Finding A Teaching Job General by Joel Wagner - July 6, 2016July 10, 20160 Do you ever feel alone in your quest to become a teacher? Well, the truth is that finding a teaching job can be lonely, but it is not a unique experience. Over the next few weeks, I will be curating Resource Posts that will serve as a springboard for digging deeper into specific topics that have been covered on this blog. Since we are at the beginning of July and many teachers are searching for their first job or for greener pastures, the first stop is a collection of resources on finding a teaching job. General Tips Help: Should I Become A Teacher? Help A New Student Teacher Out With Resources 10 Things I Wish Someone Had Explained Before My First Teaching Job Five Ways
10 Teaching Myths Busted [Infographic] General by Joel Wagner - July 5, 2016July 10, 20160 Most teachers came to their first teaching job with some beliefs that we have since learned were not true. This article explores ten of those teaching myths.
How To Stay Up To Date With The Job Market: Tips For Teachers General by Amelia Knott - July 4, 2016July 25, 20160 Stay current on industry changes to maintain job flexibility if and when you need it. As a teacher, the job market can be a tough place. In a field where competition is high and landing your ideal placement takes patience, you won’t want to fall behind on shifts and general goings-on in the job market. If you do fall behind, you may miss out on opportunities or professional development that are critical to your career as an educator. Check out these tips to make sure you stay in the game: Always be learning Teachers do more than teach; they are also lifelong learners. New teaching methods and new curriculum content are just a couple of the items that need to be on teachers’
Weekend Reading 7/3/16 General by Joel Wagner - July 3, 2016July 3, 20160 Well, I hope you're having a nice productive weekend and are ready to get a new week started. I know that we have some international readers, but in the United States, we are celebrating Independence Day this weekend. While you have some time left in the weekend, here are some cool things you can fill it with. A new podcast Malcolm Gladwell has a new podcast out called Revisionist History. From the podcasts's about page: Welcome to Revisionist History, a new podcast from Malcolm Gladwell and Panoply Media. Each week for 10 weeks, Revisionist History will go back and reinterpret something from the past: an event, a person, an idea. Something overlooked. Something misunderstood. Because sometimes the past deserves a second chance. An few older podcasts I actually learned about Malcolm
The Impact of Great Teachers [Infographic] General by Joel Wagner - July 1, 2016June 29, 20160 Great teachers Many people live their lives without impacting more than a few hundred people. Teachers often make that kind of impact over the course of one year. This kind of responsibility can be intimidating, and is one of the main reasons that I continually encourage my readers to strive toward being great teachers. This infographic below looks at some of the qualities of great teachers. Keep aiming higher, my friends. The world needs great teachers like you! Image courtesy of Teacher Certification Degrees
The Art of Encouragement Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 30, 2016July 10, 20160 By far one of the most successful early posts on this blog was 6 Motivation Techniques. I wrote it in March of 2007, as I was approaching the end of my fifth year of teaching. Now more than nine years later, I realize I was onto some good ideas, but I was off base. In this article, we'll look at the missing piece that would have helped me so much in those early years of teaching: The Art of Encouragement Without motivation, your class is just another block of time that the students have to suffer through. With motivation, you hear things like “hi, favorite teacher!â€Â and “I love this class!†As a teacher, those are the kinds of things that we
Integrating Classroom Safety with the Youngsters General by Aileen Pablo - June 29, 2016July 28, 20160 In this article, Aileen Pablo examines the issue of classroom safety, especially regarding younger students. So often, we take basic safety knowledge for granted and forget that we learned those lessons at some point. Teachers and schools aren't just responsible for educating children; when kids are in their "custody" for the school day, they are also legally tasked with keeping them safe. Unfortunately, that's sometimes easier said than done when you've got hundreds of excitable little ones who are far more interested in playing around. And with the youngest kids, they may not even have a sense of basic safety or know how to keep themselves out of harm's way. Because of these things, it’s all too common for children to put themselves
Jeopardy Champ Has Shocking Plan To Overhaul Education, And It Just Might Work! General by Mister Teacher - June 28, 2016July 3, 20161 This article by John Pearson will leave you scratching your head to figure out why you never thought of this simple solution before. With schools and students increasingly getting technology and finding themselves "on-line," it's probably time that we as educators start adapting our academic"hooks" to fit the times. Since so many ads and sites shamelessly use clickbait headlines, I thought it would be a good idea to start a little list going of similar approaches we could take. Please feel free to add your own Here's a homework sheet with 10 word problems -- Number 5 will shock you! The cafeteria served smiley-face potato wedges. You won't believe what happened next! This video will prove you've been estimating wrong your whole life!
