Blog
8 Tips for Teaching Classes Online
Listen UPDATE 2: 3/14/2020, 5:30 P.M. The free version of Zoom is back up and in order. UPDATE: (3/13/2020, 12:31 P.M.) We recommended Zoom below as a free service, but in the past 12 hours, we’ve become aware that their free services are temporarily suspended because they are overwhelmed...
Tips for Coping with Personal Mental Illness
Listen According to NAMI (the National Alliance on Mental Illness), on average, 1 in 5 Americans in the general population experience mental illness at some point in their adult life. 1 in 25 experience severe or chronic mental illnesses. It comes as no surprise that teachers are not an exception...
How Building Community Can Create Safer Schools
Listen Everytown Research reports that information contributed by “the New York Police Department’s review of active shooter incidents found that in 75% of these incidents, the shooter or shooters were school-aged and were current or former students of the school.” This means that active shooters in schools are very often...
How Do We Keep Good Teachers?
Listen Teaching is a hard job, and we all know that it doesn’t pay in proportion to the amount of work that it requires. Sometimes the reality of what teaching really is compared to the image put forth in teacher education programs and movies is too much for teachers,...
Self-Care for Worn Out Educators
Listen Have you ever noticed that the only movies that are made about us are either movies where the teacher is a terrible human who takes complete advantage of the “easy paycheck” (which we all know is not realistic) or those who have no personal boundaries and are terrible humans...
Resilience for Teachers
Listen Read Resilience became a buzzword in classrooms across the land in regards to students, but it really needs to be common among adults in conversations about our own personal emotional health. Don’t believe that? Well, here’s a little detail that may change your mind: the first ingredient for building...
7 Tips For Helping Families in Crisis
Listen Read Everyone experiences a crisis at some point. No one is immune. Whether the person involved in crisis is a student, a staff member, or an administrator, the community is affected and may need to respond swiftly to provide meaningful intervention. Here are a few crises that may affect...
The Introvert's Survival Guide for Working in Education
Listen Read Education is a tough field for introverts, and not necessarily for the reasons people might assume. The “public speaking” aspect, for example, is not that big of a deal for many people in a classroom setting. In fact, public speaking in general may be easier for introverts because...
10 Ways to Boost Morale for Teachers and School Staff
Listen As the school year begins, so does the stress and expectations put upon teachers. We go from pretty much not having a care in the world during the summer to deadlines, paperwork, planning, assessments…you name it, we have to do it. All these duties can become overwhelming quickly and...
Mindfulness in the Classroom
Listen The demands put upon students these days, from kindergarten through high school, have become overwhelming. Kindergartners, 5 and 6 year olds, are expected to read and write by the end of the school year. Upper elementary age students need to be able to use a computer and take multiple,...
PBIS - How Effective Is It?
Listen PBIS stands for "Positive Behavioral Interactions and Supports." The overarching goal of PBIS as a classroom strategy is to create safer, more positive learning environments for students of all ages and levels. Most importantly, perhaps, PBIS adds "behavior" as a classroom topic like any other. Here, everyone is first...
Should We Have Corporal Punishment in the Classroom?
Listen Corporal punishment is defined online by Merriam Webster as being “punishment inflicted on a person’s body”. They further add to the definition by pointing out that the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution “limits the use of corporal punishment on convicted offenders and prisoners”. However, they also point out...