I was always into history; however, I never realized how much learning about one’s past really affects a person. As a teacher, I’ve found ways to connect history to my ELA lessons. Even when I am watching a show, I research ways to connect with my students. One day, my cousin sent me a request to be added to the Genealogy site to connect our families. What started as a "look" ended up being fourteen hours of research, connections, looking through photographs, more research, a

“I don’t see color,” was a statement during my period 3 class that I said as we discussed the events that occurred on January 6, 2021. I’ve said this before but being an educator is hard and being an educator during a pandemic is even harder. But now being an educator during a national crisis, a pandemic, and teaching from home is not what was expected. On the day of the protest on the U.S. Capitol, thousands of thoughts were going through my mind. I took to social media, whi

by Kristen Koppers, NBCT On a recent vacation with my family to the mountains of Tennessee, we traveled along a winding road. At one point, the road was straight with one white line on each side and two single solid yellow lines in the middle. Traveling on the road is easy as the direction is clear. There were no bumps, exits, entrances, or forks in the road. Yet, with one blink of an eye, the road began to wind with one curve after another. As we were traveling around these

I often thought that getting it right the first time meant to be perfect. No mistakes. No worries. The first time I failed educationally was in middle school. It was in my eighth-grade grammar class. I didn’t realize that not passing grammar was the first time I failed myself. I can’t say that I learned from that that my grades greatly improved. That was not the lesson I learned. What I learned from that moment was that whether I passed elementary or middle school, I would mo