Sometimes the day to day in the classroom can get frustrating when we feel like we can’t get ahead or are repeating directions constantly. You know me, I’m all about organization and systems. So…here’s 3 tricks to make your teacher life a little bit easier.

Eliminate No Name Papers

Have highlighters (and pencils) next to you turn in bin. Train your students to highlight their name before they put their paper in the bin. this will eliminate 95% of no name papers. Sure a few will get through the cracks, but it will be the rare exception.

Help students learn to self-monitor their out of class time (bathroom trips).

Strategy: Allow student 1 free bathroom trip in the morning and one in the afternoon. In addition, students can go at recess and lunch as usual. Emergencies will happen, but there needs to be time made up for more trips unless there is a medical reason.

Tracking: Draw a line down horizontally across the middle of a sheet of paper. Write AM on the top...

The Scheduling Nightmare

Got a crazy schedule? You’re NOT alone! I can count on one hand the years I have had a class schedule that was the same each day of the week.

If your crazy schedule is getting you down, don’t despair. It’s really possible to have a calm, well-run classroom when your schedule is constantly changing.

Decide on Your Non-Negotiables

A couple of years ago I was working with a teacher who was stressed out about her crazy schedule. In an effort to start each subject at the same time each day, she had managed to cut her subject blocks into multiple pieces two days a week. By the time her students got in the groove for Language Arts on those days, they had to pick up and go to to specials. Then, they came back and finished up. It was hard for her to get solid time to teach small groups and difficult to get students back into the flow. Talk about stressed out! Once we made a solid Language Arts block non-negotiable, life got a lot calmer.

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Do you have a few students that are on your last nerve? Are you feeling like nothing you do is working to keep your class on task? Are your students having trouble getting along?

If you answered YES, you’re not alone. We’ve all been there at one time or another. 

Here's the gig. It's NEVER too late to start fresh. 

When I first started teaching I had the great grace of team teaching with a master teacher. What a blessing! I was the blind leading the blind after all. Fresh from college, no kids of my own and only my year of student teaching under my belt. HELP! The best advice Jan gave me? Velvet over steel. 

Velvet over Steel

Have a backbone of steel and a velvet touch. Know your boundaries and don't compromise while always treating your students with dignity.

Here's what you need to do.

Answer these questions as fully as you can.

1. What are your non-negotiables? What are you not willing to compromise on EVER?

2. What behaviors or interruptions drive...

Effective goal setting is an important skill all students need to learn.

As adults, we set personal and professional goals all the time. Sometimes we even have goals set for us by our employers. New Year’s Resolutions are the perfect way to help your students learn how to set and accomplish their own goals.

I know what you’re thinking… most people don’t keep their New Year’s Resolutions. True. I believe a lot of that has to do with how we write our goals. More often than not, New Year’s Resolutions are written more as wishes then goals. A wish is a goal without a plan. That will get you straight into failure territory. In oder to accomplish our goals, we need to know how to write them with the plan embedded in them.

7 Easy Steps to Doable, Realistic Resolutions

1. Teach students the difference between a wish and a goal. Give examples of accomplishable goals vs. wishes (goals without a plan).

2. Have students choose something they want to get...

Storytelling will improve your students’ learning and retention.

That’s a big claim, I know. I still stand behind it because I’ve lived it both as a teacher and a student. Think for a minute about the best lecture you ever sat through. The one you remember, the one that made an impact on you to this day. Or, think about the best teacher you ever had in high school or college. What did that teacher do differently? There are two things I believe you’re will saying to your self right now: taught with passion for their subject and incorporated stories that made their subject come alive or feel relatable.

What’s so special about storytelling?

The short answer is engagement. Stories help our students relate and invite them to put themselves into the narrative. Stories help us, as teachers, engage more with what we are teaching as well. That’s powerful stuff to our brains. In fact, our brains are wired for relationships and oral storytelling.

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As we head into the end of 2018, life gets busier and kids get antsy. Mean words can sneak out as students come impatient with each other. Or perhaps you just have one of those sneaky word bullies in your class. You know the ones, the sneaky ones that like to whisper mean things to tear others down. The ones that like to say mean things in front of a whole group of kids to get a reaction and an audience. They like to turn everyone against one person.

Bullying happens.

If you think it doesn’t then you’re not paying attention. Kids are just like adults, they have bad days, bad examples of behavior for home or media, and just get frustrated. They can take their frustration and insecurities out on others very easily.

A friend came to me the other day for advice about a word bully in her daughter’s class. Girls can some of the cutest and meanest people on the face of the earth. I’m talking wicked mean. Another girl (who used to be her friend) is a master at the...

This starfish keychain hangs on the wall in my office. It reminds me why I choose to be an educator, why I work so hard for teachers and students. I know starfish and students seem quite different. But in this story, you’ll find they are similar. It’s not a new story. In fact, it’s been around for more than 30 years. I took a few liberties with the original tale, but the gist of it is the same.

The day after a storm a young woman was walking along a beach covered in starfish that had washed on shore during the storm. The woman made her way down the beach slowly. With each step, she bent, picked up a starfish and threw it back into the ocean. It was slow going, but she labored on.

With each starfish she threw back into the water, she stopped, gazed into the water and smiled before reaching for another.

An old man was watching her and shaking his head as he too made his way down the beach. When he got close to the woman he commented, “Why are you bothering? You...

Writers’ Notebooks are an essential piece in well-rounded writing programs. But, organizinging and using them appropriately is not intuitive. In fact, unless you use one yourself regularly, then it’s quite a difficult thing to teach.

I believe anyone teaching writing to students, regardless of the grade you teach, should be a writer in their own life in order to teach writing well. That’s a tall order in our busy lives, and for many teachers it may seem unrealistic. I get that. In fact, I’ve been there. But you really do write all the time. You just aren’t collecting it all into a notebook.

For example…

My mom has always kept a notebook near the phone. When I was little she told us to write in that every time we answered the phone and needed to take a message. My mom still uses it every time she’s on the phone, needs to make a list, write down a phone number… It was, and is, a chronicle of her days. When she started doing this, she...

I was waiting in a line a few days ago and a young couple was ahead of me with their 7 month old daughter. I asked her age and attempted to wave and say hi to her. Her eyes were glued to a phone screen. They informed me that they always made sure their phone batteries were charged before going out because she needed to watch movies to behave. Seriously?! The only way she wouldn’t scream and cause a fuss that whole time was if they let her watch a movie. Not only that, but they had to be prepared to switch movies whenever her attention waned. Wow!

My middle school daughter was with me and said, “Mom, we didn’t have that. What did you do before mobile phones and the internet?” Am I really that old?!

I had to laugh. I asked her, “Don’t you remember? We played, sang songs, talked, danced around and were silly. I kept a bag packed full of toys, books and other things to entertain children ready to go at all times.”

“Oh yeah,” she...

Brain Breaks

Everyone needs brain breaks throughout their day to be at their most efficient and productive. We know from research that brain breaks reduce stress and increase retention of learning. What’s not to like about that?!

Go Noodle Anyone?

Taking brain breaks works with our students and for us as well. What did we ever do before GoNoodle?! But GoNoodle takes time, something that we don’t always have a lot of.

There are those days (ok, a lot of days) we only have a minute or two for a much needed brain break in the midst of a busy day. Sound familiar? Then there are days we simply don’t have an extra second, much less minutes. Here’s how squeeze those brain breaks in on the fly.

Simon Says Lightening Round

Play Simon Says as fast as you can talk without anyone ever “getting out”. Stop briefly when you get kids to mess up and say “Gotcha”. Then, keep going.

Clap Snap Patterns

These first two are best used for waiting times,...