Teacher Tips
10 Great Teacher Blogs
Through the world of blogging, connect with other passionate teachers and be inspired by their writings, philosophies, and ideas for the classroom. To start, consider adding these 10 great teacher blogs to your RSS feed.
1. Cool Cat Teacher Blog – Vicki Davis
The “cool cat teacher,” shares her passion for combining education and technology through her blog. As a co-author of the Flat Classroom Project, Vicki shares great insights into how you can incorporate technology into a K – 12 classroom, ranging from class wikis to safely using Web 2.0.
Authored by Mathew Needleman, this blog provides intriguing literature on how to “close the digital divide” that currently exists in our classrooms. Whether you have wanted to learn about the pros of blogging in the classroom or how to help students manage their independent computer time, Needleman shares useful tips that are easily applicable in the classroom.
This tongue-and-cheek blog expresses many of the frustrations that teachers feel, or more specifically, cuts “through all the crap” to “get to what’s really useful in the American public education system.” Indeed, the blog cuts through the theoretical and gets straight to the heart of reality in the classroom. Yes, giving students independent computer time to conduct their research is a good idea, but the blog author questions: how do you deal with the fact that “half their time in the lab is spent making up for the fact that they dicked around when they were supposed to be doing research in the library?”
For all passionate science teachers who need a smile at the end of a long lab day, the Science Teacher blog is the perfect destination. Filled with funny adventures in the science classroom (and beyond!), this blog also provides excellent food for thought for both you and your students.
5. Free Technology for Teachers
Like the name implies, this blog connects you with free technology resources you can integrate into your classroom. Better yet, there are assignment ideas that incorporate technology, news clips, and even widgets to help you jumpstart your lesson plans.
For art educators, this blog is an inspirational resource that helps with classroom management, provides ideas for integrating music and art in the classroom, and inspires new projects. From how to help your students mind their manners at a museum visit to virtually touring other art teachers’ rooms, this is a fantastic blog to inspire your own classroom’s palette.
Although a relative newcomer to the education blogging community, Smart Classroom Management provides sound techniques to help any educator improve the class environment. Drilling down to the psychology of the classroom and students, this blog provides insightful tips, ranging from “how to love unlikable students” to “how to get students to stay seated and quiet in time-out.”
Another excellent blog on incorporating technology in the classroom, Generation YES explores the successes and failures of integrating digital classrooms. From how to bridge the gender gap in the technology classroom to creating the perfect classroom presentation, an abundance of helpful tips abound.
History educators will find fun facts, lesson plan ideas, and plenty of smiles through the History is Elementary blog. You may even learn a few nuggets of history knowledge yourself, including “13 New World Explorers Not Commonly Known.”
Math teachers don’t have to feel left out in the blogging world! Join Dan Meyer in his math teaching adventures as he explores how to most effectively manage the classroom and inspire students numerically. True to its goal, this is a teaching blog that focuses on practice, not policy.
Guide to Surviving Your First Year as a Teacher
The first year of teaching is rife with conflict, both internal and external. New teachers must bridge the gap between theoretical concepts and the rowdy classroom, where reality is quite different than the expectations taught in the Ivory Tower of the School of Education. Indeed, teachers must learn how to quickly "survive" in the classroom or else fall victim to the disheartening statistics. According to the National Education Association, 30% of new teachers quit within three years, while 50% of new teachers leave within five years of stepping foot into their own classrooms. Thankfully, with this guide by your side, you are well on your way to enjoying your first year as a teacher!
Pave the Foundation on the First Day
The first day of school will set the tone for the entire year. Students are quick to test boundaries, and this process instantly begins with first impressions. You want your students to see that you are supportive and nurturing, yet firm when it comes to your expectations. Too many first-year teachers want their students to like them, but this is a fallacy. It doesn't matter whether or not the students like you; it only matters if they respect you. On the very first day, make sure that your academic and behavioral expectations for the classroom are clearly understood by your students. You may wish to create your own set of rules (and consequences) that are posted clearly in the classroom, or you can encourage your students to take ownership of the rules by enlisting their help. The latter will help your students become more respectful of the rules, as well as the consequences of breaking them. Other seasoned teachers simply use one easy-to-remember rule in the classroom: respect.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare!
The best way to calm your first-year jitters is to be as absolutely prepared as possible. When it comes to lesson plans, you may breeze through a two-hour plan in an hour. What will you do with the extra time? Always keep a small list of supplemental activities with each lesson plan to ensure that you have sufficient material. Remember, if the classroom is unstructured for even five minutes, rowdiness will erupt! Preparing your classroom is also an important part of maintaining a positive environment. When you create your room, make sure that distractions are limited. Sit in the students' desks and look around the room, analyzing potential distractions from their point of view. Before each day, write your plans on the board. This helps you to stay on track, as well as gives your students an overview of what to expect. However, with teaching must come a level of flexibility. While you want to be as prepared as possible, you want to give yourself the freedom to spend time exploring topics that the students find engaging and interesting.
