Creating a positive classroom culture is hard work. We are living in a time of high anxiety and our students can feel that tension. Many no longer feel safe or welcomed in their communities just as many no longer feel safe expressing themselves. As educators, it is our responsibility to create classroom environments that are […]
classroom strategies
Posted inInstructional Strategies
How to Apply The New American Lecture to Mathematics
While it is important to gain the attention of students through activities that create opportunities for learning, sometimes lectures are necessary to help students connect prior knowledge to what they need to learn, and the New American Lecture is designed to teach students in a way that provides them with opportunities to interact with the […]
Posted inCommon Core
Have You Been To A #GAFE Summit?
I’ve been teaching for 26 years – English, AVID, Yearbook, Reading, History and any sort of intervention class that gets thrown my way. I’ve been through whole language and back. I’ve survived NCLB. I’ve been trained in teaching the Gifted and Talented, the At-Risk and 21st-century students. And last weekend, I went to my first […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Teach Like Someone is Watching–Because Someone is Always Watching
Do you ever feel that you aren’t teaching at your best? Not that you are deliberately not trying, but that you aren’t being deliberate about how you teach all of the time? Sometimes I go home and think about how the day has gone and realize, that I could have done better. So what, right? […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher, Back to School, How to Fix Education, New Teacher Bootcamp, Parents, Technology, The New Teacher Chronicles
8 Ways For Teachers To Communicate With Parents in the 21st Century
In the 21st century, there is a multitude of ways to communicate with parents. I know a large part of the education workforce is comprised of ‘digital immigrants’, but with a little time and motivation, all teachers can (and should) utilize technology to increase communication with parents and students. Here are my eight favorite ways […]
Posted inBack to School
Trying to Find a Balance
When you are a new teacher, there are so many small parts of teaching you have to figure out. And you get bombarded by advice on what to do. You’ve got feedback from your principal, tips from veteran teachers, and “best practices” from professional development consultants. You have to sift through it all and somehow […]
Posted inSpecial Education
My Math Learning Disability: A Student Perspective
As a student with a math learning disability, there are a lot of difficulties I experience in the classroom that get in the way of my learning, including “memory, language, attention, temporal-sequential ordering, higher order cognition, and spatial ordering” (WGBH Educational Foundation, 2002). Many times, as I sit in the classroom, I feel like I […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
How To Do A Focused Writing Bootcamp
Using the term “boot camp” to describe a teaching experience suggests something perhaps not so pleasant—what’s the classroom equivalent of crawling through mud under barbed wire? But teaching a focused bootcamp can be a lot of fun, and it’s actually a nice break from the norm. Students gain a great deal by an intense focus […]