emily koonce

excerpt from the link posted that focuses on statistics around student distraction with technology

"However, if there are two or more options for engaging with learning material, then it is best to select the tool that will yield the best results. As we’ve seen, that tool will rarely be digital in nature."

substack.com/home/post/p-...

Newline TV screen that says “Out of Order :(“ and a whiteboard full of instructions.

You don’t realize how reliant you are on technology until your screen breaks. Here’s to whiteboards and portable bluetooth speakers!

This: in 2025 and beyond, I am definitely reminding myself that "writing = job skill" needs to be de-centered in my own communication to students

Instead: agency, thinking, understanding, reflection, joy.

And so much more.

Reminders-to-self for 2025:

1️⃣ it's more important to be curious than efficient
2️⃣ it's more important to be curious than productive
3️⃣ it's more important to be curious than, well, most things

50 Contemporary Poets on the Best Poems they Read in 2024 In the sea of endless year-end lists, poetry often seems to get sidelined, or forgotten—or maybe the critics and listmakers just aren’t reading enough poetry in the first place. Which made me…

#TeachLivingPoets
lithub.com/49-contempor...

*Lavar!

Paper Menagerie (story) by Ken Liu! (Really, anything by Liu)

Before listening to Lamar Burton’s reading of the story, we tried as a class to follow a YouTube origami tutorial — really great bonding story for class & helped us understand the narrator’s mother more!

150 cups of cocoa, five cans of whipped cream, and countless marshmallows later… final essays are done! This week was a reminder that we can do anything (even back-to-back projects) with a little sugary motivation.

tree.fm – Tune Into Forests From Around The World 🌳🔈 People around the world recorded the sounds of their forests, so you can escape into nature, while in lockdown or unable to travel. Use this site to chill, meditate or do some digital shinrin-yoku.

In our busy, pressured world, you need the sounds of a forest more than ever. What a wonderful project this is!

www.tree.fm

People will say that students need to be prepared for the real world as if the real world doesn't include joy, curiosity, self-discovery, and grace. #EduSky

one I tried (by my favorite author) but ended up not caring for: ‘My Grandmother Asked Me To Tell You She’s Sorry’ by Fredrik Backman

one I hated (as did my students): ‘A Separate Peace’ by John Knowles. taught it as a book club pick that I personally did not choose.

During long independent work days, I love using this visual pacing for students to monitor their own progress (writing/erasing/rewriting their names as they move to each step)!

I really, really try hard to consume some of the same media my students do so I can use it as reference in class/for conversations, but I have tried to watch Outer Banks so many times and have yet again failed.

“All communities are the sum of our choices and all that holds us together in the end are our stories.”

I usually have to take a year(s) long break in between reading Fredrik Backman books, and I’m finally reading “The Winners.”

Backman’s focus on humanity as complex and evil and full of love and how all those ideas coexist is what I need right now.

The uncountable hours I spent reading and watching political coverage and at the end I had no idea what world I was living in, I just thought I did. If I'd spent that time reading about, say, birds, I would now know an awful lot about an awful lot of birds.