Gina Wilson, PhD, NBCT
 

“Maybe I’m just not good at math.” Hearing those words from Alice, one of my students, made my heart sink. Like all of my students, I knew that she had the potential to succeed. The challenge was finding a way to engage her and help her develop a growth mindset. Alice told me once that she loved puzzles, so I created a mathematical puzzle that incorporated the math concepts she needed to learn. Alice jumped right in and solved the problem faster than some of my most math-savv

TeachStrong is a national campaign dedicated to modernizing and elevating the teaching profession. Sixty partner organizations have united in the belief that our nation’s students and teachers are not receiving the support and attention they need to thrive. Learn more on The Standard. #teacherleadership #NBCT #teaching #policy #retention #TeachStrong

Michigan Department of Education Superintendent Brian Whiston has challenged our state to become a Top 10 Education state in 10 years, but at the rate we are going, we’re headed right to the bottom. The Great Lake State is on track to becoming a state better defined by its continual failure of its students and teachers. Read more here. #teacherleadership #careerreadiness #collegereadiness #TopTeninTen #retention #policy

If you had asked me six months ago if I would be requesting meetings with legislators and sharing my experiences as an educator with them, I would have laughed at you. But that is exactly what I did this month and will be doing in the future. If you are an educator you need to do this too. Let me tell you how. Read more here. #teacherleadership #NBCT #TopTeninTen #policy

There is a lot of media coverage right now about the deplorable conditions in Detroit Public Schools and the water crisis in Flint. These two crises are superimposed on Superintendent Whiston’s Campaign for Michigan to become a Top Ten [Education] State in Ten Years, which could arguably be called the third crisis facing Michigan right now. In thinking about these issues I keep coming back to the need to support the Detroit and Flint communities. I also keep coming back to th

#ITeachBecause it is fun and challenging. Teaching requires strong content knowledge and managerial/coaching skills. I love the challenge of math, and engineering and science, but I’ll stick to math here because that is what I teach. Math is a puzzle that requires logic, complex thinking, and the abliity to connect many things together. My Algebra I class is studying number systems this week, and I have always found the hierarchical structures of number systems fascinating, b

Last December I was ready to walk away from teaching. Truthfully, I was probably ready to walk away in November, but I felt I owed it to my students to remain at least until the semester ended in December. I figured I could re-enter the engineering field and not be nearly as exhausted and run down as I was as a teacher. Fall semester is our program’s most difficult semester, and last fall was even more insanely intense than usual because of the number of roles I was juggling.

My blog last week was about the fall convening of the MI EdVoice Fellowship, and one thing that is still stuck in my head is all the information about messaging and branding.This has been a common theme of my summer - I also attended the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards Academy for state networks.This was the yearly planning meeting for all of the state networks and resource centers associated with the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards. Many