If you’ve ever felt like you don’t get the attention or respect you deserve from the people who know you well, you’re not alone. Maybe you’ve even heard the saying that no one is a prophet in their own land? The phrase has its origins in Luke 4:24 meaning that this phenomenon is by no…
I loved my job as a teacher specialist in Downey Unified School District because I was part of a team that helped students and teachers better understand and love mathematics. Over time, we built relationships and created processes that played a small part in our overall improvement. Clearly not everything we did was successful, but…
If you’re a leader or nurture other leaders, then this blog post is for you! I believe that mangrove forests are a great metaphor for a leader’s role. To understand what I mean, please watch this 13 second video that shows how mangrove forests protect the shores from large waves. Then continue reading. I love…
I’m a big fan of NPR’s How I Built This Podcast, and in one episode Jim Koch, the founder of Sam Adams, talks about the differences between scary and dangerous. I had never thought about those words having different meanings, but now that I understand what those differences are, I believe that they are applicable…
Imagine a group of people who all want to go to Las Vegas. They’re all happy and excited… until they get there. Once they get there, they realize that they wanted to go there for different reasons. One person wanted to gamble. One person wanted to see some shows. One wanted to hang out at…
Many years ago I took a steak cooking class where the instructor told us, “If you’re not sure if the steak is done, it’s better to undercook it than overcook it. The reason why is because you can always throw the steak back on the grill if it’s undercooked, but you can never undo overcooking.”…
It’s common practice for educators to create their own assessments including selecting and/or creating the individual questions. This may be fine in many cases, but there are huge issues you need to be aware of when making this choice. To illustrate this potential problem, consider what happens when office buildings need to perform maintenance on…