Inside Bell's Brain

I'm really excited to accept the TpT Seller Challenge hosted by the fabulous ladies at Third in Hollywood , Teach Create Motivate , Peppy Zesty Teacherista , and Sparkling in Second .  Sometimes being a seller can be difficult to balance with our other life roles, so we're taking on one task at a time ...together.  The "pre-task" was collecting our social media stats .  This week was so busy that I noted mine on Tuesday morning, but I got distracted and didn't post them to Instagram until today!  So here's where I'm beginning ... This week is the official first week of the challenge , and this week's task was a Makeover Madness challenge.  We were supposed to take an existing product in our stores and give it a little "face lift."  We were free to design and re-design however we wanted, as long as we shared/blogged about our "before and after" and shared it with the other challengers. I took on my product " How to...

I've had many conversations about Common Core State Standards (CCSS) with fellow teachers, concerned parents, and curious friends.  Throughout these conversations, several things kept coming to my mind, so I've had this blog post in my heart for quite some time. With that said, I want to establish that this post is NOT with any single person or conversation in mind .  It is simply a list of ideas that I think should be clearly explained when it comes to Common Core.  Everyone is entitled to his or her own opinions, but I think being able to intelligently discuss issues and explain ourselves is part of what learning and growing is all about.  So here it goes... Establishing a Context In this blog post, I am just talking about the standards themselves.  Historically, states and educational institutions have often received funding or been encouraged to receive funding for this or that initiative.  Many people focus on this funding issue, but my primary co...