​Note: I engaged in this work as a Siegel Fellow at STEMteachersNYC. Climate change had always felt abstract to me. Yes, I understand scientific models’ predictions about the future of our ecosystems; yes, I’ve taught students who are climate refugees; and yes, I’ve worked in a variety of activism…

Informal intervisitations are indeed invaluable — (Note: some of the work discussed below was supported by the Siegel Family Fellowship through STEMteachersNYC.)

Sung to the tune of Alanis Morissette’s Ironic (Writing lyrics is a departure from my usual Medium fare, but I do enjoy parodizing from time to time — especially when it comes to NGSS 😉. …

You’re probably already doing it. Now, do it deliberately. — (with many thanks to Brian Palacios) I first encountered the term “cogenerative dialogue” in 2017 when, as a brand new teacher, I read Christopher Emdin’s For White Folks Who Teach in the Hood. Prior to my teaching career, I inhabited relatively privileged, predominantly white spaces: a New Jersey suburb, an…

It’s tax season, which means most adults in the US are currently figuring out how to file their taxes, and most kids vaguely know about taxes as a thing they’ll need to do in the future. …

When every day just isn’t their day — This isn’t about teacher burnout, although I first put pen to paper after a particularly grueling day at work. This is about how pandemic trauma manifests in America’s teens, how we see it in the high school classroom, and how it’s affecting a generation. I’ve heard many education-adjacent professionals suggest…

How to do it and teach it too — Note: this post was written jointly by Greg Benedis-Grab and Elissa Levy, to show how we teach the math of machine learning to high schoolers and to high school teachers. Introduction We (Greg and Elissa) met while teaching coding to high school students with Upperline Code. About a year later…

Why I teach high school physics and computer science in New York City I am proud to say I earned tenure this year. It’s in my nature to be always reflecting, but the tenure process catalyzed a deeper articulation of my “why.” …

I’ll be the first to admit it: this past school year, my high school physics students learned far, far less physics than in any other year of my career. It’s not surprising: live classes met twice a week instead of daily, and over half of that time was spent on…