Ninja Notes

Let us help you teach like a ninja!

Classroom Tips

How to Reconnect From Your Teaching Island

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Is teaching making you feel isolated and disconnected? Come read through some of the strategies that may help you through the tough times. Your mental health is much more important than your teaching job, so let us help.

Teaching has always been an isolating profession. We spend all day in a classroom with little people who get our jokes. The adult conversations we get happen during recess or staff meetings or in the bathroom line waiting for a toilet. It can leave anyone feeling disconnected.

My husband has a joke about teachers, they can seek each other out anywhere in the world. It never fails that when we travel to another country and meet another couple, one of them will be a teacher. He calls it teacher radar.

And it’s true. When two teachers meet in the wild, they talk about teaching. Because it’s another human in the world who actually gets it.

I mean, Mr. Ninja tries to be supportive, but unless you’re in the trenches, you don’t really get it.

How do you connect with other teachers? Come read about our struggles and some of the solutions.

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Your Must-Do Back to School Survival Checklist

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This year is different than any other back to school seasons, so what are some of the things you can do to get yourself prepared regardless of whether you're teaching in person or online. Come take care of your own mental health before your students return!

We created a back to school checklist to think about what might happen this year. It’s not possible to predict exactly what will happen. Things tend to be getting back to normal, but it the past few years have tuaght us anything, don’t get complacent. You might be teaching in person, online or some sort of combination of these things.

You might be teaching a new subject or a new grade level. You might not know anything about what you’ll be doing.

None of it is within your control. So, let’s talk about the things you can control and get ready before you have to go back to school no matter how it looks.

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How to Get Your Classroom Set Up in One Day

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Are you stuck in a time crunch with one day to set up your classroom? Yes, it can be done. Get down to the basics and leave everything else for later. Come read about how we've set up our classroom in one day.

It was the first day we were allowed to reenter the school after a major renovation. It was a disaster. Before the end of the previous year, we packed up everything and carefully labeled it. Nothing was returned to the classrooms. Students would be arriving in ONE day! Yup! You heard that right.

What a nightmare! Fortunately, we worked with the most amazing staff on the planet. We planned out a solution to bring everyone’s anxiety level down to a manageable level. We hosted a walking set-up bus.

What is a walking set-up bus? Keep reading to find out.

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5 Things To Get Organized Before the School Year Starts

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Are you looking for things you can do to get your school year off to a good start? These are all things you can do that don't involve making lesson plans or decorating your classroom. These are things you can do to make your life easier during the school start up.

We firmly believe that teachers should enjoy the time off they have and shouldn’t be forced to work. It’s the time we all need to replenish and prepare, but if you’re a little like us, you thrive when you are well-planned and prepared. It’s time to get organized for the year ahead.

That’s why we wrote this post. These are the things we try to get done over the summer months so we don’t have to worry about them in the first days of school. Having a simple plan makes answering the bombardment of questions from students so much easier.

Are you getting ready to start a new school year? Well, keep reading because these common sense things are the things you should be thinking about. We’re sharing them because these are all things we messed up in the past and want to pass down our wisdom.

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Are You Feeling Like a Failing Teacher?

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Do you feel like you are failing your students? Are you struggling to keep up? Come let us help you get through the rough days.

This is the time of year when we question whether or not we can continue teaching. Reflection is important. It’s how we grow, but maybe you’re feeling like a failing teacher.

It doesn’t matter that we have years of experience behind us and the school year is finished, but there’s just something about this time of year that puts us in a funk. Add a pandemic into the mix and there’s even more confusion.

Even more, new teachers really start to question whether or not they can cut it as a teacher. This is the time of year when we tend to field questions from our new-to-school teachers and over and over we hear the same issues.

Maybe some of these sound like you, so before you throw in the towel and quit everything you’ve worked so hard to achieve, please keep reading.

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How to Reduce Paper Clutter in Your Classroom

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The classroom seems to be a vortex of paper that piles up and makes organizing it even more complicated. Come learn some of the ways you can tame the paper clutter in your classroom.

Is your classroom drowning in paper? It can happen so easily. Between student work, office memos, plans, reminders and reports, your classroom can easily become a fire hazard or, at the very least, a tree massacre.

Here are some of our best ways to reduce the amount of paper that keeps creeping into your classroom.

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