"Crush"ing It- Sarah Thomas's P3

Sarah-Jane Thomas PhD is a Regional Technology Coordinator in Prince George’s County Public Schools. She is also a Google Certified Innovator and Google Education Trainer. In 2015, Sarah was named was named Prince George's County Public Schools Outstanding Educator Using Technology. She was also recognized by ASCD as an Emerging Leader in 2016. Sarah was part of the Technical Working Group that refreshed the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) Standards for Educators in 2016-2017 and, in 2017, she received the ISTE “Making IT Happen” Award. Sarah is also on the leadership team of the ISTE Digital Equity PLN and is Affiliate Faculty at Loyola University in Maryland. She is the co-author of the ISTE publications, Closing the Gap Digital Equity Strategies for Teacher Prep Programs and Closing the Gap Digital Equity Strategies for the K-12 Classroom, coming out later this year.

In addition to the many accomplishments noted above, Sarah is the founder of the EduMatch project. EduMatch is a grassroots organization that promotes connection and collaboration among educators around the world along similar lines of interest. Sarah graduated from George Mason University with a doctoral degree in Education and a concentration in International Education. “I knew that I wanted to work with Haitian students, being of Haitian ethnic background…” but the idea of connection was really a draw. EduMath helped to inform her dissertation, and she mentioned it several times. The exponential growth of EduMatch is something that Sarah called organized. She referred to it as, “A bunch of people getting together sharing their ideas, sharing themselves…” Through EduMatch, Sarah has published several collaborative and individual books, and she serves as President on the Board of Directors for EduMatch Foundation Inc.

Sarah said that preparing for her guest appearance on The Personal Playlist Podcast was so much fun. She referred to herself as a music addict saying, “When I was looking up the songs it really caused me to reflect and really to think about it because it feels like music is my first language.” Sarah went through her Spotify playlists and picked the three songs that most resonated with her for each category.

Sarah’s nostalgic song is a P3 first. It is the first time that a guest has shared their own original song and recording as part of their personal playlist. In college, Sarah wanted to pursue a music career. She said, “Music feels like air to me sometimes.” She writes to process things, and she remembers writing this song in her sophomore year of college at Howard University. She started a record label up with her friends and was putting out her own content, which Sarah compared to the educator space. “We create our content, we put it out, we have fun learning with each other…” This song is a shout out to her early days of “just creating.” She recorded it in an affordable studio in DC with her best friend. There was s producer there who helped her out and suggested that she channel the animated Jessica Rabbit. She took the direction and it “triggered it” for her. Though she doesn’t recall the exact personal she wrote this song about, here is Crush:

Sarah’s identity song is one that she first heard when she was 16. This artist had just released her first solo album, and the lyrics spoke to her. The chorus goes But deep in my heart the answer was in me, and I made up my mind to define my own destiny. She felt the song could have been about her, speaking as if to the artist saying, “Wow, you are speaking my life,” and it has many layers for Sarah. There was an article in Tidal (http://read.tidal.com/article/miseducation-lauryn-hill-20-years) by Kathy Iandoli that said about this album, “It arrived while hip-hop was undergoing a reinvention as a commercially viable genre, delivering an earthquake of an album whose tremors are still being felt today.” Here is The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill by Lauren Hill:

Her inspirational song is one Sarah described as her 2019 anthem because this song takes her into a zone. Sarah was running, and she was listening to music play on random. Suddenly, this song came on, and it really spoke to her. Sarah makes the point of trying to craft life and is looking forward to going along for the ride and seeing where life takes her for a while. Referring to the lyrics, she said, “I am ready for the mountains to move me.” Here is singer, songwriter, record producer and model, Skylar Grey with Moving Mountains:

After sharing her P3, Sarah added a fun fact. There is actually another Sarah-Jane Thomas who is a singer from South Africa.

As it says on Medium, Sarah Thomas is “passionate about using social media to connecting with educators around the world.” You can learn more about Sarah through her blog. Her books are available through ISTE and on Amazon. You can find her on Twitter and Periscope @sarahdateechur and @edu_match. You can also locate all of her and Edu Match’s social media links. Sarah will be a spring Cue in California and Rutgers Digital Equity Conference in New Jersey in March. She will also be in Toronto (for all you local peeps) in April for AERA. And, of course, Sarah will be at ISTE in Philadelphia June.