Quirky Situation + Angry Parent + What to Say Via Email = All Better! As a busy teacher, we all know how time-consuming it can be when a situation arises and a parent’s scathing email comes through. It’s always at the worst possible time, too! We either check our email
Project Based Learning (PBL) Helping Students Take Ownership of Their Learning Ok, let’s be real here: Anytime you give 12 year-olds a project and then release them to go work on it, there’s going to be some chaos. Here’s what PBL is supposed to look like in my 6th
Too Sick to Teach… But I’m Not Exactly Sick Enough to Stay Home, Either! What can we do on those days that it’s not quite bad enough to stay home, and it’s too much work or it’s too late to get a sub for your classes? Well, every
NOW what are they wanting me to do? Ok, so it’s easy to get caught off-guard when someone asks or tells you to help with yet another after-school or evening activity . It’s easy to get cornered and swept into the whole “help us with XYZ after school because it’s
How do you really use your meager conference time/planning time? Whatever paltry amount of time you have for planning during the school day, use it to actually get stuff done. Living life first, then teaching, won’t happen if you’re not even being productive during planning time. I know you’re exhausted
Here’s what happened in my class a few weeks ago that I can’t get out of my mind: In the middle of Language Arts class on Tuesday, sweet little Desiree asked me if I could help her with her test corrections (the test our school district so graciously provides for
Keep your work/school email OFF of your personal smartphone. It’s pretty convenient to just have your school email go straight to your phone so you can respond to messages while standing in line at the copy machine, or while waiting for the kids to come in from the next class.
Hint: Holistic Grading is the best thing since sliced bread. The cross that we bear as Language Arts teachers is all the freakin’ writing we have to grade for our students. (But, yeah, they NEED to be writing!!) Let’s give our students lots of writing opportunities without us actually having
I don’t know if you can really do this every day… It definitely depends on how much class time you have. It’s more important to just do it consistently, whatever that means for you and your classes. So maybe twice a week, give your students a free-writing topic. To make it
Um… Just make them write everything? When I first began teaching English / Language Arts, I was just trying to survive. I even had a principal at the time who expected to see the same thing happening in every classroom. Ugh. So I did what the other ELA teachers did.
What to Do When Kids Finish Their Work Early Those few minutes that exist between activities when some kids have finished their work and others haven’t is sooo chaotic, right? Oh sure, just have them pull out their library books and read until you’re all ready to move on.
Like… actually using it. For real. Ok, so whether you’re teaching Greek & Latin root words or SAT terminology, you know what it’s like to feel that pull-your-hair-out level of frustration when your kids come in the next day or the next week and Don’t. Remember. Anything. I personally went