The beginning of the school year is probably right around the corner for you. You might be thinking about how you want to decorate your classroom, looking for back-to-school activities and getting-to-know-you ideas, and making copies of your syllabus. You may meet with your school and/or department prior to that first day, and then proceed […]
Teaching Strategies
How to ensure that your summer planning prepares you for success
As another school year winds down, many teachers are envisioning all of the things they want to do (or NOT do) over the summer. With an extended student-free block of time and no assignments to grade, lessons to plan, or parents to call, the time off during summer offers so many opportunities for catching up! […]
How to keep your students from going insane after finals
We’re fast approaching the end of the school year, and for many districts, this means a week of finals/end-of-course exams (EOCs). Since my school is already on a block schedule, we don’t modify the classes at all. However, I know that some non-block schools change to two-hour blocks for each period to allow extra for […]
How to plan a lesson that will keep your students engaged and on-task
As a beginning teacher mentor, I have the privilege of helping our future educators wrap their brains around the many components of teaching. This requires me to get my own brain back into what it felt like to start out – the details I would miss, what I struggled the most with, and the mistakes […]
Why effective lesson planning leads to good classroom management
The average teacher probably handles classroom management and lesson planning as separate entities. I know I do, especially since it seems like once you have your classroom management plan in place, you just have to worry about enforcing it. This leaves open the mental space to tackle everything else involved with teaching. I was recently […]
6 foundations of teaching to focus on in your first year
I’ll bet that some of you are reading this blog post in an attempt to distract yourself from the crushing amount of work you need to do. Perhaps it’s 10:00 PM, and you still don’t know what you’re teaching tomorrow. Even worse, it’s now 11:00 PM, you don’t know what you’re teaching tomorrow, and you […]
What to do when you get an angry parent email
Like many of you reading this, I’m both a parent and a teacher. Wearing these hats has given me a unique perspective while also a disadvantage – I just might think I know more than my daughter’s teachers. Admittedly, this sounds terrible, but every parent/teacher is guilty of this. You look at the work they take […]
How to conquer assignment grading and take back your weekends
So we need to talk…about grading. You’re thinking, AGAIN? Didn’t you tell me how to grade less while improving student outcomes, and then how to attack that pile of grading? I sure did! But in the past month or so I discovered yet another amazing tool that has cut down the amount of time I spend […]
