Tips for Getting Parents Involved

• Encourage parents to read with their children each night
  
• Request/require parent signatures on homework assignments
  
• Send home a fun parent/child assignment for them to do together
  
• Offer ideas for ways parents can reinforce concepts or skills at home or while doing daily tasks
  
• Ask for help in specific areas and at specific times such as reading with one child, stuffing Thursday folders, or putting up a bulletin board
  
• When you need help, send home a notice, email, or announcement in your newsletter
  
• Call parents when you have a specific need
  
• Use your parent volunteers
  
• Ask parents to send a list of their hobbies and talents. You may find a great guest speaker or demonstrator for a unit (ex: making tortillas during a unit on early Texas Mission life)
  
• When parents volunteer, send regular thank you notes
  
• When making the first phone call home, list activities, events, and tasks you need help to complete. Ask the parent if he/she could help with any one of the tasks listed. Make sure to write it down and note the phone number for follow-up.
  
• Send home a pledge for parents to complete and sign committing to at least one activity, event, etc. to do with the school or class during the year.
  

Sparking the Minds of Students

Getting students excited about their learning is absolutely the best way to have fun every day as a teacher. When your students are fired up about being in your class they bring with them their unbridled enthusiasm and energy. That energy and enthusiasm is then pumped into to you and it begins a positive cycle between you and your students and learning. So what are some ways you can spark the minds of your students and get them excited about learning?

First of all, you need to feel passionate about what you are teaching. If you find your subject matter boring and unworthy of your attention, then you won't be able to inspire your students to be excited about it. If you've lost the passion for what you teach, you need to take some time to reconnect with the reason why you started teaching. Remind yourself of the spark that first entered you and filled you with excitement about your subject area. I've always loved writing. It is something I've been doing since the 2^nd grade. I can remember going over to a friend's house and writing story after story while she drew the pictures to go along with them. Teaching writing was not necessarily my first choice, but when I finally decided that was what I wanted to do I became thoroughly excited about inspiring my students to let loose the muse and communicate their thoughts on paper. What was your experience?

If you find yourself teaching something not your first choice, what can you do to become passionate about it? One way is to watch movies, read books, and find interesting facts about that subject area or topic. Actively search for something that will spark your interest and passion so that you can pass it along to students. I, for one, am not an avid mathematician. It is not my forte at all. However, I found myself suddenly having to teach math and needing my students excited about it. I do love puzzles and I connected solving math equations to solving puzzles. Suddenly math seemed like an endless set of mysteries to be solved rather than just skill and drill. When the topic or subject area is not your favorite, it is up to you to find a way to make it intriguing for both yourself and your students.

Secondly, find a way to make the students active in their learning. Passive learning, including listening to lectures and doggedly copying down notes or reading silently and answering worksheet questions is boring. Do we need some of that type of learning? Yes. Do we need that type of learning all the time? No. Look at your lessons and ask yourself, what can I do to get my students actively involved? Break them into groups and assign each one a section of the chapter. Have them become experts on that information and present it to the rest of the class as a skit, on a poster, through a poem or story, or possibly in a Power Point presentation. Create scavenger hunts for students to locate information or have them create their own scavenger hunts and swap papers. Get students moving around the classroom. Create mysteries that require math or science to solve the problem. Give students sleuthing tools so they feel like detectives as they solve these mysteries.

Pose questions that challenge students to think through the answers or research information to solve the puzzle. This can be done in any subject area. Allow students to cut, color, draw, and create products as part of the learning process. Many elementary teachers use these types of learning tools, but unfortunately many middle school and high school teachers seem to feel that it is beneath them and their students to do more than lecture, read, and complete pre-printed handouts. This is so sad because our middle and high school students love to be read to, color, cut, and create. They simply need to do so at a higher level than our elementary students. They have more experiences and bigger ideas to add to the creative process, and as such can come up with fantastic products that enhance both their excitement and learning. For instance, creating collages from modern day pictures in magazines to represent/explain a historical event or historical figure requires students to synthesize information.

