I LOVE SNOW DAYS!! They are always a surprise in our school district. Despite the amount of snow we get in these here parts,  it is very rarely that we have a snow day called the night before. But this week, it was a surprise and very welcome SNOW DAY. So, what did we do?After a leisurely start to our Tuesday off, snow-shoes were donned and off I ...

For specifics about the framework, be sure to see Dwight Carter’s (@Dwight_Carter) blog after his three-days training. Today was my first of 3 OTES days, and I’m still feeling pretty good about that “left side” (or the performance piece) of the Ohio Teacher Evaluation System framework. (The “right side,” or the student growth side, is another ...

MyWeb4Ed is now a Symbaloo Premier account and has a page dedicated to the growing collection of educational resources.  This site will give you literally thousands of resources for almost any topic from Bring Your Own Device resources to Videos 4 Professional Development.  Keep this one handy as it grows daily and will continue to [...] Related ...

Imagine this scenario: You teach at least 5 classes or 5 hours a day (this accounts for both elementary and secondary teachers). Each 1 hour block takes about 5 minutes to get started and ends about 5 minutes early.  This means that roughly 10 minutes out of every 60 minutes are underutilized. Over the course of the day, this means that roughly ...

Many special education teachers are getting nervous because they have not had training in the new common core standards. They will be evaluated as their students reach the individual learning objectives, derived from the common core standards. They may be similar to IEP goals, but are not necessarily the same.Teachers who are responsible for the ...

Many people are not fans of being a substitute teacher at the high school level. This is because many substitute teachers believe that they lead the class either by intimidation or by being the class hero. Neither of these approaches work very well in high school. There are some simple guidelines that make most high school substitute teaching ...

I wanted to share my new blog with all of you! Add it to your reader or follow it on google.  http://samcooltoolsfortheclassroom.blogspot.com/ Its all about cool and techy tools to use in the classroom. 

I have been using this website for years and I have watched it develop into what it is today. The website is http://www.abcya.com/. ABC YA hosts many free educational websites, games, apps, and resources for parents, teachers, and students. This is a great go to site to find that special game or app you have been looking for! The website is ...

And you know they would! Merit pay, how realistic is it that our pay could actually be tied to test scores? Very realistic! What is merit pay?  Noun :extra pay awarded to an employee on the basis of merit (especially to school teachers) What “think tank” thought up this idea, maybe the same one that [...]

Another school year is coming to a close, and many teachers will be evaluated using a new system. After receiving an evaluation, please let me know how the new system worked and where we should go from here.