Let us help you teach like a ninja!
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.
Do you ever feel your classroom just keeps getting louder and louder until you want to take your ears off? As your students get more comfortable, the noise level can get out of hand. Of course, the activity going on in your room can often impact the noise, but your body language and your tone of voice play a bigger role than you may realize. This is a real experiment we tried on our students.
[Read more…] about How to Set the Noise Level in Your Classroom
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
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
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?