Be Open to Criticism
In every occupation, criticism will exist - and teaching is certainly no exception, especially when you have administrators and parents all sharing their opinion of your classroom. It is important to put defensiveness to the side as a teacher, as being defensive will deafen your ears to real concerns. Put your ego aside and listen to parents' concerns and administrators' feedback, as positive critique is a very effective way to help you grow as an effective teacher.
Conduct a Reality Check
As you will quickly realize, the real classroom presents hurdles and challenges glossed over by education theories. You will not always be able to reach every student; some simply will not respond, despite your best efforts and most creative ideas. Do not become disheartened if there are a few students you simply cannot reach. Your first year of teaching will be filled with both hurdles and immense rewards. By being prepared with the right expectations, you will quickly become a seasoned educator prepared to face all of the challenges of the classroom!
3 Ways to Avoid Teacher Burnout
Although teaching can be a highly rewarding career, schools are consistently challenged with poor teacher retention rates. New teachers can find the rigors of the classroom challenging, and many quit after only a few years in the profession. Teaching burnout can impact any instructor, whether novice or seasoned. To keep your passion for teaching bright, consider these three tips to avoid teacher burnout, regardless of the grade level or subject area you teach.
Tip #1: Don’t Reinvent the Wheel
Filled with lesson plans and worksheets, the internet is the modern teacher’s best friend! Instead of reinventing every single lesson plan with your own personal touch, make your life easier by searching for lesson plans on the web. Resources such as www.readwritethink.org offer either free or reduced-cost teaching materials, saving you both your time and sanity. Teachers can even find unit plans that contain handouts, answer keys, project rubrics, and an array of other helpful teaching resources.
Tip #2: Work Stays at Work
Although students leave the classroom at 3 pm, teachers find themselves staying after the final bell, working on upcoming lesson plans, running copies, grading student work, or completing other seemingly endless responsibilities. With so much work confronting a teacher each day, many educators choose to take some of their school work home – but this could easily lead to teaching burnout. Many seasoned educators believe that taking work home results in an endless cycle of school-focused stress. To avoid bringing stress home with you each night, many veteran teachers recommend arriving an hour or two before school starts to complete your work. Or simply stay in the classroom after school until all of your tasks have been completed. Many teachers find it emotionally and mentally restorative to leave the school each day without trudging (literally and figuratively) school materials into their homes. Your home can remain your haven, giving you the ability to recharge for the next school day.
Tip #3: Seek Support and Mentorship
One of the biggest challenges facing new teachers often centers on the issue of isolation. The school day is busy with ringing bells, inquisitive students, emails, and other distractions – which means a teacher rarely has even a minute or two to speak with a fellow co-worker. To avoid feeling alone and shipwrecked in your own classroom, veteran teachers encourage new teachers to seek a mentor in their department. Additionally, making an active effort to meet and speak with other new teachers in the building can lead to a greater sense of teamwork and support. Teaching burnout is a real issue facing both novice and seasoned educators alike. However, by incorporating smart strategies, you can keep your teaching flame shining brightly!
5 Thanksgiving Myths - Dispelled!
With Thanksgiving just around the corner, you have a splendid opportunity to teach your students historical, social, and cultural lessons that surround this celebrated holiday. However, before you reach into your trusty lesson book, could those historical "facts" really be myths? Learn more about the five most prevalent Thanksgiving myths, which your students will love dispelling at the dinner table with their family.
Myth #1: The Pilgrims Started Thanksgiving
Nearly all students, regardless of their age, generally envision our nation's first Thanksgiving as a gathering of Pilgrims and Native Americans. While this is a common belief, the Pilgrims were not the first groups of Americans to host this holiday! According to historical reports, the citizens of San Elizario, Texas held the very first Thanksgiving in the year of 1598 - three decades before the pilgrims hosted their Thanksgiving dinner! The Texans beat Pilgrims to this tradition by hosting the first Thanksgiving in honor of Juan de Onate. Known for leading hundreds of settlers across hundreds of miles in the Mexican Desert, Juan de Onate was a celebrated "hero," inspiring the very first gathering over 400 years ago!
Myth # 2: The Pilgrims Feasted on Turkey
While many children and adults refer to Thanksgiving as "Turkey Day," the pilgrims may have been confused by this holiday nickname. According to reports, once the Pilgrims began celebrating the Thanksgiving holiday, their menu for the event was far different from what most Americans believe. Unlike modern Thanksgivings, full of corn on the cob, turkey, and cranberry sauce, there is no clear evidence to neither support nor refute whether or not Pilgrims even ate turkey! In fact, evidence only proves that the Pilgrims ate deer for this annual meal.
