Let’s not kid ourselves: The college classroom is a very different world than secondary teaching, as it should be. The material taught there is more rigorous, the students are more independent, and there is far less supervision of teaching practice, among other contrasts. The assumption at good colleges is this: If you’re proficient enough to […]
teaching
Posted inOpinion
10 Things You Can Do Now that It’s Summer Break
Man, being a teacher is such a sweet gig. I mean, we get out of school at three o’clock every day, have our weekends free, have super-long vacations, and we get the summer off? Okay, so maybe all of that’s not true (most of that’s not true), but unless you’re at a year-round school, you still […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Facilitating vs. Teaching
Facilitating in the classroom is a different bird than teaching in front of the class. When most people think of teaching, they picture an adult standing in front of a classroom giving information to students. That is exactly the picture that I have from my K-12 school days. For many decades, when public education was […]
Posted inUncategorized
Who Will Care for the Teachers?
When I sat down to write this piece, my purpose was to scribe a thinly veiled, autobiographical accounting of my own experience of surviving the middle school classroom while I struggled with depression. However, wanting to avoid the cathartic-memoir trope, I planned to include information on the prevalence of depressive disorders among classroom teachers .I […]
Posted inHigh School, Social Justice
Ethics in Education… Do We Still Have Them?
James Comer said, “No significant learning can occur without a significant relationship.” At a dinner party recently, some teacher friends and I were discussing inappropriate relationships between teachers and students. A non-teacher asked, “What’s going on between these teachers and students? How does THAT happen?” It piqued my curiosity; so I began to investigate the […]
Posted inAdult Learning, Child Development, Classroom Management, Confessions of a Teacher, Current Events in Education, Elementary School, Featured, From the Front Lines, High School, Instructional Strategies, Kindergarten, Middle School, Opinion, Parents, Professional Development, School Improvement, Special Education
The Mental State of Teaching
“The greatest weapon against stress is our ability to choose one thought over another.” – William James Is anyone else climbing into this boat and dropping anchor? I know I am. My life has been turned upside down since January with personal struggles, professional struggles and just day-to-day struggles that seem to be heavier than […]
Posted inClassroom Management, Featured
The Conundrums of Teaching
Conundrum is defined as a puzzle, challenge, or enigma, and I cannot think of a better word for teaching. Teaching is a paradox, and every decision we make has an immediate impact and more often than not we wonder if we made the right decision. The Puzzle of Content. It is so unfortunate that teachers […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher, From the Front Lines, Middle School, Parents
Balancing Teaching and Mothering
I’ve always been a working mom. I guess I should qualify that – I’ve always been a work-outside-the-home mom. Since I was in my thirties before I had both children, I spent several years teaching before they rocked my world…and to be honest, it was a struggle to figure out how I could balance it […]