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Yes, I remember: boiling leaves to eat; rubbing leaves on your skin because you have no soap; crushing leaves under your arms so that you don’t smell bad. Leaves and dirt, sticks and rocks: these are the only things a refugee can count on. Even if the exiles go home, the average wage in Liberia is about $1.25 a day. Many people have no clean water or flush toilets. Their lives are hard every day. There is no route to riches. To get money from America is like a blessing from God—bread falling from the sky.

—Louise Troh, writing in Vanity Fair about the death of her longtime love Thomas Eric Duncan, a Liberian man who died of Ebola in Dallas. Troh came to America from Liberia in 1998 as a political refugee.

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Last year, I taught at a charter school and developed an experimental curriculum in what we termed the “Revolution Lab.” This was a space where students would work independently on laptop computers with the aim of differentiated instruction via technology integration for language arts and math. I taught Writing II, a writing composition class that spiraled in skills from Writing I, a mechanics and syntactic driven class. I taught two sections of this class, each with 50 students. Among the litany of challenges was how to facilitate the technology integration. I was a first year teacher with no technical expertise in the art of teaching or using technology to teach, but I did study and research writing workshops throughout college. I was (and am) a Lucy Calkins(ite), and I believe her writing and reading workshop models are what allow children to feel empowered as writers while honing the craft. I…

Thinking back on the teacher education courses I took in college and graduate school, I don’t recall a single professor discussing the importance of data-driven instruction or what implementing it looked like in a classroom setting. I can’t recall reading any research-based or pragmatic approaches for what a teacher should do after developing and administering a test, multiple-choice or not.

Analyzing data is certainly not the easiest, most glamorous, or quick endeavor for a teacher. However, it’s the only way to ensure that instruction is relevant and skills that need remediation are retaught in a different way.

I first became familiar with data directing what a teacher teaches when reading excerpts of Driven By Data by Paul Bambrick Santoyo, a text devoted to detailing, explaining, and providing examples of teachers making data central to their daily practice.

I worked at a charter school where we had weekly data meeting that required…

Can you believe there are less than 30 school days left until summer vacation??? One minute I can’t believe how fast this school year flew by, but on the other hand I can’t believe how much has happened in the last 8 months. You know what they say, “time flies when you’re having fun,” and this year was so much more fun for me than when I taught at the high school last year. Don’t get me wrong, I liked teaching Spanish and I enjoy high-schoolers sometimes, but I feel like elementary is the best fit for me as an educator.

When your students come to school with matching hair, you document it of course! ; )

Some of my favorite moments teaching sixth grade this year have had nothing to do with the academics. I’ve loved building relationships with my students, talking to them one on one, seeing them grow up (physically…