Being passionate about your subject area communicates fascination and energy to students. They soak up that energy and return it back to you double-fold. Getting students actively involved in their learning gives them the opportunity to put themselves into the equation. Both of these strategies will work together to spark the minds of your students. This in turn lights the fire of enthusiasm and excitement about teaching and learning in you, which then lights the fire of learning in your students. What an awesome cycle to create in our classrooms and what a lasting legacy we leave when this happens!

Reprinted with permission from Emma McDonald's column, New Teacher Advisor, on Education World. http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/mcdonald/mcdonald017.shtml

 

The Choices We Make

As teachers and parents we are concerned that our students and children are making good choices in their lives and for their future. Unfortunately so many children and teens don't recognize that they make hundreds of decisions each day which affect themselves and those around them. You may hear a child say something like, "My teacher gave me a low grade on that test," or "My mom made me stay in my room all afternoon." This shows exactly the perspective of the child who doesn't recognize that the choices he or she made dictated the consequences being faced. As the adult we understand that the choice of not studying for a test can lead to the consequence of a low grade and the choice of disobeying a parent can result in restrictions. Our children don't make these direct connections. In fact, the part of the brain that identifies consequences for actions and uses that information to plan ahead does not fully mature until the age of 25. However, we can help this part of the brain grow and develop strength by taking time to teach our children and teens to recognize the decisions or choices they make each and every day.

One way we can do this is by pointing out the choices facing the child or teen and describing the consequences (both positive and negative) for each choice. For example, when a test is scheduled for Friday we may tell the child/teen, "If you choose to study every day this week for at least fifteen minutes, you won't have to study as long or as hard on Thursday AND the information will be so familiar to you by Friday that the test should be easy. However, if you choose to wait until Thursday, you'll have to spend more time studying that night and you may not remember it all on Friday for the test. The choice is yours." Then allow the child to make the choice. As a parent and a teacher this is never easy. However, by stepping back you are accomplishing two things. First, you are empowering the child/teen which helps them develop into a mature adult. Second, you are allowing the child/teen to learn from the choices made. It is very important that you then use the results (either positive or negative) to illustrate how the choice made determined the consequences. For example, "You chose to wait until Thursday to start studying. As a result you didn't perform as well on the test. This caused you to earn a lower grade. That grade is a result of your choice."

    Testing situations are not the only choices children make. They also make choices with regards to behavior and attitudes. When you see a student or your child making a choice that will lead to a negative consequence, take the time to point this out. "You are choosing to _______ (be specific in describing the action or attitude). This choice will lead to _______ (be specific in describing the consequences)." Then offer a different choice that will lead to a more positive result. For example, "You are choosing to ignore my instructions. If you continue to choose to ignore my instructions, you will not be able to complete the assignment correctly and you will make a low grade. However, you can choose to follow my instructions and you will have a much better chance of making a higher grade." Another example might be, "You are choosing to disobey me when I asked you to clean your room. If you continue to disobey me by not cleaning your room, I will be forced to take away all electronics (TV, computer, video games) for a week. The other option is to choose to obey me and clean your room as I have asked. The sooner you complete this task, the sooner you will be able to watch your favorite show on TV."

Another way we can help children understand the importance of the choices they make each day is to point out both positive and negative results of choices made by ourselves and others. Every moment is a teachable moment. When at the market, watching TV or a movie, or listening to the news, take time to talk to your child about the things you see and hear. What choices did people make? What were the results or consequences of those choices? Ask the child whether he or she thinks the choice was worth the consequence. Is that something they would want to happen to them? What kind of choice would they have made in that same situation? Then share the choice you would have made if it had been you. This type of discussion models good thinking and decision-making skills. Additionally, talking about these kinds of situations with children and teens offers them a chance to learn from the behavior, attitudes, and choices of others without walking down the same perilous path. Also, don't just focus on the negative. Take some time to point out good choices that are being made and the positive results of those as well.

