Often, the best words in life are the easiest to spell.  Freedom, chocolate, barbecue, love, peace.  The worst words are difficult to spell: racism, xenophobia, beuracracy, committee.  I know I am oversimplifying here.  Beauty is an exception to this rule.  I mention this because I hate committees.  It seems fitting ...

I play with a lot of digital tools, including some that are not for use in my classroom but instead enhance my ability to stay organized and do my job better.  Ever since I synched my first PDA, a Handspring Visor, in 1999, I have slowly begun to outsource my memory.  Little by little, one appointment/contact/to-do item at a time, I have been ...

** This is a guest post by Pamela, who doesn’t currently have her own blog. Pamela teaches elementary in Michigan. Ideas for organizing your subcategories In part 1 of this series, I talked about the shortcomings of traditional to-do lists and the increased productivity that results from using a to-do schedule. With a to-do schedule, your list ...

As we come to the conclusion of Reader Appreciation Month, I want to summarize some of the things that we have learned. Today, I’ll focus on the incredible wealth of knowledge that we have learned about classroom management. I found that when I put all of the tips together, I had over 70 suggestions. I combined [...]

So Christmas is just around the corner. One month away, to be exact. For the last two months I have been posting articles nearly every day. Common wisdom says that you will build your blog most by doing just that. The blog has indeed grown. But I also have noticed that I spend more time [...]

This school year has been remarkably stress-free for me. As a middle school band director working with the non-varsity group, this is unheard of. I have come up with a list of 25 things I have done that have helped to make this happen. During the month of October, the busiest month of the year [...]

This is the first in a series of articles entitled 5 Habits of Highly Effective Teachers. Communication Procedures Without question, one of the most essential elements of any good relationship is clear and open communication. As a teacher, practically everything that we do in the classroom is communication in one sense or another. With this in ...

I recently read an article written by a newly-hired teacher. She was concerned about the fall and how to establish procedures. My response was for her simply to be patient, ask lots of questions, and hang in there. When I was in her position, that kind of advice would have sounded trite and condescending to [...]

After a conversation with another teacher last night, I started looking through the archives. I realized that I have written a few times about having a clean desk and a clean desktop on my computer, but I have never really given a step-by-step guide of how I got there and some of the things I [...]