Well, a lot has happened in the past few months in my education career. I am now the elementary principal of my school. I am excited and apprehensive. I do believe this is another avenue for me to help "better" education. The staff at my school is hard-working and dedicated to ensuring students receive the most appropriate education. I am excited to work with them. I have been a teacher for so long and love working with children, so being out of the classroom will be a bit difficult to adjust to, but I plan on being a visible principal who interacts with the children on my campus daily. I hope to be the kind of principal who remembers what it was like being in the classroom and honors the teachers every day with the thinking "is this how I would have wanted to be treated". I am not a very consistent blogger and hope to do better. I really want to help educators and students blog and know I must be more dedicated to it if I am to be a role model.

A Great New Resource for the BUSY Educator

In this crazy busy world....the life of an educator is getting busier and busier! Resources that help us "better" our teaching and lessen the time it takes to do so are wonderful for the BUSY educator.
I often find myself thinking...if I had had the kinds of resources that are available today when I first started teaching, what a much better teacher I would have been.
Here is a really great one with extra features that help the busy educator plan for future lessons.
The Teaching Channel multitudes of videos to use in lessons with a benefit of planning the video ahead of time and getting a reminder of when/where to use it

"Betterness" Begins With You!

I named my blog, Bettering and Bettering...as a play on words from The Lorax..."biggering and biggering". My main goal for the blog is to hopefully be of some help to others and definitely to myself to "better" how I/we educate children.
I do realize to "better" education, I must be willing to "better" myself. A friend of mine in the "biz" said to me...that he believes that education should never be the "same" each day, but should be "better" each day. I AGREE! I also believe that sometimes educators fail to ask the experts, the students, on exactly what is and isn't working for them! So, I am on a mission to "better" myself and hopefully education daily!

Here are some interesting resources about "bettering".

The Betterness Manifesto
Making School Better-A 13 Year old's Perspective
Making Schools Better (several videos on one blog.."laid back science" blog
10 Ways to Improve Education

Must See Video Changing Education Paradigms

RSA Animate – Changing Education Paradigms

Project Based Learning

Project Based Learning is an instructional method that gives students the opportunity to learn curriculum through complex tasks based on challenging questions and problems. Students are engaged in hands on activities that require critical thinking, problem solving, and investigative tasks. They will be able to apply information learned to the world they live in.
This is nothing new to education. However, given that there are still classrooms in which the teacher still mainly stands up front pouring out information lecture style, PBL is on the rise again promoting best practices.

Click here for a list of PBL resources.

State Tests....Standardized Tests

Well, spring is here and if you are a teacher you know what that means...state/standardized testing. Hopefully, teachers realize that if they are using best practices and truly teaching their state/school curriculum, then testing will be no problem for the majority of students.

That being said, here are some resources to help prepare students and hopefully help alleviate student stress about the test.


Reading Rainbow: The Biggest Test in the Universe
Testing Mrs. Malarkey

A Hungering....

I set up this blog for a technology course while taking my masters for principal leadership. That was a couple of years ago.

I have been an educator since 1991 and I can honestly say my passion nor commitment have dwindled one bit. At times even, it seems, that the passion I have inside to make education for children better consumes me. I have often wondered about an outlet that would allow me to channel this passion and have thought that blogging could be an answer. Now that I have used Pinterest and have been linked to so many wonderful teacher resources and blogs, I have become even more passionate, if that was even possible!

So today, I have changed this blog name, and I am hoping that my commitment to it will ensue and this will become something that will not only let me express what I have bottled up inside, but will also help me share with other dedicated educators. I hope this will help me learn and grow and as a community of educators we can help students see that learning and lifelong learning is truly the most exciting and beneficial path they will ever take!

I hope to post ideas that will help teachers in the classroom, lessons, best practices, technology integration....and so much more. So, if you are an educator who is starting out, been in "the business" for a long time, or just wants to share in a journey of a passionate educator who feels no child should ever think learning is boring or inconsequential....then please join in and blog with me.