Article Say Yes to Smart, Happy Kids
Frances Zale
Graduating from the University of Illinois at the turn of the new century, I would have never predicted the types of tools I would be teaching with and to the degree we would be using them. As my teaching career has unfolded, I continued to educate myself with graduate coursework, conversations with colleagues, and a high level of personal reading and experimentation to grow my practices as an educator. My academic education has been no doubt foundational to all that I have experienced as a teacher thus far, but it is quite apparent that much of the daily instructional design and decision-making needs to be done “on the spot” with the students currently right in front of me in the classroom. The technology tools I use today may or may not be the same ones I use five years from now (or even next year). They are definitely an important part of the direction taken for students; yet not something that forms the foundation of teaching and learning in and of itself. It is helpful to think about the work of MusiowskyBorneman and Arnold (2021) when they describe the Triple P framework in The Minimalist Teacher. They call on educators to define their purpose, priorities, and think about how to pare down resources (MusiowskyBorneman, Arnold 2021). As Musiowsky-Borneman and Arnold suggest, it is important to be intentional and 45