This guest post was written by Atticus from www.atticusparker.com/education

I was chuffed earlier this month when Joel asked me to write guest post for his edublog SYWTT. I was however also nervous. Joel has created an enviable web presence with SYWTT through an obvious passion for teaching, hard work and obvious dedication. I didn’t want to let him down.

The topic he suggested was ‘How To Make This Year The Best of Your Career’. Wow, I thought. A topic like that calls for an action plan. A list. So I have resorted to an old favourite of blog readers – the list article.

Many blog articles today feature a list. Do Lists. Don’t lists. They are attractive because they…

I have been asked to pass along a request. Unfortunately, I had a pep rally this morning and a football game this evening.

I’m hosting the next EduCarnival at my blog (http://imadreamerteacher.blogspot.com/), and there aren’t a ton of submissions.  Since you have a widely read blog, I was wondering if you could post a short thing about how people could still submit today?  It’s too late to do it through the form, but they could email me links directly at imadreamerteacher@gmail.com.

EDIT: It’s now too late to submit…but check out the EduCarnival V2 Issue 11 anyway.

Are you looking for a new job this summer? I know some people are sticking it out in their current district just because of the insecurity with the recession and current economic situation. I also know that some people have graduated from college and are moving into the world of education. Others have chosen to leave the teaching profession entirely. Are you looking for a new job this summer? Care to comment about your questions/fears/experiences?

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

One of the biggest difficulties that many teachers face is grasping the reality that treating students equally is often not even remotely fair. In fact, fairness in most circumstances necessitates inequality.

One hallmark of a great teacher is that she is fair in her dealings with her students. He has different expectations for every student, but they are all equally achievable. Students with disabilities are one example that immediately comes to mind. We have to provide accommodations for their education. That doesn’t mean we are treating them unfairly, simply that we are adjusting their education to make it more conducive to learning and appropriate…

This is an article in the Total Teacher Transformation series. Click here for a complete table of contents.

Let’s play a game
I want you to think about your classes right now. Think about the four biggest trouble-makers on your roll sheet. Now imagine, what it would be like if they all got sent to another school. You wake up tomorrow and those four kids are gone. What a great day!

But you know what?
With them gone, four more kids will step up and strart ruining your life. There is no end to the number of children who will misbehave if given the chance! Even if you only have one kid, they will still act up…

This post has absolutely nothing to do with teaching or education. It’s totally about blogging. More specifically, WordPress. If you have not yet discovered the wonders of WordPress, I recommend checking it out sometime.

With that disclaimer out of the way, I’ll start out by listing the hacks that I have done, explaining why I did them, and then explaining how I went about adding them. Here goes:

1. Added a featured article
2. Put Featured & Latest images on home page only
3. Thumbnails of all images in main and archive pages
   
4. Moved most ads to search visitors only
5. Added social media links to individual posts and searches
6. Retweet button
   
7. Reader submitted links page
8. Added links to the

…

I was supposed to have my Pre-UIL concert tonight, but we were informed yesterday afternoon that the 7th Graders would be having pre-registration that night instead and they need to use the cafetorium, and gym. Of course! By the time I left school at 5:45 this afternoon, parents were already showing up and trying to go into the band hall. Evidently they had meetings scheduled in there tonight also.

Lemme tell you, I can’t wait to get to the band hall tomorrow morning and figure out what they’ve done with my chairs and stands that I had set up for our 7am rehearsal!

So in my last article, I mentioned that I require pass-offs and also that I cut students….

Well, I’m sitting here in a motel room in San Antonio. I am trading some of my time with a band director friend. I came here to teach trumpet and horn sectionals yesterday since I’m on spring break this week and he had it last week. In turn, he’s going to come in next week and clinic my band. Basically what that means is that he’s going to rehearse them for two hours and tell them stuff they can do to make it better.

It also gives me a chance to step back and listen more closely. When I’m conducting and everything, I hear things, but not everything. This is why I record my band regularly. As an aside, if you…

In what has turned out to be some of the best comment-produicing material on this blog, I wrote about Asperger’s Syndrome early this month. Amidst the comments, G. Broaddus dropped this little gem:

Fairness in the classroom is not always about giving equal tasks; it is sometimes about giving students an equal chance to succeed, and clearly a student with Asperger’s will need a different way to demonstrate learning than his or her “typical” peers.

He then later fleshed out that idea on his own blog with the post Fairness and equality in the classroom. Please check out his post to read some of these thoughts.

As we take this break and get ready to go back into our classes…

This has very little to do with education, but the concept is brilliant and bears sharing. Foodista is a cookbook with a wiki approach.

Some of the cool features include:

1. User-generated and user-edited recipes
2. Easily link to recipes from your blog
3. Click on an ingredient, and find recipes that include that ingredient

For instance, here is a link to a recipe for Christmas Pudding.

Feel free to explore the site while you have some time off for the Christmas Break!

