Helpful Websites

The art of teaching is the art of assisting discovery.
-- Mark Van Doren --


As I prepare for summer school (which I start teaching tomorrow!) and the looming school year, I find myself turning to every available source I can find to help prepare myself for classroom management, lesson planning, and engaging my students in rigorous and fun coursework. Enjoy this list of resources, and feel free to suggest others.


4 teachers

A to Z Teacher Stuff

ED.Gov

EduHound

FREE

Fun Brain

GradeBook.org

JLAB Science Resources

PBS Teachers

Science Buddies

Teacher Files

teachers (dot) net

teAchnology

The Teacher's Corner

U.S. DOI Teacher Resources

Please allow me to introduce myself..

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire.
-- W.B. Yeats --


As a child, I lived in New Orleans, and my fondest memories revolve around the city in one fashion or another - from my preference in coffee (Community French roast, please) to my delight in all forms of nature conservation (thanks in no small part to the Audubon). We lived in New Orleans East near The Plaza, which at the time had an indoor ice rink that always fascinated me, and when my mother wasn't at work we spent long days either there watching the skaters or at City Park enjoying the wonders of Storyland. My little sister was born at Baptist Hospital, and we grew up drinking cafe au lait and thinking every city had a French Market and loving nothing more than spicy crawfish and cold snowballs.

While some might see post-Katrina New Orleans as a city in need, I look at New Orleans and see home.

Though we moved to the Mississippi Gulf Coast where I attended school in my heart I have always felt the closest to the home of my early childhood. Now, I want my own daughter to know what it is like to grow up there. Until Hurricane Katrina, I have never lived farther than an hour from the city, and I've never wanted to be anyplace else.

I want to teach in New Orleans exactly for this reason. I want to bring my love for the city and my love for learning home to where I can do the greatest good by fostering these exact loves at a school where the students need them the most.

My name is Destin Rutherford, and I'm a new teacher in New Orleans. I've been admitted into the 2008 cohort for teachNOLA, and have a practitioner teacher's license and highly-qualified status to teach high school biological sciences this fall, following the summer training institute that began today.

I'm looking forward to both the challenge and the opportunity for change that New Orleans schools now represent.