A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

Happy Digital Learning Day! As an educator, I have definitely evolved from tech tentative to tech tenacious in a very short period of time. Because of my recently found passion for educational technology, I want to share some of the scaffolds I’ve developed to help my students evolve into digital learners.

A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

As many of my readers know, my classes are currently mimicking a TED conference by writing Advocacy/Memoir speeches of their own as a means to learn a more real-world version persuasive writing. That is, they are studying the structure of many of the TED speeches online

A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

I'm currently prepping my classes for another research unit, this one a blend of Memoir, Advocacy, and Speech Writing. After all, never in real life are genres categorized. They blend together; and the Common Core assessments to come recognize the desegregation of writing genres and the need for performance-based assessments.

A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

I've been examining the Common Core Standards and the upcoming assessments lately in an attempt to tease apart this huge seismic shift that is about to go down. And while I think it will have its challenges, I have to admit that I like what I'm seeing. For one thing, they prioritize a more accurate alignment of school life versus real life, seeking to blur the lines more than ever.

A twelve-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

Along with the National Writing Project, Figment, and The New York Times Learning Network, we are celebrating the National Day on Writing today. As part of this celebration, we're inviting writers to share the why of writing in an essay, poem, or post. Please add your own thoughts in the comment section below, and/or follow the hashtag #whyiwrite on Twitter.

The reason I write has changed through the years, but it has become a timeline that reflects my many chapters of life.

A ten-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

Twenty Everyday Ways to Model Technology Use

I wanted to post a list that talked about how to "use" technology in the classroom, but I found myself revising that word "use" to the more general word, "model." The reason I did this is because so many teachers believe that if students aren't actively sitting in front of the computer screen themselves, then clearly technology is not being used in the classroom.

A ten-year teaching veteran and a California regional Teacher of the Year, Heather Wolpert-Gawron's musings on educational policy, curriculum design, and daily school life can also be read at www.tweenteacher.com.

Sometime ago, I wrote a blog for Edutopia that chronicled the equation of student success as being dependent on three necessary elements: students, teachers, and family. I believe now, as I did then, that all three variables must work together in order for our students to achieve. But I recently began working with someone who is slowly convincing me that even those three groups need the support of one more: the community.

The following is an excerpt from my new book, 'Tween Crayons and Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers. In the unabridged chapter, I explore specific cross-curricular lessons and activities that teachers can use to help encourage metacognition, think aloud, and storytelling as a means to teach commentary and deeper thinking. This excerpt argues why storytelling is a valuable tool in any classroom, and also gives a word of caution for teachers who use this important strategy.