Archive for the ‘Inspiration’ Category
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I don’t care if it’s your teaching job or your personal habits or your social life or what it is, we all face burnout at one time or another. Or another or another or another. At times, I can feel like we are in a dark tunnel with no escape and we don’t have the energy to escape. Ummm, not that I have ever experienced that, of course.
ANYWAY, you may or may not be struggling with this now. I would guess at this point in the school year, none of us in the United States are wanting to ever teach another school year. It happens. So I present to you an autobiographical short story that addresses this concept.
Once …
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How is this year going to be different from every other year you’ve taught before? Do you have a specific plan to ensure that it will be? Here’s a simple suggestion that I aim to implement in my own teaching this year. Ready?
Plan
Each Sunday, I am going to think about what has happened in recent weeks and identify one weak area that needs to be addressed. It doesn’t have to be the biggest problem area. In fact, sometimes targeting a seemingly insignificant problem that I know I can rectify helps me gain confidence to attack the bigger, more ominous ones later on. Perhaps I can tackle one specific element of a larger problem area. The whole “one bite …
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Five years ago, I wrote a series of seven articles called “Questions That Will Save Your Career” that still remain among the most visited articles on this site. When I wrote those, I had successfully completed my 5th year in education. This summer, after 10 years, I am revisiting some of these older concepts. Today, I revisit How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
- How Do I Keep My Students Quiet?
- How Do I Keep My Students Engaged?
- How Do I Keep My Students Interested?
- How Do I Keep My Students Learning?
- How Do I Keep My Students Away From Me?
- How Do I Keep My School Administration Happy?
- How Do I Keep My Sanity?
- 10 Years of Teaching: How
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After having successfully completed my tenth year as a professional educator, I have come to realize that a lot of what I used to think worked didn’t really work…at least not long-term. While some things may be effective in the immediate future, they are not sustainable down the road, and sometimes even backfire if used to often and too early.
- Love your job and your students
No matter how hard you try to pretend you love your job, if you don’t, the kids will see right through you. Students feed off of the energy that the teacher gives off in the classroom. If you love your job, they will know it. If you hate your job, they will know it.If
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I started this blog more than five years ago. I have now come to the conclusion of my 10th year of teaching. It strikes me that there is a lot of information contained in here (especially in the older articles) that is just flat out wrong, misleading, or easily misunderstood. In the upcoming weeks and months, I aim to readdress some of those same issues from my new, far more patient and friendly mindset. At the same time, there are some core beliefs I held to in those early days that are ever strong in me and I want to really bring those out as well.
Over the last two school years, I have been in a situation where I …
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One piece of wisdom emerging from our ongoing discussions about education is that teachers matter most. They matter more than any other single factor in determining the quality of an education. Studies show it, and students realize it.
But what makes great teachers great? I was wondering that myself a few years ago, and I decided to take a direct, old-fashioned approach. I would set out to find some of the greatest teachers in America and talk to them about teaching.
I scoured America and found some inspiringly great teachers in the public and private schools, in universities, but also on the athletic field, in the culinary school, in the ballet studio, at the speedway, and in the operating room. …
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This guest post is contributed by Maria Rainier, she writes on the topic of online education.
John Jacob Astor, multimillionaire businessman. John Jacob Astor was America’s first multimillionaire. He was also a high school dropout. Woody Allen once said “I was thrown out of college for cheating on the metaphysics final. I looked within the soul of the boy sitting next to me.” Woody Allen really was thrown out of NYU after just a single semester for poor grades.
If you’re an educator or thinking about becoming one there is no doubt that you have run into the disruptive, irritating, distracting, wisecracking and sometimes funny class clown. We all have either been sitting in class with one, have taught one or have been one….
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A friend recently mailed me a copy of the book The Line and the Dot: Alternative thoughts on vision by Paul Gibbs. The book intrigued me because there is very little information on the outside of the book and I trust my friend’s recommendation. So I began reading a little bit. Tonight I came across the following excerpt:
During my time as a school pupil, I had learned a valuable lesson. In the religious education I’d received, I had two different teachers. They both taught me about Christianity, but one turned me off of God, and one turned me on to God. The first taught the program. The second taught passion.
The head of PSE agreed and gave me opportunities …
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I just listened to a recent podcast of Radiolab entitled Words. They included a bonus video along with the podcast. Powerful images and sounds here. The video is below. If you haven’t listened to Radiolab, now is a great time to start.
As I approach my ninth year of teaching, I have begun to wonder about the effectiveness of my classroom management plan.
A brief summary
When I first started out, I allowed way too much stuff to go on. In the middle of my second year, I cracked down like nobody’s business and began what I might term my “dictator days”. Basically, I was a bully and made sure I was in charge of my classroom. I still wholeheartedly …
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I ran 1 mile last night and it took me 18:45. I saw a post on the Couch To 5K’s Facebook profile the other day that questioned whether someone made a typo when they said they ran a mile in 33 minutes.
They couldn’t imagine someone only running one mile in 33 minutes. My contribution to that discussion was pretty good, so I posted it on the Can Wii Do It? blog this evening.
Enjoy The Art of Slow Slow Slow Running……
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Look around you. How many unrealized plans do you see? How much unfinished business do you have sitting on your desk at work waiting for you in the morning? What about ungraded papers, unread emails, un-thrown-away junk mail?
Maybe paperwork isn’t your problem. Maybe it’s a half-finished basement, a bathroom renovation gone sour, a fence in the back yard that needs to be adjusted. Or you have bill collectors hounding you. Or you aren’t contributing enough (or anything) to your retirement plan. Or you are in debt out your eyeballs. Or you’re still lugging around that extra 5 pounds that you’ve been meaning to lose (or the 75 pounds that has grown as you’ve been ignoring it for the last …
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In the past I’ve come up with New Year’s Resolutions, and more recently Visions for the Year. They sort of helped to guide the first four to six weeks of the year, but rarely have lasted much beyond that. This year is different. This year I’m for real. I’ve decided to create a BHAG – a Big, Hairy, Audacious Goal – for myself. I am making active steps in moving forward on the goal, and I am setting myself up to either win big or fail big. It will not be a quiet ending, whichever way things pan out.
But I’m getting ahead of myself. The first thing I’ll do is go over the basics of goal-setting, and then give …
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