I Will Screw This Up / Pandemic Stress
by Dina Strasser · Published 11/10/2021 · Last modified 01/03/2022
As teacher Dina Strasser looks at the multiple sources of stress educators face in fall 2021, she shares insights from the radical origins of the concept of self-care: it is possible to tune in to ourselves without tuning out the larger social issues surrounding us.
Dina Strasser’s mute button moment hooks us into a reflection on student interruptions and their cultural roots. Consider this: How do we balance middle level kids’ natural tendency to run over each other verbally with their eager desire to engage in what we’re teaching?
ELA and Equity / I Will Screw This Up
by Dina Strasser · Published 06/21/2021 · Last modified 04/04/2025
Middle grades ELA teacher Dina Strasser shares ways we can change our language so that all of our students are included. We’re seeing an uptick of kids who are comfortable expressing their gender in nonbinary ways. Which of our grammar lessons don’t really apply anymore?
Watching her teenager struggle through a day of virtual learning, teacher Dina Strasser is trying to not lose what we’ve learned about supporting kids and parents through the pandemic challenges, retaining the patience and concern so needed to buoy our school communities.
Sunny Nwazue discovers she is a witch in Nnedi Okorafor’s novel about how a girl raised amid Nigerian-American culture experiences tween life in Nigeria. Dina Strasser recommends the book for its overt tackling of racism, ableism, and sexism as well as its narrative magic.
Students have all too real tech issues interfering with online participation. But Dina Strasser’s pandemic experience tells her other kids’ black squares in Zoom signal disengagement. Here are 5 ways she’s keeping them tuned in with virtual class management strategies.
Is there a price students must pay to earn a teacher’s respect? The posters in Dina Strasser’s classroom and school seem to frame “respect” as a transaction. Given the power and skill imbalance that exists between student and teacher, can that possibly be good practice?
There are too many demands on instructional time in the Covid era to waste very much of it teaching at the lowest level of Bloom’s Taxonomy. ELA/ENL teacher Dina Strasser recommends taking a fine-tooth comb to those sometimes necessary TPT plans and removing the fluff.
Dina Strasser shares ‘a small bit’ about why she changed her blog title to I Will Screw This Up, has some news about a big celebration in the world of awards, and offers some reflection on a book by a Canadian SF/fantasy author you might not yet have in your YA collection.
Worry, anger and fear are not worthy expenditures of a teacher’s precious energy, writes Dina Strasser, as she prepares for a pandemic fall in a new school. “I am inviting us to look upon our exhaustion as a gift. It will teach us what is necessary and what is not.”
