Month: January 2021

Happy Inauguration Day!

Massive day in education. Lots of rhetoric happening within school walls (or zoom classes) around the country. I was involved in multiple programming for today’s school day.

Had me thinking about how habits and identities of our students are cultivated through teacher bias. Lots of information was distributed to our students today backed by a sly jab, gesture, or comment.

I am no way shape or form a political person. My connection to the American political system is very little, even with a Bachelor’s in History. The reason being? I attempt to embrace other parts of humanity over one that was created for me. In simpler words, my goal is to life a choice filled life. My choice is to travel, learn, experience, help, etc. I would rather spend my time doing what I enjoy instead of cultivating my identity around a political party.

When it comes to education, I attempt to live by the facts. Anything political, I probably don’t know enough to feel good having strong opinions. Are these opinions others believe as truthful as they think? Do they know there is still more research to be done and or that their biased opinion could potentially be way wrong?

I try to control what I can control. Therefore, my goal as an educator is to cultivate experience and build relationships through aspects of humanity, not systems or blatantly biased opinions.

I just want to be a good person first.

Greeting y’all,

Through help from multiple stakeholders, we were able to secure $25,000 from the Colorado Department of Transportation. CDOT surveyed our community and decided that the data collected matched an opportunity to improve the experience of young people. That opportunity is a bicycle program.

I was handed the reins of the program and tasked with ordering the equipment, implementing how they would be used, and redesigning a physical education curriculum. I purchased a storage unit, 30 bicycles, 30 helmets, 30 bike pumps, 30 bike locks and 2 years of free maintenance. The little money left over will go to program upkeep.

I was able to run physical education classes teaching students how to ride bikes as well as bike maintenance. Some students have never ridden one before! The goal of the bike program is also for students to rent them, teaching responsibility while encouraging coming to school more. Read this article from Denver News9!

I am honored and fortunate to be leading this level of programming.

You can find the story about the program shared on the local news channel here.

Morning everyone,

I wanted to pop in and speak on a project I worked on this last year with middle school aged students. I was able to crowd fund around $600 which was enough to order 30 chessboards, 30 chess clocks, and other chess related equipment.

From there, I led a chess club of around 28 middle school aged children once a week. It was very introductory, but the students loved learning the game. If COVID didn’t happen, the goal was to send the top players from the club to a local chess tournament where I would cover the fee’s.

With the right marketing and backing from your school, this type of program can be seamlessly created! There are so many benefits to chess and I hope this helps spark spreading the game!