This blog has brought some exciting and unexpected things into my life. In this article, I’ll discuss some of the biggest surprises that have come about as a result of this. A brief background It was about a year ago that I first began to really get into blogging. I knew of blogs and actually had a few on livejournal and myspace for a few ...

The common classroom management wisdom we all hear is, “Don’t smile before Christmas.” I believe that advice is good advice when taken metaphorically. If taken directly as written, it is about the worst advice you can follow. Good advice In the middle of my fourth semester of teaching, when I was learning how to really get a ...

As I have mentioned before, my priorities as a first year teacher were a little bit off. It wasn’t until the end of my second year before I began to really “get it.” I still don’t get it, but I have begun to. What I learned in the last two and a half months of [...]

This is the seventh in a series of posts entitled “Questions That Will Save Your Career.” How do you keep your sanity? We come to the final and most personally rewarding part of the whole deal. This has to do with the things that happen outside of the classroom. How do you teach and teach well, and [...]

This is the sixth in a series of posts entitled “Questions That Will Save Your Career.” How do you keep the administrators happy? No matter how hard you try and no matter how much the students and parents love you, certain people remain who can make your job more difficult. Principals, superintendents, counselors, and secretaries are ...

This is the fifth in a series of posts entitled “Questions That Will Save Your Career.” How do you keep them away? Here is where things begin to get fun. When I first started teaching, I did so because I loved working with children. I tried so hard to make them like me. I wanted to be [...]

This is the fourth in a series of posts entitled “Questions That Will Save Your Career.” How do you keep them learning? We have come to the central part of why we entered into the educational field. Sometimes amidst the classroom management issues, paperwork, extracurricular assignments, professional development, and all sorts of other ...

This is the third in a series of posts entitled “Questions That Will Save Your Career.” How do you keep them interested? Maintaining interest in the subject matter is clearly one of the best things you can do for your teaching. If you are asked to give a speech, you want the audience to be receptive to [...]