Category: Edutopia

Ramping up Relevance with community-centered learning

7/12/2025

I'm excited to have a new article published on the Edutopia blog that describes two community-centered research projects I designed and implemented with middle school students.

Facilitating a community-based research project is a lot of work, but it's so rewarding to see the learning that happens through the process.

When doing local field trips for these projects, students said things like "Can we do this every day?" and "This is the best school day ever!"

You can view all my work published on the Edutopia website here.

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Building a STEM program

5/20/2025

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Thanks to Edutopia for publishing my article on "Low-Cost, High-Interest Elementary STEM Activities." I am grateful for the opportunity to share how I created a STEM program at my school. The program has grown over the past eight years and my students always look forward to library STEM time. It's one of the highlights of our year.

It was gratifying to look back at how I started small and have continued to expand the program.

Each year, I based purchases and programming on student feedback. I searched out funding sources to allow us to purchase more STEM materials and equipment and am especially grateful to the South Central Kansas Library System and Midwest Energy for their generous grants.

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PD with Perks: Travel and Learn

2/3/2025

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I am excited to share an article I wrote that was published by Edutopia. In PD with Perks: Travel and Learn, I share some amazing professional development experiences I've had through National Endowment for the Humanities and Fulbright-Hays programs.

The article includes tips for applying to these and similar programs and along with a list of travel and learn PD programs and how to discover new opportunities.

If you love to travel and learn, you'll want to take a look.