I’ve always been a fan of giving anonymous surveys to students at the end of the school year.
An anonymous survey is your chance to ask students the questions you may have been asking yourself all year: Does everyone in your class feel respected? Was there something they wished you’d noticed? Is that joke you tell every morning really as funny as you think it is?
Honest answers to these questions can save you from repeating mistakes.
That being said…
(more…)
Early in my teaching career, a colleague told me about her plan to give every one of her students a personalized card on their birthday.
What a wonderful way to show students she cared!
I decided that I, too, would be the type of teacher who gave out birthday cards to students. I bought the cards, wrote the birthdays on my calendar, and proudly announced the plan when I gave out the first birthday card in September.
(more…)
Is this the right moment to show compassion by allowing a student to turn in that late assignment? Or would a tough-love approach teach them to be responsible about deadlines? Should you follow that interesting topic that came up organically or stick to your lesson plan? How much of your class time should be devoted to activities that don’t feel like good teaching but might help your kids squeeze extra points out of a high-stakes test?
The answer to all of these questions is:
(more…)
One of the big underlying themes of my novel, Adequate Yearly Progress, is how teachers’ personal lives impact their teaching, and vice versa. I’ve written elsewhere about some of the problematic portrayals of teachers in the media: single-adjective characters who, whether they appear in inspirational edu-dramas or comedies about role models acting badly, never quite turn into people.
Even the most well-meaning and complimentary descriptions of teaching lack a certain complexity. Teachers are so patient. They’re essential workers. They are heroes, responding to a calling expressed on the side of a tote bag that you can read thanks to a teacher who was created because God couldn’t be everywhere.
All of the above is lovely. And it’s not wrong, exactly. Teachers are great!
But teachers are also people. They spend just as much time thinking about family, friendship, fitness, and finances as people whose jobs are never described as a superpower or a “work of heart.”
(more…)
Of course you knew teaching wouldn’t be exactly how it looks in the movies, or perfectly match the scenarios you studied in college. But sometimes? Wow. Just. . . wow. Here’s a somewhat depressing word cloud. It’s from a 12-page set of responses to a survey that used to be part of my email series, The New Teacher Disillusionment Power Pack. These were responses that fell into the general category of “coming to terms with what teaching is and who you are as a teacher.” (You can scroll down and click on the graphic to see it better.)
(more…)