Taking time to identify the different choices facing a child during the day, whether at home or at school, offers a valuable teaching tool to parents and teachers. It provides an opportunity to show how each decision we make is followed by a consequence of some sort, either positive or negative. It opens up discussion about how choices can lead us down different paths in life. It also helps develop the part of the brain that uses forethought, thinking through a situation before acting on it. This is a vital skill that will help your child and your students lead a successful life.

Laying the Groundwork

The first day of school is absolutely one of the most important days of the year. It is the day when you set the tone for your classroom. We all want to have a smoothly running classroom, but it is difficult when you don't know where to start. You may be feeling that you are groping around half blindfolded with only bits and pieces of information rather than the whole. What you need is a vision of what you want your classroom to look like as a positive learning environment. Then take that vision and use the first day of school to lay the groundwork towards making the vision become a reality. How?

First, before school starts, take some time to sit down and brainstorm all of your expectations. This includes how you want students to behave towards you and each other, how you want the day-to-day activities and transitions to be performed, and how you want your classroom to feel. Within each of these categories, think about different scenarios from your own days as a student and plan out how you would deal with each one. Some questions you might ask yourself include how will students enter the classroom, leave the classroom, turn in homework, work in team situations, work as individuals? Picture in your head what you would like to see happening and then write it down as a statement.

When you've mapped out this information, create a poster of basic classroom expectations for everyone to follow. Your poster won't include every single expectation you have, but the ones that guide student behavior. You'll also want to create some procedures posters for various activities during the day such as entering and leaving the classroom. Write them in a very basic step-by-step method with no more than five steps in each. Post these where all students can easily read them. Once you have a clear idea of how you expect students to behave and what you expect them to do from the moment they enter the classroom until the moment they leave the classroom, then you are prepared to explain these expectations to your students.

Now we lay the groundwork. When planning out your first day of school, be sure to alternate between fun ice-breaker and get-to-know activities, which build a positive classroom community, and discussing your expectations and procedures. You need a mixture of both through the first several days as students can only absorb so much information at once. By alternating fun activities with the practical and serious you give students time to internalize the information. When transitioning from a fun activity into another lesson of expectations or procedures, be sure to review previous information before moving on to the new. For example, you might ask students to show you the quiet signal and explain what it means before moving forward to discuss your classroom procedures.

When discussing your classroom expectations and procedures with students, be sure to speak slowly, get eye contact with each student one-on-one, and pause significantly after each expectation. This reinforces the impression that the information is important and also gives students time to listen, understand, and internalize what you are saying. You also want to practice procedures, such as the quiet signal, entering the classroom, and leaving the classroom, with your students. Continue to practice these throughout the next two weeks. By practicing your procedures and expectations with students during the first day and weeks of school, you are laying the groundwork for your vision and building good habits that will last all year long.

Reprinted with permission from Emma McDonald "New Teacher Advisor" column on Education World. http://www.educationworld.com/a_curr/columnists/mcdonald/mcdonald.shtml

Making the Most of Your Summer

Ah, it is almost summertime. Time to kick back, relax, and enjoy your time off, and yes, you should take some time off to relax! After all, you've made it through a school year and survived. Although some of you may have chosen to teach summer school or have a summer job, you still need to take at least a week or two off for a break. Otherwise, you'll be worn out and exhausted before the new school year begins. So, how can you enjoy your summer and also be ready for the new school year? Below are a few tips and ideas to help you get started.

1. Take a much needed break. Take the first week after you get out of school to simply relax and recuperate after a long school year of teaching. Go do something fun, vegge out on the couch, go see a movie or two, hang with your friends, and lie in the sun. If you had a particularly stressful school year, you might think about taking two weeks to recuperate.
   
