I didn't always know what I was doing in IEP meetings. Especially in my first few years of teaching, I had assumptions about family involvement that I understand very differently now. There were families I assumed weren't going to participate much in the IEP process. Sometimes there were language barriers, immigration concerns, complicated family dynamics, or simply families who didn't know what resources were available or what questions they were allowed to ask. I was wrong. What I learned,...

We give people some incredibly useless advice. Get organized. Speak up for yourself. Take better care of yourself. Set boundaries. Participate more. Be confident. Ask for help. Find a hobby. Okay. How? I have spent most of my career in education, which means I have spent a lot of time around goals, feedback, evaluations, interventions, and people telling other people how they could improve. One of my least favorite experiences was learning that, on most teacher evaluation systems, a 4 out of...

I have purchased an embarrassing number of domain names. This feels important to disclose before I give anyone advice about finding their purpose. I have started blogs. Built websites. Created teaching projects. Abandoned teaching projects. Researched ideas extensively, made elaborate plans, created three organizational systems for the plan, and then somehow made the entire thing so complicated that I no longer wanted to do it. I know this about myself. I have a tendency to make things...