Moving my Blog to Substack
As the title suggests, I’ve made the difficult decision to move most of my future blog posts over to Substack. Don’t worry if you have no clue what a substack is – basically it just means that I’ll be posting on a different website. But that also means if you want to continue receiving an…
Keep readingTeacher Depreciation
For Teacher Appreciation week last week, a teacher on social media said she literally received a clown nose with a note saying, “this place would be a circus without you.” Hopefully it was just a joke, but many other teachers said they felt similarly undervalued by their schools. Thankfully, some teachers chimed in saying they…
Keep readingTest-Taking Strategies
As a special education teacher, many of my students had a really difficult time remembering what they had learned. Students with learning disabilities often need more practice and more repetition when the information involves an area in which they struggle (e.g. reading for a student with dyslexia, or math for a student with dyscalculia). Unfortunately,…
Keep readingTranscranial Direct Current Stimulation: The Drug of the Future?
Scientists have been trying to harness the power of electricity to enhance the functioning of the human body for centuries. Perhaps the most notable achievement, in this regard, is the invention of defibrillators that use an electric current to essentially reset a person’s heart when it is uncontrollably quivering in cardiac arrest. When not experiencing cardiac…
Keep readingNeuroscience tidbits
Many of you know that I moved to NYC last fall to study Neuroscience and Education at Columbia University (check out my last post about my thoughts on living in NYC). When I talk to people about it, I feel like they want me to tell them the secrets of the world. To package it…
Keep readingIn search of a decent salary (aka why I’m leaving teaching)
Note to Arizona voters, parents, legislature, and governor: I am a highly qualified, 31-year-old, certified, special education teacher who is passionate about education. And I am leaving this beautiful state that I love because you didn’t think I deserved more than $33,449 as a 4th year teacher who had nearly 10 years of professional…
Keep readingThis blog post is not about Common Core (chorus: Thank God!)
I’m so over everyone talking about, debating about, whining about Common Core. Don’t worry, like I said, that is NOT what this blog post is about. Common Core is a detail. A scapegoat in the never-ending saga of debates over education. I want to go bigger. I want to talk about healthcare. And education. Together…
Keep readingMeditation in schools: a holy grail or a serpent?
I only started to really practice meditation just a few weeks ago, though I consider my yoga practice to be a type of meditation in and of itself. From everything I’ve read about meditation (and personally experienced), it is a highly effective, relatively easily implemented strategy for reducing stress, improving health, and relieving depression and anxiety. Basically,…
Keep readingMy thoughts = your reality?
You might not know what I’m thinking if I don’t say it out loud, but can my thoughts completely change the outcome of your life? Can a scientist’s thoughts about a mouse or a group of mice change the outcome of the experiment using those mice? Could people who are blind learn to see if…
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Trynia Kaufman 