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 […]
Classroom Management
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 […]
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 […]
A Leader is Not Always a Leader
Oh my goodness! I have an abundance of, how shall I put it, VERY STRONG LEADERS in my classroom this year. You know that point where you feel like your class is completely autonomous and could run smoothly without you? Yeah, we haven’t gotten to that point because if I wasn’t present it would be […]
Why you need a Classroom Mission Statement
A mission statement. The best businesses use them to guide direction and lead to success. Our classrooms are definitely not businesses — but I believe, like in business, that a classroom mission statement can lead us and our students toward a clear outcome, guided by a defined purpose. I’ve created a teaching philosophy before. I’ve […]
Dealing With Personal Tragedy In the Classroom
I experienced quite a lot of personal tragedy last year. And as a result of my stress, my students experienced them too. I tried so very hard to keep my personal life from affecting my students, but I’m convinced that sometimes no matter what you do, some events just can’t be disposed of at the classroom […]
How Response Notebooks Differ From Reading Logs
When I moved from teaching high school to teaching 8th grade English three years ago, I was introduced to an independent reading requirement: each student would read one book of their own choosing each quarter. How we chose to implement this requirement was up to the teacher, but each student had to produce a product […]
Transforming the ‘Trump Effect’ in Schools
As early as March of this year, teachers were reporting a significant increase in anti-Muslim, anti-immigrant, and bullying behavior in their students since the start of the 2016 presidential race in what has become known as the “Trump Effect.” Â Â The Southern Poverty Law Center tries to get some data on these anecdotal reports, and ran […]