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? […]
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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 inInstructional Strategies
Seven Steps to a Fresh Start for your Class
You started off with the best of intentions—a clean desk, new notebooks, resolutions for the new school year—but things are already turning sour. Students aren’t working the way that you’d like them to, lessons have flopped, you are having discipline and classroom management issues. Your classes feel chaotic and out of control, and you are […]
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 […]
Posted inClassroom Management
Time to End Students’ Need for Instant Gratification
When you were in your educational psychology class a few years back, you probably learned about instant gratification. This behavior, at heart, is when we pursue what we want, when we want it. Often, that means now. The primal need couldn’t be more evident in our school children – and it’s up to us educators to redirect it. […]
Posted inBack to School
Small Things to Create a Great Community
At the end of last school year, after I informed my students that I would be leaving the district, they showered me with gratitude. They wrote notes; they gave speeches; they made a scrapbook; they spent money on gifts; they arranged parties with food; they collaborated with teachers and counselors to surprise me with a […]
Posted inClassroom Management
How to Avoid Teacher Burnout
One of the great pieces of advice that I received in my teaching career is that at the end of the day students should be more tired than the teacher. The other great piece of advice that I got was from a freshman in one of my classes. She said, “Why don’t you just give […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
How To Make Writing a Priority in Your ELA Classroom
For many years of teaching, I would follow the same formula over and over throughout the year with my classes: teach a unit, finish unit, assign paper on that unit. Writing happened, but it was the thing that we did after we did the other stuff. What this means is that writing mostly happened at home, […]