Heather Wolpert-Gawron

How to Battle Epic Paragraphing

By heather on May 12, 2009

Every year my nemesis rears its ugly head: the epic paragraph. Epic paragraphs are those essays comprised entirely of one mega-paragraph with no indentations to indicate transition from thought thought. I bet you thought your kids were the only ones

5 Things Teachers can do to Improve Teaching

By heather on April 21, 2009

We all know there are many problems in education and not one bullet to solve any one of them. We as teachers can’t do a lot about many of the factors that have huge influence on student success: parental involvement,

Students, Sexting, and the threat to Ed Tech

By heather on April 19, 2009

Thanks to Scott McLeod for Twittering the following article from The Washington Post. It describes a terrible ordeal that an administrator went through battling charges of “failure to report suspected child abuse” and potential child pornography after students were caught sexting on

Fictional Crushes

By heather on April 11, 2009

OK, don’t tell my husband, but I have a fictional crush. That is, I have a crush based on a fictitious character. I think I’ve always had one, but the object of my literary love has always changed with my

Obama’s “Race to the Top”

By heather on April 10, 2009

So US News is reporting that President Obama and the educator leaning out of the sidecar, Arne Duncan, have created “a $5 billion ‘Race to the Top’ fund for states that have made progress on the following fronts: 1) improving

The mythical superhuman teacher

By heather on April 10, 2009

Yes, there are many problems in education. But many of them boil down to the fact that we are a cadre of professionals who are taken advantage of as part of the job requirement.

Spontaneous Public Displays of Art

By heather on April 8, 2009

I can’t wait to show my 8th Grade Honors class this clip: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vq6b9bMBXpg. It’s a great display of the act of spreading the arts publicly and on a huge scale. My students have been working all year on their

Marzano con’t & Corporate Sponsorship in Education

By heather on March 31, 2009

There’s a really interesting discussion thread going on at the Interactive Whiteboard Revolution ning. It all began with my post recapping Robert Marzano’s position on the influence of IWB technology when he presented at the CUE conference this year. You can

Teaching Secrets: Finding a Job That You Love

By heather on March 25, 2009

Know a teacher who got a pink slip? Maybe my newest post at Teacher Magazine can help. Click here for the article. It’s Step 1 of my Top Secret New Teacher Handbook. Hope it creates some shortcuts, a machete even,

Internet Reading: The genre

By heather on March 23, 2009

So I’m sitting here pondering the titles of the two curriculum books I am currently writing on teaching Internet Literacy, and I can’t help but wonder if reading on the Internet isn’t its own genre all together. I mean,

Finding Your Own Theme in Life

By heather on March 20, 2009

I have an article in the new March/April issue of Imagine Magazine, put out by Johns Hopkins. It’s a beautiful magazine, whose audience is gifted middle schoolers. It’s always a pleasure to write for a middle school audience. I can

A teacher’s duty?

By heather on March 20, 2009

So by now I assume we’ve all heard of the sanctioned “cage fighting” in a Dallas, TX school. As AP reports, school officials apparently condoned the use of a steel cage in which students could bare-knuckle fight their way towards

Extreme Makeover: Classroom Edition

By heather on March 11, 2009

There’s been so much talk lately of deep-needed reforms for education, but we neglect just how powerful a simple makeover can be. I’m lucky to currently work at a school that has a patch of green, which fixes the broken

The Importance of The Classroom Library

By heather on March 1, 2009

I believe a classroom library is the heartbeat of a teacher’s environment. It is the window into their own personality, and it reflects the importance of literacy in the classroom. I believe every teacher, no matter the subject taught, should

Top 10: How to Take Control of Your Teaching

By heather on February 25, 2009

How can you take control of your teaching, both literally and internally? Read my Top 10 list that advises a teacher on how to get what you need in this demanding job of ours, how to survive it, and how to love it.

DARPA to create metacognitively aware robots

By heather on February 24, 2009

The Register reports that DARPA (Defense Advance Research Projects Agency) is currently researching how to create robots that are “like some self-aware computer systems capable of “meta-reasoning” and “introspection…” Their goal is to “Provide machines with an ability to reason

The Death of Teacher Conferences or I Can’t Believe I Miss My Canvas Bag

By heather on February 23, 2009

So, CATE (the California Association of Teachers of English) just came to an end. The hotel was lovely. All ran smoothly. We were greeted with smiles aplenty, and everything ran on time. Sheridan Blau, Kelly Gallagher, Carol Booth Olson, Taylor

Am I So Past My Prime?

By heather on February 21, 2009

Somehow, and maybe I’m reading into it here, I feel a little written off already. Education Week is reporting that some districts are pondering the possibility of “front-loading” new teacher salaries, increasing their compensation earlier in their career to aid

“I Statements” in Expository Writing

By heather on February 18, 2009

This weekend I’m presenting at the CATE conference in Santa Clara, CA. It’s a session on developing high level, critical-thinking commentary in expository writing. My feeling is that great commentary is the Voice in Expository, it is the Show, Not

Starting from scratch in teacher training