Is Anybody Listening?

One of the easiest mistakes for any teacher--and especially a first-year teacher--to make is to talk when students are not listening. There are lots of reasons for this, but none of them are good ones. If you are talking and your students are not listening, then nothing productive is happening and you are sending a strong message that what you have to say is not important.

If you only make one small change this month, then make that small change be that you will help your students listen to you when you speak to them. If you want a class to listen to you, catch their attention and then slowly lower the volume of your voice. If you really want to make students pay attention, a dramatic stage whisper works wonders.

Don't Give Up on Challenging Students

At this time of year, it's easy to feel discouraged about the potential success of students who have been challenging since the term began. By this point, you have probably had numerous conferences with administrators, counselors, case managers, parents or guardians, your lunch table companions, and the students themselves. When nothing appears to change, it's only natural to feel discouraged. Weary. Worn out. Frustrated.

Don't give up. All of your students--and especially the challenging ones--deserve the best from you. They need to feel that they can succeed. More important, however, they need to feel that you still believe in them. 

Because challenging students often have years of failure behind them, they expect to be singled out—to be different.  When teachers appear to give up, then the negative self-image that challenging students carry with them is reinforced once again. 

Teacher commitment to the belief that all students are expected to succeed is the bedrock of successfully dealing with challenging students. After all, if their teachers don’t believe in their ability to succeed, who will?

Instead of giving in to your frustration and viewing your students with expectations of looming misbehavior, if you can calmly treat difficult students with the same expectations as other students, they will often rise to the occasion. The self-fulfilling prophecy of their teacher’s acceptance and expectations will make it possible for them to achieve academic and behavioral success.

Brighten Up Your Winter Classroom with Free Posters

Need a little bit of inspiration for your students? It's just a click or two away.

Although the very best décor in any classroom is student created work, you can also make your classroom a friendlier place for your students to work without having to spend any of your own paycheck.

At Print A Poster (https://print-a-poster.com), you can find lots of free posters to brighten your walls and inspire your students. There are lots of categories to choose from with a wide variety of choices in each category.

Busy Teacher (http://busyteacher.org/teaching_ideas_and_techniques/classroom-posters) offers over sixty free posters for teachers.

Need Help with Differentiation? Try So All Can Learn

Like many teachers, I always felt frustrated when I learned about a really good idea but had no real idea about how to implement it in my classroom so that it would work. One of those exciting but frustrating ideas is differentiation.

The benefits of a differentiated classoom are obvious to anyone who has ever faced a room full of students, but the nuts and bolts of how to make it work without losing control of the class environment or even your sanity trying to keep up with all of the moving parts can be intimidating.

While there are lots of helpful resources available to teachers online, John McCarthy's book, So All Can Learn, and his web site, http://johnmccarthyeds.net are both resources well worth exploring. Practical, well-written, and filled with useful information, it is well worth your time to include these resources in your research about differentiation. You can also find him on Twitter: @JMcCarthyEds. 

Stressed Out in December? Ten Suggestions.

December 11, 2017

     It's not secret that teachers are stressed in the days leading up to Winter Break. There is a lot going on in our personal lives as well as in our classrooms. The demands of the curriculum that must be covered and the looming standardized tests don't vanish just because a holiday season is approaching. Add excited students to the mix and the ingredients are all in place for serious teacher stress.
     Although there are many different ways to deal with stress in general, there are some that are particularly helpful for teachers and that don't involve chocolate and alcohol. Here goes:
1. Go to your school’s media center and escape into a good book or read a newspaper for 10-15 minutes.
2. Talk things over with a sympathetic colleague or mentor.
3. Take a brisk walk around the perimeter of your building.
4. Refuse to take it personally when students are rude or disruptive.
5. Find a quiet spot and practice deep breathing exercises.
6. Slowly count to one hundred before you speak in anger. Still stressed? Keep counting until you feel yourself relaxing.
7. Try to lighten your mood by changing your perspective. Find a way to laugh at yourself or the situation.
8. If you have too much to do, divide each task into manageable amounts and get busy.
9. Turn on some music to change your mood.
10. There are lots of free apps for mindfulness or meditation. If you would like to try one, a good place to start is with Calm (https://www.calm.com)

It's Not a Happy Holiday for All Students

December 7, 2017

               For many students, the contrast between their classmate’s lives and their own can be particularly painful during December. It’s important to keep in mind that not everyone in your class is going to have a merry holiday filled with presents and loving families. Children of poverty are not the only ones who struggle this time of year. You may have students whose home lives appear on the surface to be happy, but they may be dealing with family conflicts, family substance abuse, or any other of the perils of modern life that can be so difficult for all children.

               Of course, it is only natural that caring teachers would want to celebrate the joys of the season with their students, but thoughtful teachers will strive to keep the impact of the holidays on their classrooms as low key as possible. Here are some ways you can keep your students focused on school instead of the holidays in the days ahead.

·        When students veer into discussions of the holiday, gently steer them back to learning. You don’t have to be the Grinch to do this, just be gentle, pleasant, and firm.

·        When your students beg for a class party, offer a celebration after the holidays to commemorate classroom achievements instead.

·        If students bring you gifts, handle them tactfully and as privately as possible. Honor the giver with a sincere thank you card rather than making a big deal of the gift in front of students who were not able to give gifts.

·        Recognize that the distraction and excited buzz that many students feel is completely contagious.  If you are used to one or two students being off task, expect to see many students off task now. Add in activities that help students stay on task: use manipulatives, have them work in pairs, use checklists and choice boards...do whatever will appeal to your students’ interests so that they will want to work.

A Service Project Where Everyone Learns

December 4, 2017

     Although this is traditionally the season of giving, not all of students will be able to participate in the many charitable activities that occur in schools everywhere this time of year. While some students will bring in heavy bags of canned goods or armloads of warm winter clothing, many students and their families do not have the means to do so. The challenge for a compassionate teacher is to find charitable activities where every student can participate.
     One of the best ways to do this is to have students play an online game that allows them to learn and help others at the same time without having to spend any of their own money. Free Rice (www.freerice.com) is an addictive charitable game that any student who can read can play. For every correct answer, ten grains of rice is donated to the World Food Programme.  It is a legitimate enterprise with thousands of players around the world--and loads of fun to play.
     The photo above is a banner my students and I made to celebrate the total number of grains of rice they donated in one month several years ago. After they learned to play the game, we made it a class goal that they would use their spare time in class to play the game to help others less fortunate. (We were fortunate enough to have a one-to-one laptop classroom.) They set a goal near the end of January that they would try to raise one million grains of rice by the end of the school year in June. They reached that goal by the end of February. The banner is a representation of how proud my students were at being able to help others. And what a gratifying way to spend any extra time in class: a shared class project that provides differentiated learning opportunities for all players, does not cost students anything but time and effort, and encourages students to do good deeds. It's worth a try.