Myth #3: Thanksgiving is Always on a Thursday in November
Modern families enjoy a day away from school or work on the third Thursday of each November to celebrate Thanksgiving. However, our nation once celebrated two different Thanksgiving holidays! In 1863, President Lincoln ordered that Thanksgiving should be celebrated in both August and November. Before this proclamation, most Americans outside of the New England regions never even celebrated the holiday!
Myth #4: Pilgrims Only Wore Black Outfits, Buckled Shoes, and Hats
Ask your students to imagine pilgrim attire, and most will describe black outfits with white cuffs topped with hats and accented with buckle shoes. Contrary to common belief, the Pilgrims did not dress entirely in black. Instead, Pilgrims did wear an abundance of solid colors, including red, violet, green, and blue. They also did not wear the quintessential "Pilgrim hat" often displayed in Thanksgiving images, nor did they wear distinct buckled shoes. In fact, this type of apparel did not even appear on the fashion scene until 1632. The wardrobe misconceptions have been perpetuated by illustrations of Pilgrims published over time. The earliest pictures of Pilgrims were created in this type of dress to reveal the Pilgrims' devotion to more simplistic habits and lifestyles - but this does not mean they dressed in the attire we imagine today.
Myth #5: Pilgrims and Puritans are the Same People
When studying history, Pilgrims and Puritans are often confused. However, Pilgrims and Puritans are two very distinct groups. Pilgrims, the group that landed in Plymouth onboard the Mayflower, arrived nearly 10 years before Puritans settled in Boston. Not only do these two groups of settlers differ in location and in date of arrival, but components of their cultural values, goals, and ideals are different as well. The largest difference between the Pilgrims and the Puritans is that the latter did not hold the intention of breaking away from the Anglican Church. There are certainly many history lessons that surround Thanksgiving, but this holiday, excite your students by dispelling the myths!
5 Steps to Starting a Teacher's Blog
Today's teachers are no longer limited to writing on the blackboard and sending home paper notes. As educators embrace the benefits of technology, more and more teachers are capitalizing on blogs to stimulate learning and effectively communicate with parents and students outside of the classroom walls. Teachers use blogs in a variety of ways, from updating parents to clarifying lessons. Some teachers also invite their students to contribute their thoughts and ideas in blog form, either for the purpose of discussing specific topics or to share their ideas and areas of interest. The opportunities to use blogs in education are infinite, and you may find that your students may actually enjoy blogging! Not only is blogging a creative way to encourage your students to write, but it will also help them learn more about using information technology simultaneously.
Step 1: Choose a Blogging Website
There are many blogging websites available for teachers to use. Most options are free, but some charge a monthly fee. Many services, such as Class Blogmeister and Edublogs, are specifically designed for educators, and these may offer more benefits for a teacher's blog. For example, Class Blogmeister employs safety precautions that filter content that is inappropriate for children accessing the blog platform. Some of the most popular blogging platforms include:
- Class Blogmeister (free and education based)
- EduBlogs (free and education based)
- Blogger (free)
- WordPress (free)
- MoveableType (free)
- TypePad (monthly fee)
- LiveJournal (free)
Step 2: Set Up Your Blog
All of the listed blog platforms allow you to choose a template style and formatting elements that suit your specific blogging needs. Thus, you have some control over the format of the title, sidebars, main body and footer sections of your blog. Consider playing around with the formatting of your blog to specifically suit your classroom's needs. For example, in the sidebar section, you can create different sub-sections of links. Some of these links may be for parents, while others are great research resources for your students. In addition to the design elements, you can also customize the administrative components of your blog. For example, do you wish for comments to be automatically published? Or would you like to read and approve the comments before they are published on the blog? Take a moment to scan the customization elements you have available in the blogging backend to create the right administrative controls.
Step 3: Write Your First Blog Post
Once you have finished creating the format of your blog, it is time to compose your very first post! Your first post sets the tone for the teacher's blog, and it can be a personal introduction, stimulate a topic discussion, or outline how you intend to use the blog. Be open to the different ways in which a blog can evolve. You may want to brainstorm some ideas about how you want to use the blog before you start, but open yourself up to the possibility that your blog may take on a life of its own. Your students may be very proactive and have great suggestions to incorporate into the blog, and by including their ideas, the teacher's blog will stimulate pride of ownership for your students.
Step 4: Include Images and Videos
Another fantastic feature of blogs is the ease with which you can upload images to illustrate a point or enhance a specific topic with visual imagery. You can also imbed video, so long as you aren't infringing on copyrighted material. The following short list of websites provide blogging teachers access to free services for creating slide shows, post cards, online presentations, forms, photos and more.
Step 5: Invite Students to Participate
It is, of course, a personal choice whether or not to invite your students to participate in your blog. You may find, however, that having your students participate enhances the blog and makes it more interesting for them and others to read. You will need to add students as team members or guest bloggers within your blog account settings. Blogging has the potential to connect people to the larger global community. However you choose to use your teacher blog, be creative and have fun with it! It is intended to enrich the education experience for both you and your students.