Hello, my name is Penelope Torribio, known to many as Mrs. T. Welcome to my site. If you are reading education journals, education magazines, such as Education Weekly, or educational news and political discussion, you know that teachers are concerned with increasing academic diversity in the classrooms, high absenteeism, and increasing behavior problems.

I have faced these issues for over twenty years of working with challenged and challenging students in public schools and lockdown facilities.  To help students, I developed various tools and techniques for working in these widely diverse classrooms, including “Directive Drawing for Diagnosis, Intervention, and Development,” “The Cooperative Classroom,” “Think Like a Writer,” “Spelling Stories,” and “Edu-Tainment Novels.” These techniques sprang from specific educational and behavioral challenges, and so they sound like stories.

The purpose of Educational Stories is to reveal the philosophy and science behind the techniques, and he students themselves. My focus has always been to help each individual student become the best they can be, within the classroom structure.

This brings us to the question of the use of technology in the classroom. I am not against technology. Below is a photo of my grandson when he was five years old. On my computer, he taught himself to play  Minecraft. He then taught himself how to create a YouTube channel, and  somehow he generated followers, and he taught them how to play Minecraft.

 I monitored him, but I still don’t know how to make an axe, the beginning of building in Minecraft, nor how to build followers on YouTube.   However, I know that turning teaching over to robots and computer monitors, and focusing on individualized learning programs, won’t work in the diverse classroom. 

 I am not anti-technology. I believe that technology will be a part of modern education. There is no way to stop it.   However, I firmly believe that someone else can teach and monitor technology in our schools, and that teachers should focus on developing students’ abilities to think critically, communicate effectively, understand their strengths and interests, and their role in creating a better world. I believe these Educator Stories will help.