Get Down With Our Zomnacular

In Teachingland, our zombie tropes are a little different from traditional zombie culture. We have compiled a glossary of our terms with how they are used all throughout the book, and our online community! Book mark this page, and come back often!

Zip the Zombie

Glossary

Antidote: Strategies to cure and prevent infection.

Bite: Moments that spread the disease either through drill and practice or killing the love for learning; students can bite each other through learned dead behavior.

Blue-Tape Thinking/Teaching: A teacher who is in the trenches being innovative, integrating PBL (Problem-Based Learning), design thinking, and creative ways to engage students.

#BrainSnap: An adaptation of Tara Martin’s #BookSnaps but customized to #Teachingland. Taking a picture of our book, annotating it, then posting it to social media.

Bunkers: Schools

Classroom Apocalypse: Damage to classrooms all over the world on a catastrophic scale due to a global movement in over testing and impossible teacher/student expectations based on shallow/snapshots.

Flatline: An infected student or teacher on the verge of a zombiism from the feeling of hopelessness brought about by a broken system.

Luddite—Either a teacher new to integrating EdTech, a teacher apprehensive about integrating technology, or a seasoned teacher that refuses. Luddite is usually used in the latter situation.

Ole Pedagogy Players (O.P.P.s): Cognitive scientists, learning scientists, educational philosophers, and practitioners who have contributed immensely to the classroom apocalyptic landscape. If you are gonna use other people’s intellectual property, I would start here.

Red-Tape Thinking/Teaching—Recycling the same lesson plans year after year, teaching to the test, drill and practice, not integrating technology, and making excuses to not rise up and reclaim our art!

R.E.M.E.D.Y.: Our acronym for good pedagogy: Reach, Engage, Make, Evaluate/Empower, Demystify, and Yearn.

Sanctuaries: Conferences, Edcamps, and learning communities to share ideas and antidotes!

Savage Failure: Failure that stops trying or failure that doesn’t end in learning.

Trenches: Classrooms

Trickle Down Zombienomics: A top-down, policy-driven solution posed as a cure but really an infection to the whole system.

Virus: The sickness plaguing the nation’s education system characterized by over testing, outdated thinking, and excessive focus on compliance and accountability that leads to burnout and disillusionment among students, teachers, parents, and members of the community.

Vitals: Feedback from assessments to show that students are learning.

Warm Bodies: Students who have been brought back from the brink of zombification through phenomenal, innovative teaching strategies. This extends to teachers who have been brought back!

Wifi Warriors: Teachers that are on the front lines of social media sharing, caring, and blaring their awesomeness!

Zombie: An infected person in the classroom apocalypse.

Zombigogy: The art of channeling excellent culture-changing teaching and guiding disengaged students back to warm-bodied lovers of learning. This also refers to teachers as adult learners continuing their craft through professional development. This involves creativity and triage.

Zombie Zips: Ziploc bag challenges that can be completed in a 45–60-minute class period.