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 contrast rural America with anywhere else. I’ve always taught in rural schools: first in Pennsylvania

and now in North Dakota. My current school educates about 450 students who come from an area of just over 1000 square miles.

When I first moved to North Dakota 10 years ago, I discovered that “rural” is a relative term. The school where I student taught back in Pennsylvania…

This article was recently featured in the Carnival of Education, #180. Check it out if you haven’t already!

I was recently asked about how I handle student absences and make-up work. As a band director, generally an absence simply means they missed out on a rehearsal and we don’t have a lot of make-up work to assign. This gives me limited experience dealing with the issue. I am confident that most of the readers of this blog have far more experience in this realm. So it got me thinking, and I want to throw some questions out you you.

1. How do you handle make-up work for students?
2. What steps do you take for students with excessive absences?
3. What

…

My blog has been running on a fairly regular basis now for over a year. I have a wealth of information stored in the archives here. So often, some of the great writing of the past has gone overlooked. One of the most common reasons for this is that the majority of you who are reading this didn’t even subscribe to this blog 5 months ago.

Some of the best content I’ve written on the blog was put online last spring or summer. But it so often gets overlooked. Some of it needs to be rehashed from time to time as new readers come along. I have implemented some related posts plugins and some other techniques as well as trying…

Recently, I have come across a number of people writing about rights in the education sense.

Some seem to pit parents, teachers, and students all against one another. Some seem to think that parents and students gang up against the poor teachers. Still others throw the wicked old administrators into the mix. It seems most of the bloggers I’ve read seem to have the teacher as the poor, mistreated, valiant hero against whom all the evil forces of society are lashing out. And then there are those who have it out for the Conservative Republican upstate hacks who call themselves “consultants” (see the comments on Matthew’s blog).

Whatever the case, it seems the discussion of parent-teacher relationships and dynamics bring…

I have had quite a few sites link to me lately and I have not returned the favor. If you have linked to me at any point, please trust that I will be linking to you within the next three months. I’m telling you, this site will go crazy after the school year is over. I may be able to do some more catching up over spring break in a week or so. We’ll see what happens.

Joseph Pisano has posted the latest Official List Of The ME Bloggers.

jd2718 added me to his March link updates. He also said I’m a great idea and very helpful. Awww, thanks!

Wow, where has the time gone? I’ve been featured in a…

Welcome to the January 2, 2008 edition of The Carnival of Education. I have been asked to host this party, so fasten your seat belts, tighten your shoelaces, batten down the hatches, and let the good times roll. How’s that for a cliché riddled sentence?

Last time I hosted, I got quite a few positive comments. So hopefully you will enjoy this time around as well.

If this is your first time visiting my blog, welcome! I’d love it if you stick around, subscribe, and contribute to the conversations! Looking for somewhere to start, check out The Busiest Articles of 2007, then if you’re in a real commenting mood, go visit the poor Overlooked Articles of 2007 and The…

I have been working for about a month now on redesigning So You Want To Teach? I want to make it even more reader friendly. I’m excited about the changes that will be coming this week. In fact, the redesigned site has now made its debut! If you’re reading in a RSS reader, come check it out. Let me know what you think.

Wow, look at the colors!
I have changed the color scheme and the heading graphic a little bit. The goal is to add some more color and make the site more inviting and more reminiscent of actually teaching children.

Why is there a question mark next to my comment?
Because you haven’t set up a…

We come now to the final chapter of our 25 Tips For Less Stress. This is perhaps my favorite one of all. Without this decision, you cannot have a stress-free life. The key is to choose to have fun at work.

No matter what industry you work in, if you love your job, you will be more productive. In education, our products are educated people. The more we love teaching, the more of our children will be successful. That love will translate into their development of greater passion for learning. It’s an upward spiral.

Conversely, when we hate our job — or when we just show up to collect the paycheck — it also shows. The students laboriously come to…

I touched on this topic before in Deepen Your Relationships With Friends, but I want to get even more involved here. I want to look at specific ways that you can collaborate with coworkers.

More experienced teachers
These people are the lifeblood of education. We’ve all had at least a small handful of teachers who we had in school whom everyone KNEW were older than the school building, but was afraid to say it. We all know the type. But they truly love teaching. They can imagine nothing else they would do with their lives!

These are the people you need to hook up with. Not only can they be unvaluable sources of free information, but they also generally…

I just recently read NYC Educator‘s article entitled, Startup Tips. Great stuff there.

Neither she nor any teacher of education ever advised me on classroom control. The standing platitude was “A good lesson plan is the best way to control a class,” but I no longer believe that. I think a good lesson plan is the best thing to have after you control the class.

…

The best trick, and it’s not much of a trick at all, is frequent home contact. It’s true that not all parents will be helpful, but I’ve found most of them to be. When kids know reports of their classroom behavior will reach their homes, they tend to save the acting out for your…