As I have been reading the interviews for the Reader Appreciation Month (by the way, there is room for another 7 interviews. If you don’t send them in, they end on Wednesday!), I have been amazed at the depth of knowledge of some of the readers of this blog. I was going through my Google … Read more
In preparing for my month-long series on 25 Tips For Less Stress, I realized that I left out a few key ingredients. If you follow all 25 tips listed, and leave out the foundational ingredients, you will still be under intense stress. If you follow the tips with little success, you may actually be under … Read more
In The Beginning When I was in college, I had an assignment for one of my classes. The assignment was to write up my own philosophy of education. It was somewhat noble (“I teach children to be better people through music” or something like that). It was substantially trite. Most importantly, it lacked any passion … Read more
Life as a teacher can be awfully challenging. While the challenges change as we gain experience, there are always new ones. It can be an awfully lonely time for many teachers. This article looks at 9 reasons to quit teaching and also raises 10 reasons to stick with teaching. Think of the many reasons you have … Read more
Topic: Best Teaching Tips In my first year of teaching, I thought enthusiasm would be enough to carry me through. It wasn’t. By October, I was behind on grading, losing sleep over lesson plans, and wondering why no one warned me how hard this job could be. And the kids just didn’t seem to respect … Read more
Embed from Getty Images “What are you doing to motivate them?” I was talking with a friend this afternoon about her class. She is a second year teacher. She taught elementary last year and is teaching seventh grade this year. What a change! In the process of our conversation, I asked her, “what are you … Read more
As we come to the conclusion of Reader Appreciation Month, I want to summarize some of the things that we have learned. Today, I’ll focus on the incredible wealth of knowledge that we have learned about classroom management with these 50 awesome classroom management tips. I found that when I put all of the tips … Read more
I’m taking a break today from my Stress Reduction series and getting back to some real teaching issues. That’s why we’re here anyway, right? So August and September have come and gone with great behavior. Now the students are beginning to do a lot more testing of the limits. It’s been a while since I … Read more
Laniza over at Walk Tall has posed the question, how do you handle students who continually test the rules? She writes: I have about 3-4 students in each of my classes that I’m going to have to keep a tight leash on, at least for the first couple of months. My response is that I … Read more
This past summer was a whirlwind tour for me and someday I may share a bit about the amazing experiences I had traveling by myself across the country (including three nights stranded in airports, a fourth of July parade in a small town outside of Boston, following my beloved Texas Rangers to Saint Louis, New … Read more