Adam Chiocca shares and blogs here.

Greetings. Today, I wanted to share some thoughts on the adolescent mind, and its ability to handle and discuss deep and serious topics among peers.  Today, in class, students asked some specific questions in regards to the current ballot questions, for this current election, in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts (November 2012, USA).  It’s amazing how even when English is not your first language, students’ oral language production skills come out and impress you.  We discussed Question 2 in depth.  For this current election (November 2012), Question 2 pertains to “doctor-assisted suicide,” and the “right to end one’s own life.” Tomorrow (Nov. 6 th , 2012), residents in Massachusetts will go to the polls and be asked whether you support or don’t support Question 2.  In short, it’s like this:  “Should an elderly (old) person who has lived a long life be allowed to take pills to take his/her own life (suicide); while being mindful that the individual...

Hi, Busy teacher ... no time to blog... please enjoy the music! Thanks! Mista Chocka

Hey all, Good news -- this ELL Teacher has got a brand new classroom! Is it true...?!  Yes!!  Believe it or not, there's plenty of room for my 15 ELL (ESL) students, with big windows overlooking a beautiful New England road, just as the colorful leaves of fall descend. Our school has been going through a major renovation.  Check out our school site here:   http://marshallsimonds.wordpress.com/ Happy blogging! Mista Chocka Our newly renovated middle school~

Great to see everyone!

In every career, job and trade, people can get better at what they do and I think we all should, in any small way we can.  I hope that I improve each year, and summer vacation allows me to do some thinking and reflection.  I know that I am not the best teacher in my school, but I'm glad that my parents raised me to remember some things really do matter - like a good attitude. Let me take a moment just to thank my mom and dad for teaching me that having a good attitude makes everything else better.  I'm glad too that they instilled in me a strong work ethic, and a desire to want to do my best.  Having a good sense of humor helps too!  T hanks Mom and Dad!

Hey all, Hope your summer is off to a fine start!  The MADPC conference last week, at Burlington High was really awesome.  I was glad to learn about how I can use new and different sites and apps in my teaching and teacher preparation, but was even happier that I got to put some of my new knowledge into practice. I got much better at Dropbox.  In case you're not familiar with it, it's basically free online storage of your docs, files, photos and more, but the best part is that you don't have it on one device or hard drive.  It's through Dropbox.com, so essentially it's like "in the cloud." Anyways, so... I think our district will be doing away with our current document storage system, so we have been encourages to start moving important files to either GoogleDocs (aka Google Drive) or Dropbox.  I'm glad to say I moved it all to Dropbox during the MADPC conference! Let me give a big shout out to Dennis, Josh, Dan, Andy and Tim and the rest of our aw...

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