Teaching and learning both create stress in students and teachers, especially as learning becomes more high-stakes for everyone. However, through mindfulness activities, teachers and students can become more productive in the process. It helps control emotions, maintain focus, and increase productivity. When emotions run high, you’re going to want to practice these mindfulness techniques in […]
Classroom Management
Posted inTeacher Leaders
“Active Monitoring” Standardized Tests Is a Joke
Most states have a guide for how educators should properly proctor a standardized test. Chief among the list of directions is teacher behavior while students are testing. Those of us proctoring tests are bound to come across the term “active monitoring” (AK-tiv * Mahn-it-ORR-ing) N. – educational jargon-ese for teachers doing nothing other than staring at their […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Featured, Opinion
Making Learning Extra-Ordinary: A Sarcastic Stab at EduJargon
During my first week as president of our local association, I shared a copy of a “Faculty Meeting Bingo” manipulative with all our members as a joke regarding educators’ over-reliance on edu-jargon. Eventually, this information made it to our superintendent, who wasn’t too pleased with the actions of his new opposite. Yet I utilized the wait time to […]
Posted inClassroom Management, From the Front Lines, Parents
Taking Care of Business: Managing Difficult Situations at School
Something happened to me the past week that I’ve never experienced in my years of teaching: I had one student accuse another student of touching him inappropriately. You can only imagine the chaos that has ensued over the past week and a half, and we still don’t have a resolution to this difficult situation. Because I own my […]
Posted inInstructional Strategies
Relationships Matter: How Building Trust Boosts Classroom Performance
No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. — James Comer Take a moment to think about this James Comer quote. No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship. In other words, learning is about relationships. But if that’s the case, we’d better get to work on that, right? Or does that relationship begin to build from day […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
10 Ways To Help Students Develop a Growth Mindset
Stanford University psychologist Carol Dweck has done numerous studies on how mindset affects achievement in children. The results showed that those with a fixed mindset perform more poorly than those with a growth mindset. However, not all students know how to change their mindset or even that intelligence is not a fixed thing that they […]
Posted inTeacher Leaders
Using your Mission Statement to Establish Classroom Routines
We all know that the best way to manage the classroom is to create a positive, structured environment. That’s an adorable concept — but it is downright difficult to figure out what the heck that positive, structured environment ought to constitute. We learn a handful of suggestions in Teacher School; but in practice, these suggestions […]
Posted inTeacher Leaders
The Age Of Entitlement
When I first started teaching years ago I was gifted with classes that had almost 100% parent involvement. If I needed items for activities, my parents signed up. If we had classroom parties parents not only volunteered to organize them, but they also showed up to help. Over the years, this participation slowly declined. Parents were […]