increased work expectations since the 1st day of school. They seem to be treading water to survive rather than swimming forward.
2 weeks ago was especially hard. I came home last weekend frustrated having a hard time trying to grapple with the current mood of the school and wanting to fix it. I laid low, stayed quiet and began to get to work trying to address the climate first. As I grow as an educator nothing becomes more apparent to me over and over again than the saying I walked into teaching with from my grad school time at UVM- "They don't care how much you know, until they know how much you care." I have believed this from the second I went into teaching, and 15 (!) years later I believe it now more than ever. So this week I went back to making connections and teaching about it. We started our advisory on Monday talking about "Would you rather", an activity I created asking students to examine the world they would rather live in. The whole activity was deeply moving and the level of participation was more than I could have expected. I feel confident that students left and went into the halls that day as positive agents of change. They went out looking to make their world the one they want.
I sat more with students. I made an effort to connect and check in with phrases like "how are you doing today?", "what do you have exciting going on this week?". I asked these to every student that came to check in work, ask questions about classwork and every interaction I had with students. This work of connecting first, educating second was only reinforced when I went to the Rowland Foundation Annual Conference. The topic of addressing systemic racism, and inequity in our schools and society at large is a heavy one. Nothing about it was comfortable or easy to hear. But it is our responsibility to work towards the goal and make progress one day at a time, one person at a time. The first step, at the heart of it all, is connections. Connecting people, promoting humanness, interrupting the cycle of racism, bias and inequity are what it takes to move society forward. I could see that more work was needed in my curriculum and our school system as a whole.
So next steps, the post is running long... I'm having students dig deep into their culture and background for the next month. As I learned Wednesday in the mindfulness workshop, we need to know ourselves before we can really begin to know others. So students are looking at all aspects of their culture- from their belief structure to their passions to their ancestry. We're also beginning personal interest projects next week around our work on the 19th century in US History. Allowing students to dig deep into something that are excited to research more and teach others about. Advisory work will continue to focus on empathy, kindness and tolerance. Creating a culture where we call others in to our community and call others out for unkind behaviors. Continuing to work on my AMLE presentation about master schedules rebuilds that promote relationships before more curriculum time because why I want our school to rebuild our schedule is because my goal is to have a school-wide advisory. Where all people in our building are working together to promote the values that my students voted on. The words they used to describe their ideal world- LOVE, ACCEPTANCE, SAFE, WELCOMED, SMILES, RESPECTED, TRUSTED.
This is a great group of kids, the energy is so positive, I'm really enjoying these first weeks. In my homeroom, our advisory has been amazing. Kids willing to take risks, work hard to get to know new people and be leaders in our school. I have really enjoyed our new schedule, which allows us to have advisory first thing on Monday mornings. While, of course, I'd love advisory every day- having it to start the week has been a great change which really helps set the tone for a positive week.
In Social Studies I'm having an equally positive time. I'm trying a new routine where on Mondays when we "single block" our focus is on Current Events and Culture & Diversity. The students have seem to really respond! They have been engaged in the news of the world around them and this past Monday we focused on them getting to know their own culture better. We'll start doing a project on that next month. Hopefully we'll give this a whole new meaning!
In our Tuesday-Friday work we've been doing our school-wide Social Studies curriculum around Peace One Day. Students have been researching peacemakers and working on making a claim as to why that person is a great peacemaker. I have loved watching learners dig deep into their own opinions as to why so many great people in history have worked for peace. The message of peace from these peacemakers has really inspired many students to become change makers themselves. Many students have created their own statements of peace.
One of favorite things to the start of this year has been my literature group, or should I say groups! I have a large group (we all do in fairness because my team does not have any interns this year.) So when I saw that I was taking 17 students, I have the idea to split the group into 2 groups and use some student designed curriculum to help manage it. I'm blown away by how serious they have been in deciding on the two books (The Great Trouble and A Girl Named Disaster), and pacing their groups. They have set their own reading schedule as a group, hold their own book talks during class, checking in on each other if they've done the reading, and have shared so many great ideas when thinking about their research projects for this. What an awesome group of students.
I have so many more thoughts, but I don't want to write a super long post today. In personal news, I'm honored to be have been elected the next president of VAMLE (Vermont Association for Middle Level Education). I will spend this year as the president-elect before starting a 3 year term next school year. I'm nervous but excited for this chapter of my professional growth. I'm in year 2 of my National Board candidacy, I'm presenting at the AMLE national conference in November and I'm one of the leaders for re-writing the VAMLE/Middles Grades Collaborative document, Middle School is Not a Building. I'm very excited to see version 2.0 get edited, and republished over the next few months!
