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Have you been hired as a substitute teacher at the last minute? Are there no substitute teacher plans in place or you can’t find them? We pulled together this list of activities you can use to get your day sorted out. Most of the activities are designed for upper elementary, but you might be able to adapt them for your group of students.
[Read more…] about Last Minute Substitute Teacher Ideas When Plans Fall Through
As a student, I never appreciated the first month of school. It always seemed like we didn’t get too deep into the content and spent a lot of time playing games and doing art projects. It wasn’t until I became a teacher that I recognized how much work teachers do during the first month of school. While we created a list with nine of the most important, there really are so many more that could be added.
[Read more…] about 9 Things To Do During the First Month of SchoolCongratulations! You got your first teaching job and are now an elementary school teacher. All that hard work has paid off and you are gainfully employed in your vocation (or calling or job to pay the bills-your choice). Now the real work begins. But don’t panic. We’ve been there! Read what you need to know to get your new job started off on the right foot.
If you’ve ever shared a class or a classroom with another teacher, you might have called yourselves co-teachers or team teachers. What’s the difference between co-teaching and team teaching? We’ve discovered that most people use these terms interchangeably, but we’re going to challenge you to think about it in a different way. Do you like sharing a classroom with another teacher?
Sometimes team teachers are thrown together whether they planned it or not. Here are some ways to make the most of your team teaching situation.
[Read more…] about 7 Amazing Team Teaching Tips
Even writing this post, I recognize that my overachieving personality is going to make sure it’s perfect and it will never be as perfect as it needs to because I am an overachieving teacher.
It’s just who I am and I know this, so I actively try to not be me (and sometimes I even overachieve at that). Some people call it being uptight. Others think I’m a perfectionist. I just feel like I like things done right. And to be honest, it hasn’t served me well.
If this resonates with you at all, then read on.
[Read more…] about Are You an Overachieving Teacher? Read This Now
If you’re anything like me, you were playing school with your dolls, neighbours or siblings as soon as you could walk. Teaching is just part of my soul, but there might come a time in your life when you should quit your teaching job and that’s ok.
If you are looking for a post that will tell you it’s ok to quit your teaching job to run away with the circus, this isn’t really that kind of post. This isn’t what you can do instead of teaching.
Instead, this post is about knowing when it’s time to change the teaching job you are currently doing. That could be a change of subject matter, grade level, locations, training or type of school position. Change is a good thing. It can breathe life back into your calling.
Read on to find out when you should quit.
[Read more…] about When to Quit Your Teaching Job and Why It’s Ok
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.
[Read more…] about How to Reconnect From Your Teaching Island
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.
[Read more…] about How to Get Your Classroom Set Up in One Day
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.
[Read more…] about Are You Feeling Like a Failing Teacher?
Disclaimer: This article is meant for fun. We are not actually criticising anyone or their work ethic, but let’s be honest, we all know these types of teachers. Keep reading for our advice on how to handle it.
Think about the last staff meeting you attended. It’s time to pass around the volunteer sign-up because it’s going to be a busy month. That’s always the intention, but by the end of the month there are usually a lot of hard feelings and regret over glitter, balloons, and most of all missed class time (because everyone needs to sit around and listen to first graders read their research reports on goats for 45 minutes. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?)
[Read more…] about Five Types of Teachers and How To Deal With Them
If you are often tagging #teachertired on your social media posts, then maybe it’s time you stopped joking about it and did something to change. Being tired is part of life, but if you are so tired that you cry in your car on a daily basis, then it’s time to break some bad teacher-tired habits.
This is not about judgment. This comes from love-because we have been there. We have cried in the car. We’ve stress-eaten crappy food. Sometimes we’ve taken out our tiredness in our family relationships. We’ve felt guilty for not being a good enough teacher, not being a good enough spouse, not being a good enough parent and not being a good enough cook (no one said it was rational). We often used humour to joke about how tired we were, but the real problem was that we kept letting it continue.
[Read more…] about Teacher Tired Habits to Break
December can be a great month. It can also be exhausting. Your schedule gets tossed aside for concert rehearsals, bad weather and overstimulation of the little darlings in your care. How do you teach when your whole schedule needs to be tossed? This is our guide to calm the chaos.
There are three whole weeks of learning that are supposed to happen in December, but it can be VERY challenging to fit it all in. Here is what we do to mitigate the chaos.
While December is the month with the most disruptions for us, these ideas can work any time of year.
[Read more…] about How to Calm the Chaos in December