Adieu, Homework: Let’s Explore Alternatives to Traditional Homework General by Ethan Miller - June 27, 2016July 10, 20163 This article explores some of the history of homework and also a few homework alternatives. If you end your class with homework and you hear groans, it may be time to stop and ask why. Of course, this is nothing new and it knows no boundaries, geographically at least, from what I hear from colleagues. Homework and a collective groan following its announcement have been around for many years now, since formal schooling began. If you are surprised to hear this because your students always respond enthusiastically to assignments, I’d like to buy you coffee and grill you! I am sure everyone would like to know how you do it. I was reading about the pros and cons of homework, and I want to
Failing Forward: Turning Setbacks Into Triumphs Inspiration by Joel Wagner - June 25, 2016July 10, 20160 Another school year has come and gone. For many of us, it was a year of a few huge successes, a few colossal failures, and a whole lot of in-betweens. This article discusses how those colossal failures can propel you toward being a much better version of yourself. Every failure is an opportunity I love failure...at least after it's all over. I don't love failing. In fact, failing at stuff is one of my least favorite things. But I love what failure does to a person. It means I did something. It means I tried. It also means, I have a new opportunity to learn a great lesson. Often, the bigger the failure, the more valuable the potential lesson. The tough part about being
10 Steps For Interview Success [INFOGRAPHIC] New Teachers by Joel Wagner - June 24, 2016July 5, 20160 Summertime is in full swing. That means that many new teachers search for their first job, and many more experienced teachers look for a new job. The interview is an inevitable part of the job hunt. For many pre-service teachers, a teaching job interview is the first real job interview they have ever had. But interviews often lead to rejection. The good news is you only need one interview success. Nowadays, numerous resources are available to help make sure the interview goes well. Unfortunately, few of them seem to be geared specifically toward teachers. Tradewind Recruitment is one company whose focus is helping teachers find jobs. They have put together a nice infographic to help guide you through the process. If you happen to be in the United Kingdom, you may want to check out
How To Actually Enjoy Teaching A Class You Don’t Want To Teach General by Joel Wagner - June 23, 2016June 23, 20160 You want me to teach what? Imagine my surprise the first day of my job one year when I found out that I was teaching Music History and that there was no curriculum for the class, no budget for it, and no textbook. The class was used to fulfill the fine arts credit that student needed to graduate, so I could reasonably expect that less than 25% of the students had any kind of working knowledge of music. In fact, most of them would inevitably want to listen to exclusively hip hop music and complain about anything that was produced more than 5 years earlier. Other teachers who had taught the class explained to me that they just show movies, or spend a semester teaching music theory and then a
Common New Teacher Struggles (And How To Deal With Them) New Teachers by Zoe Anderson - June 22, 2016August 5, 20161 Being a teacher is one of the most stressful jobs a person can have, and if you’re a teacher, you will know that one of the most stressful periods during the job occurs in the first year. Being a new teacher means that you will have to face the struggles and difficulties that all new jobs have, as well as having to deal with the high stakes of education; it’s a lot to take on. In this article, you will find the common new teacher struggles that every new teacher has to face, as well as the solutions to make that first year a little easier. Curricular guidance We have all experienced the first day on a new job where we are sat down
How I Fell In Love With Lesson Planning Music Education by Joel Wagner - June 20, 2016June 20, 20160 "I got your lesson plans right here, buddy!" You know the drill, spend hours creating a lesson plan weeks ahead of the class that you don't even stick to because the students fell behind last week  and now you're playing catch up trying to make magic happen. I know. Or an administrator drops by expecting to see your lesson plan binder at the front of the classroom or the state-mandated objectives listen on the board, or whatever new wild scheme the wind has blown in this year. Or maybe I'm the only one who has spent one industrious teacher work day in April writing lesson plans for the entire year because I didn't do them. Or simply turned in an empty lesson plan binder at the end of another school year.
Weekend Reading 6/18/16 General by Joel Wagner - June 18, 2016June 19, 20161 I found some great stuff going on out there in the world of education blogging this week. Here is a summary of what I found and shared on Twitter (follow @sywtt). this week. Growth Mindset: Clearing Up Some Common Confusions Digital transformation in eduction: from challenge to opportunity What's so sexy about math? How I teach kids to love science 10 Open-Ended Questions for Teachers' Reflection and Summative Evaluation 5 Common Teaching Practices I'm Kicking to the Curb When Everyone Owns the Place of the Arts I'm A Teacher Who Loves Quizzing; But Does Quiz Format Matter? Are We Too Preoccupied with Teaching Techniques? 7 Shifts To Create A Classroom of the Future 6 Apps That Can Help with Student Assessment