ohhey[blog]

New Year, New Goals

What better way to start 2024 than with a blog post. I finished 2023 with 86 blog posts which is far more than I've written in several years. I was... Read more

Art Review 2023

I had a soft goal of learning how to do some sketching and water color painting this year. I filled the small book I got last Christmas so I though... Read more

Downgrading Files for a Road Trip

We have a trip to Kentucky coming up and for the first time in a while, we don't have a general-purpose iPad to use for some in-car entertainment. ... Read more

Some Simple Security Chores

I've self-hosted my website for years, first with Bluehost and then many happy years with Reclaim Hosting. In early 2023 I moved to a VPS with Lino... Read more

Two Weeks Ahead: A Reflection

Back in November, I wrote about steps I was taking to improve my lesson planning habits. Six weeks later, I'm reflecting back on how I improved and... Read more

I Showed a Movie For a Final

Sorry for the clickbait title, but I really did. My environmental science class just finished our unit on human populations and the affects it has ... Read more

Lifesaver Chrome Extensions (for a Teacher)

I'm procrastinating on finishing my final exam, so here are two Chrome extensions which make my life much, much easier. Reader View for Chrome. Thi... Read more

Ecological Footprints

We're finishing our human population unit in environmental science this week. This has been a difficult unit to teach because many of the solutions... Read more

Leaning Toward Codespaces

I'm prepping a revamp of the computer science class we have available at school for next year and my first task has been to figure out a cloud runt... Read more

Resurrecting my YouTube Channel

I decided to become more active on my YouTube channel again. Students discovered it on their own while doing whatever they do when they look up tea... Read more

A Mini Lesson on Reaction Types with Particle Diagrams

My students struggled to differentiate single vs double replacement reactions on our latest test. We had used particle diagrams in notes and while ... Read more

Podcasts are in my Past

I saw some cool stuff about AntennaPod offering a year-end summary generated from listening stats. Even cooler, it's all done locally on the phone ... Read more

You Can't Build Skills in a Day

Test days are tough for my students because they need to be able to show skills in practice. This year, we're not giving any rote exams - there are... Read more

Music Battle

My wife and I have vastly different preferences for casual listening music. We don't disagree on everything, but I tend to listen to early-mid 2000... Read more

Google Classroom Things that Kind of Work Well

This is my first year teaching with Google Classroom. It's tough to counteract the kool-aid that is Google stuff in schools, but it's safe to say t... Read more

Owning My Own Attitudes

Yesterday, I did something dumb: I let my own attitude get in the way of modeling appropraite responses to behaviors. It started with a simple seat... Read more

Ionic Bonding Dice Game

We're in the middle of writing chemical formulas and names right now and this unit is just mind numbingly boring. It's important for fluency and fo... Read more

Better Mobile Blogging Setup

A couple weeks ago, I managed to write a post from my phone because I finally took the time to get my site build process pushed to the server. Toda... Read more

The Postal Service

There are very few bands that leave significant lasting impressions on me. I'm kind of picky and I have specific tastes, so I don't explore new mus... Read more

Two Weeks Ahead

My biggest weakness, by far, is not planning far enough ahead in teaching. I know generally where I want to be on a given day, but I often don't fi... Read more

I'm Writing From My Phone

The other day, I got my blog moved solely to my VPS and buildong from a git push. That will let me write from either of our home computers instead ... Read more

I'm Publishing with Git!

One of my goals this month was to make my publishing more flexible. I'm finally publising with a git hook, rebuilding this site on the server (8 se... Read more

Multiple Means of Expression

Every time I test, I'm reminded that multiple means of expression are important when assessing students. Finding ways to get kids to tell you what ... Read more

Staying Organized as a Teacher

I got a suggestion to write about how I stay organized during the teaching day and I thought that was a great idea. My organizational strategies ha... Read more

The Phone Counter

Sometimes, you just need to make a point in class. A small comment or sidebar conversation is a way to do that verbally, but other times, it's more... Read more

A Collection of Teaching Thoughts

This has been a whirlwind couple of weeks and I can't really find enough coherent thought for a single-topic blog post. I thought I had written a c... Read more

Intentionality

My friend Phil has taught me a lot about intentional teaching. He would frequently remind me that curriculum is much more than the content - it is ... Read more

Thinking More About SBG

We're finishing our first month of school and I'm thinking a lot about my grading system. I use standards-based grading, which boils down to the ma... Read more

Working for Our Food

Today was one of our Work Days on the farm. We have work days all the time, but this day each year is when we all - the whole family - come togethe... Read more

Quick Thoughts on Grading

Today was the first day I put standards grades into my gradebook. We took our unit test yesterday and I've generally waited until about then to put... Read more

Simple Standard Tracking for Students

I took a little while to think about how I'd like students to be able to track their progress on learning standards in class. The web app I built w... Read more

Systems of Assessment

Two weeks in, and I'm coming up on our first major grade check. I'm continuing to use standards-based grading as my main method of assessment and r... Read more

I Ripped Stats Out Of My Blog

Earlier this summer, I took a shot at installing awstats on my server because I'm always up for a good data explore. It took a little trickery beca... Read more

Not Everything Needs to be a Service

I often fall into the trap of thinking, "Maybe I should publish this thing for other people to use." And I almost always regret it. I'm a full-time... Read more

The First Week

I just finished my first week back teaching after moving into professional development and staff support in 2017. I was nervous and feeling concern... Read more

Get in touch

Comments are always open. You can get in touch by sending me an email at brian@ohheybrian.com