Quick Bio:
- Middle School History teacher at Springside Chestnut Hill Academy
- Faculty Advisor for the Games for Change Club
- Co-Founder of edcamp philly
- Board member of the edcamp Foundation
- Member of the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Mentor Advisory Board
- Author of three article for ISTE’s Learning and Leading
- Conference Presenter – “Using Twitter to Build a Professional Learning Network,” “Movement as a 21st Century Skill,” “Collaboration: Learn it, Use it, Teach it,” “From Thinking to Being a Risk-Taking Teacher.”
I am one of those people who knew that they wanted to teach from the very beginning. I use to line up my younger siblings and make them play school, with me as the teacher, of course. I studied English, education and religion in college. I went on and got an MEd, where I developed a love of creating curriculum to meet the needs of individual classes and subjects. Originally, the plan was to be an elementary school teacher. My student teaching was in a 3rd grade classroom, and my first job was as a 5th grade teacher in a small, Epispocal school in Los Angeles. I had gotten a call in August that they needed a teacher and was I willing to go? Since they were offering to pay me $9,000 to do what I loved, there was no question about it. (It was in 1973, not a lot of money even back then!).
Then came the years of parenting and home-schooling four children. I started home-schooling in response to a dare. “You would be good at this,” said a woman I knew, who ended up sending her girls to school after a year. I, on the other hand, got hooked on the joy of learning and growing with our children. I got to pace our days based on what the kids and I needed for that day. The mornings were filled with directed lessons, field trips and lots of exploration. The afternoons were for “Quiet Time,” time for each child to be alone in his or her room with some assignments and lots of books, drawing materials and paper. As one of my sons says, “Colored pencils plus Quiet Time = Creativity.” Boredom often created the impetus or the silence in which they could hear their own voice.
When all of the kids had reached high school, I went back into the classroom, landing a job teaching history and English at an all girls school in Philadelphia, close to where we were living at the time. I have been here almost 10 years now. I became fascinated by the possibilities of the 2.0 world when I was part of our team for the Powerful Learning Practices, led by Will Richardson and Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach. The process of learning the new skills reawakened in me a love of learning – facing the challenges, searching for answers, sharing insights. The more I learned, the more excited I became about understanding and employing the new tools in my classroom.
In the year since I started this blog, my world has changed due to the connections that I have made with educators around the world. Those people have encouraged and challenged me to grow and reach beyond the boundaries of my personal classroom and world. It has led to having articles published and presenting at conferences. I am now a member of the Library of Congress’ Mentor Advisor group to help build an online teacher network for “Teaching with Primary Sources.” Every day has become about learning and growing, seeking to enhance my understanding of my students and of the world in which they are growing up. In the process, I have found new passions and rediscovered old ones. It is a wonderful journey!
Welcome!
Middle School Matrix 
Hi Hadley,
Thanks for following me on Twitter and RTing my library comment. I like your site. You are obviously much more technologically oriented than I am! I’d rather buy a new fountain pen than update my computer! I know the Philly area fairly well, having done my grad work at U Del and interning at the Devereux Foundation…some time ago.
I hope you find my site useful.
Best wishes,
Gary
HI, I saw your wiki. I have a wiki too and would love to make a friend and talk about how we are using this great resource. Check out my wiki and send me an email if you are interested. I am esp. interested in the revolver maps.
Hi Hadley,
I just came across your blog. Very cool.
I loved reading about your teaching adventures at Springside.
Happy Holidays, Rena
Great blog. Kudos.
And I like the way you’ve oriented your external interest in other blogs as “blogs I’ve commented on”, instead of a simple blogroll. Great way to share what you like, or dislike and guide your readers to other interesting sites.
Cheers, Brad
Great presentation at !40 Conference yesterday. Thanks for sharing. I am a retired principal. I retired in 2006 to care for my wife who had ALS. After she died in 2009 I started a blog for busy educators and parents who don’t have as much time to read as I do. The idea is to offer Bite-Sized Self-Development so that anyone with a few minutes can do some learning on a daily basis. I believe this is the most effective way to learn and grow. The content is totally free. Let me know what you think and please forward this message to anyone in your organization charged with professional development. I also wish you the best as you move forward in your most important job.
Good Luck.
Just read your article in Dec./Jan issue of Learning & Leading magazine, and decided to follow your advice about reaching out to follow educators. Especially since we both teach at private schools in the Philadelphia area. Still looking for ways to use Twitter more successfully, but I’m getting there. Will be missing #edchat again tonight, but that seems like a good place to start. I’ll also follow you on Twitter. Thanks for lots of food for thought.
Hi ,
My name is Chenee . I am part of a team at Open Colleges and an avid reader of your blog.
I remember reading a post you did and I thought that you might be interested in this infographic that we just developed about parental involvement. I believe it has some interesting points here about the effects on students’ performance when parents are actively participating with their children’s schoolwork.
You can see the post here: http://www.opencolleges.edu.au/informed/features/the-effect-of-parental-involvement-in-academic-achievement/.
Please let me know what you think. And if you can feature it on your blog, I’d be really thrilled! 😀
Looking forward to your reply,
Chenee Marie Quia-Eo
Community Outreach Specialist, Open Colleges
| m: 09328504568
| e: chenee.quiaeo@oc.edu.au
| w: http://www.opencolleges.edu.au
Hi Hadley,
I recently came across your blog and was wondering if there were any sponsored post opportunities available? I represent a number of education clients who are looking to sponsor posts with a contextual link in the text itself.
Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in, or if you have any similar alternatives and we can discuss further and make arrangements.
Regards,
James
Hi!
I’m Brian Johnson, Academichelp.net manager. I have just found your resource https://hadleyjf.com/
Our team launched our project just recently and it has quickly gained popularity among students and teachers. Our resource is visited by more than 120,000 students and teachers per month.
Our website includes lots of materials, resources and guidelines for academic writing. We have also tailored a great number of writing samples. Additionally, our writing experts answer live questions that come from website visitors.
Taking this into consideration, I think that our website will be highly appreciated by your website visitors. Please do visit our website and if you find it interesting please consider adding it to your website to URL
I’ll greatly appreciate your input.
If you happen to have some questions regarding the website, I am always ready to answer them.
Regards,
Brian Johnson
Hi there, all is going perfectly here and ofcourse every one
is sharing information, that’s in fact good,
keep up writing.