Tag: inspiration for teachers
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17. Make Friends with the Secretary, Head Custodian, Media Specialist and Lunch Lady.
You may think that you want to quickly impress your grade level chair or rub elbows with the principal. Nonsense. The four critical relationships for a new teacher are the school secretary, the head custodian, the media specialist and the lunch lady. Those people run the entire school. I can promise you the principal has…
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15. When Responding to Emails that are Upsetting, Don’t Send.
Email is the most common way of communicating between a parent and a teacher. Emails are tricky. First, they are permanent. You can delete them but they still exist. When someone sends an email when they are emotional or especially upset, it sets a tone for an exchange of words that is hard to escape.…
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13. Noise is not a Bad Thing.
There are teachers who believe that absolute silence is the goal. Actually it is not. Literacy is the goal of early childhood and that involves reading, writing, speaking and listening. A perfectly silent classroom is immediately compromised. Children have learned everything they already know by interaction; not by merely listening to someone else. If your…
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11. Develop Routines and Practice Them.
The value and development of routines is definitely taught in college. Where many new teachers miss the mark is in the practice of them. They are ready to get all that stuff out of the way and start teaching lessons. There are several books that tell a teacher how to handle the first three days…
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12. Proximity Will Help You Manage a Group of Children.
When you arrange your classroom furniture, make sure you can easily get around every desk where a child sits. It is difficult for someone to misbehave when the teacher is standing right beside him. The teachers who sit behind a desk or table seem to have the most trouble with classroom management. You can offer…
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8. Teach Children to Genuinely Apologize.
Dozens of times each day, one child you love will offend another child you love with words or actions. Sometimes teachers feel more like referees than educators. If you tell a child to apologize, the perpetrator will turn toward the complainant and bark, “SORRY,” and turn away with a scowl and go tell a friend…
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7. One Rule. Do the Right Thing.
In most every classroom there is a prominently displayed list of rules. Some were created by the class while others were laws laid down by the teacher. It doesn’t really matter who contributed the content, they all involve a whole bunch of “don’ts” in regard to raising your hand to speak, leaving the room, doing…
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6. Love Your Students
Love starts with respect. Most people who grow up to be teachers loved school when they were young. They loved their teachers, they loved learning, they were often successful students and they respected the teacher and the rules. School was a great place for them. Because they respected adults, they entered the teaching profession believing…
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5. The Teacher Hasn’t Taught Until the Student has Learned.
One of the biggest lies a teacher tells herself when her students don’t perform well on an assessment is that she taught the content. What she did was a lot of talking about it, and a few volunteers accurately responded to her questions, so she believed the class was ready to test. You can talk,…
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