07-08: What Worked Well

As we begin the summer vacation, I am looking back on what went really well this year, what didn’t work so well, and what needs to change for next year. Below are some of the positives about this year: Remaining calm – Despite circumstances this year, with the other band director having a stroke and … Read more

10 Reasons to Love Rural Schools

This is a guest post by Waski The Squirrel. Joel’s invitation to be a guest-writer here was a prime opportunity to advertise the joys of teaching in rural America. I run a small blog on Townhall. Rural America is an ignored sector of education, except in the occasional news article about poverty. I can’t really … Read more

10 Things I Wish I Knew As A First Year Teacher

Pat, over at Successful Teaching, recently tagged me in her blog challenge. She suggested that I write an article about the single most important piece of advice I would give a new teacher. It’s odd that she would write that, as it has been something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately. So much so, … Read more

10 Things I Wish Someone Had Explained Before My First Teaching Job

I participated in the Reform Symposium recently and hosted a session entitled 10 Things I Wish Someone Had Explained Before My First Teaching Job. Go to the link here. A lot of these things are topics I’ve covered before, but here is what looks to be the outline for now. Professional Sanity Get a handle on classroom … Read more

148th Carnival of Education

Welcome to the 148th edition of the Carnival of Education! As is one of my signature styles, I want to present this carnival in list format. We’ll begin with a Top 5 list… The Main Attraction Obviously the process of creating any “Top 5” list is subjective and open to argument and debate. With nearly50 … Read more

15 Tricks To Transform Yourself From Classroom Bully Into A Favorite Teacher

Ramona writes: I am a first year teacher struggling with classroom management at the elementary school level. I have some logistical challenges because I don’t have my own classroom and travel between classes and schools with a cart. I also have almost 300 different students I see every week. But mostly my problem is that … Read more

20 Classic SYWTT Articles And Series

If this is your first time visiting this site, or even if you’ve been reading for a while, there are undoubtedly some articles that you’ve missed along the journey. As I have been working a lot on organizing the site lately, it has come to my attention that there are over 400 posts on the … Read more

5 Keys To Educating People

A Matter of Priorities During my first two years of teaching, I discovered that I had a whole lot of information, but the students just weren’t listening to me or learning from me. It is not, mind you, because I was giving them wrong information. It was, however, because I had placed the priorities in … Read more