Greetings,

If you're viewing this page, chances are you're enjoying summer vacation, and you look forward to joining my class next year. You might be a parent, guardian, student, or college student enrolled in my Fredonia State course. I sincerely welcome you all to my classroom, or more appropriately, my digital classroom. Here, you'll find every resource I provide, every policy I enforce, and every lesson plan and material I teach during the year. I encourage you to read deeply, click curiously, and explore the farthest reaches of this site. It represents my life's work, and as such it evolves as rapidly as my learning in the field of education.

I bid you my sincerest welcome.

Mr. Karpie

My baby Olivia and I enjoyed our first father's day together feasting and hiking at Chestnut Ridge.

I'd recommend starting your journey with the links below:

"This Week's" Lessons

At this exact moment, this week's lessons are already updated for the fall. The dates of the first week of school are updated, but as you use the "next week's lessons" links at the bottom right hand corner of each page, you'll notice that more than two or three weeks ahead of time, last year's dates still apply. The lessons will be broadly the same, but realistically, with the data-driven practices I use, planning more than a fortnight in advance is just unrealistic.

Our Shared, Zen Classroom

If there is one thing I diligently study above all others, it's how to create a Zen learning environment in which all students and adults feel welcome to explore the farthest reaches of their curiosity. I read deeply both education and cross-curricular texts to achieve a Zen learning environment. You're welcome to join us any time. 

Our Lessons

Curriculum is the bread and butter of any classroom. On my lessons page you'll find descriptions of our "big four" eighth-grade units. Click any of the units and you'll see the unit overview page describing what we study on a weekly basis, the unit goals, and a description of the final project towards which we strive. Click any given week of a unit, and you'll find narrative lesson plans in plain text to learn what learning activities students and I will engage in on a daily basis. Every word that can be linked to a page or material, is linked to the page or material to which it refers. Enjoy!

Interdisciplinary Educator Blog

Coming Soon!

Years ago, I started writing a book about classroom management. It didn't work out well because every time I wrote a chapter, it was already outdated because I had learned something new through my extensive professional reading and reflective classroom practice. Documenting my learning in the field of education on paper is just too limiting. I plan to devote my summer to witnessing my baby's first steps, losing the next (tragically, not the last) twenty pounds, and creating a blog to document and reflect upon my professional learning.

If you have any ideas about a feature you'd like to see on my website, or if you have a question about anything you read here, feel free to contact me via my contact page. The one thing that matters most to me as an educator is to cultivate reflective practices that allow me to be a more effective teacher next year than I could ever be this year.