Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Whether it’s unregulated and disruptive behavior or an overall malaise with regard to school, it’s clear that many kids are not all right, and parents and educators are taking notice. Some students are struggling to compensate for losses sustained over nearly […]
High School
Posted inPedagogy
The Secret Ingredients of Lesson Planning
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! This past Christmas, my family decided to organize our own version of the Great British Baking Show (or GBBS). We each had to make our own Signature dessert for the approval of three judges, my in-laws, and my oldest daughter. The […]
Posted inOpinion
It’s Time to Shelve Summer Reading
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Our department spent the month of May preparing and presenting our summer reading assignments to every high school student. We talked about our educational goals for the next school year. We shared advice and insight into how the selected […]
Posted inPedagogy
Why I Stopped Using Writing Rubrics
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! In my English and writing courses, I always love to share the following Anne Lamott quote with students: “…writing needs to breathe and move.” To further expand on this quote, I explain that writing cannot be constricted in a […]
Posted inOpinion
Forget College Readiness, We Need Citizenship Readiness
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! When I started teaching high school English twenty years ago, my main focus was on preparing my students for college. It took me years of teaching, parenthood, a graduate degree, and personal distress about our national politics to finally […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Organizing Ideas from the Queen of Organized Chaos
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Imagine a substitute teacher dumping your desk drawers out on the top of your desk because they wanted to “reorganize it.” That is what happened to my cooperating teacher during my student teaching days. My cooperating teacher’s organizing skills […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
How to Help Unaccompanied Youth in Your School
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! Who is an unaccompanied homeless youth? I’ve written previously about how, in education, we define homelessness under the McKinney-Vento Law. It is a definition that includes those living with others or in hotels due to economic hardship or emergency. […]
Posted inClassroom Management
Why You Should Try a No Cell Phone Policy in Your Classroom
Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! If you want to try an interesting experiment, ask your students to turn up the volume on their cell phones and tally how many times in a class period their cell phones signal an alert. We tried it a […]