Dr. Patricia Dickenson

05/18/2026

05/17/2026

My relationship with the cross has evolved over the years.

When I was a little girl, I wore a cross around my neck for protection. I believed it would keep me safe. But even while wearing it, I was never truly safe. Some of the things I carried as a child hurt deeply, and no necklace could shield me from that pain.

As I got older, the meaning of the cross changed. I wore it because I wanted to belong. I wanted acceptance, community, and connection. The cross became less about protection and more about identity a way to fit into something bigger than myself.

But time, loss, growth, and life have changed my understanding again.

Now, when I look at the cross, I no longer see perfection, certainty, or safety. I see humanity. I see suffering, resilience, sacrifice, grief, love, and the reality that life is hard for all of us.

The cross reminds me that every person is carrying something unseen. We all have burdens, wounds, disappointments, and struggles we move through quietly.

We all carry our cross.

And maybe that is what connects us most not the symbols we wear, but the weight we learn to carry with honesty, compassion, and grace.

04/09/2026

03/27/2026

Teaching has gotten incredibly demanding over the years. We’re asked to do more, and somehow still find time to design meaningful learning experiences.

At the same time, students are already using AI.

So the question isn’t if AI belongs in education, it’s how we use it in ways that actually support learning.

That’s why I wrote:
✨ Smart Teaching in the Age of AI ✨

Because great teaching still matters.
And teachers deserve tools that actually help. If that resonates this book is for you.

03/20/2026

Meet me on the math every Sunday to unwind and let go...

03/13/2026

When the weather is beautiful, it’s the perfect opportunity to take learning beyond the four walls of the classroom. Students spend so much of their day sitting, but math doesn’t have to happen only at desks.

Taking math outdoors gives students space to move, explore, observe, and talk about their thinking. Whether they’re drawing shapes with sidewalk chalk, hunting for polygons around campus, or modeling number lines on the pavement, the environment becomes part of the learning experience.

Outdoor math helps students:
📐 See math in the real world
🧠 Think more creatively
👟 Move and stay engaged
💬 Collaborate and discuss ideas

Sometimes the best math lessons happen when we simply step outside and let the world become the classroom. 🌳✏️.

👉 you for choosing Patricia Dickenson's Teaching Hub as your educational companion. Together, let's inspire, innovate, and impact the fut...

03/11/2026

As a teacher educator, one challenge I consistently see with future teachers is unpacking standards. They often read a standard and immediately jump to planning an activity without fully understanding:

• the concepts students need to learn

• the skills students must demonstrate

• the academic language embedded in the standard

• the prerequisite knowledge students need

This is where I’ve started showing preservice teachers how to use AI as a thinking partner during lesson planning.

For example, we can prompt AI to:

✔ Identify the nouns (concepts) in a standard

✔ Identify the verbs (skills) students must demonstrate

✔ Generate student-friendly “I can” statements

✔ Suggest a performance task that demonstrates mastery

Then we compare the AI’s unpacking with our own thinking and refine our instructional plan.

To make this easier for teachers, I even created a custom GPT that helps walk through this process step-by-step.

This is also the kind of practical application I explore in my upcoming book Smart Teaching in the Age of AI, where I show educators how to harness the power of AI to support planning, instruction, and assessment—while keeping teacher expertise at the center.

When used thoughtfully, AI doesn’t replace teachers.

It amplifies our thinking and helps us do our jobs better.

I’m curious—

Where do you see AI helping teachers most in their daily work?

Want ChatGPT to actually work the way you teach?In this quick tip, I’ll show you how to train ChatGPT to match your teaching style — so it can help you with:...

03/04/2026

02/26/2026

What does a spider’s web have to do with math education?

While standing in my garden, watching a spider spin its web, I was reminded that mathematics isn’t something we invented for classrooms — it’s embedded in nature. That web is a network of nodes and connections, a living example of graph theory and structural design.

In this video, I reflect on what a spider can teach us about how we think about mathematics — and how we teach it. Maybe math was never meant to be memorized. Maybe it was meant to be noticed.

What does a spider’s web have to do with math education?While standing in my garden, watching a spider spin its web, I was reminded that mathematics isn’t so...

02/26/2026

A Spider Just Taught Me Something About Math