2. Catch up on your reading. After the first week or two of reading adventure novels, romance novels, or magazines, you might change up your reading material and catch up on some professional books. You know the ones, they looked informative and interesting but you just didn't have the time to sit and read them? If you don't have any collecting dust on your shelves, go to Amazon.com and see what's out there. Think about a particular issue that challenged you throughout the school year or a concept/strategy you'd like to implement in your classroom. There are many fantastic books out there on classroom management, differentiated learning, brain-based classrooms, motivating students, positive discipline strategies and more. In my website, I have a list of authors that you might consider reading. http://www.inspiringteachers.com/development/authors.html They are organized by topic so that you can easily find an author on a specific subject.
   
3. Attend a summer conference. Education conferences are more than just learning opportunities, they are fun! You get to travel to a new city, experience the food and culture of that city, and learn some neat teaching strategies as well. If you go with some friends from school, you can also enjoy good company as well. I know that I always come back from an education conference fired up to try many different ideas. The best part about going to a summer conference is that you have the time when you get home to think through how you'll implement those ideas in your classroom.
   
4. Attend a professional workshop. You may not have the time or the funds to go away for a summer education conference, so try attending a professional workshop on a topic of interest to you. Again, it is nice to attend a workshop in the summer because you have the time to actually think through the information and figure out how you plan to implement it in your classroom. Usually when we have a staff development during the school year, we are already so busy with everything else, there is little time to actually implement any new ideas.
   
5. Review your curriculum and lesson ideas. Some of you are lucky enough to have a district that writes your curriculum and gives you daily lesson plan ideas. Others are not so lucky. Either way, take some time to look at the overall plan of what you teach during the year. Are there any areas that where you can be more creative? Do you see any boring places from last year that you can spice up with a different kind of activity? The summer is the best time to think about your lesson ideas because you have so much time. Once school starts, it will be a mad dash and a daily challenge to get everything done that needs to be done. Take the time while you have it to really think through what you want to do next year in your lessons.
   
6. Reflect, Collect, and Plan. Take some time to reflect on what went well and what didn't during this past school year. Collect your thoughts and collect different ideas and strategies for dealing with those issues that were challenges. Then take some time to plan out what you will do next year when you get a fresh start. Brainstorm ideas and put them on paper. Daydream about what you will say and how you will say it. Daydreaming is easy to do when you are floating in a pool or lying out in the sun! **This is also a perfect time to create a classroom vision (see Inspiring Teachers Weekly Teaching Tip Newsletter archives for June 11, 2010).

Lastly, don't try to do it all at once. Mix in some fun along with these strategies for professional improvement. "All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy" after all! Do a little work and then have a little fun. Having the summer to learn and play is one of the few perks we get as teachers. It is a time to refresh and rejuvenate ourselves. And although you may not believe it now, by the time August rolls around again you'll be ready to get back into your classroom and excited about starting a new school year. Until then, pack your bags and make the most of your summer!

Original column found on Education-world by Emma McDonald. Reprinted with permission.

**Statement added for this blog post.

Slow Down!

Do you feel like I do that we are rushing through each day and rushing through our lives? There are days where I just want to stop, take a deep breath, and rest a moment before returning to the hectic pace. But the question I'm asking myself and those of you reading this blog is – why aren't we slowing down and taking deep breaths every day and all through the day?

When we are rushed I believe we often make poor decisions, not necessarily bad, just not the best possible decisions. It's like when you're rushing down the street on your way to an important meeting that starts in five minutes. You are so focused on getting to the meeting that you may not notice you are cutting in front of cars, almost knocking down pedestrians, and making hairpin turns onto the street or into the parking lot. I think this happens to us in the school as well. We are so focused on getting to the next big milestone in the curriculum, in the testing, and in the school year that we react instinctually rather than thoughtfully.

Think about that for a minute. When we are rushed we react instinctually rather than thoughtfully. What does this mean for our interactions with students? Do we quickly hand out consequences rather than slowing down to find out exactly what happened? Do we label and lump students into an unofficial "group" based on first impressions? Do we offer vague praise or an absent-minded pat-on-the-back when offering feedback? Do we ignore individual student concerns and issues in our rush to address the needs of the whole class?

I believe very strongly that our interactions with students help each one to develop a sense of identity and self-worth. The time we take and the relationships we make send important messages and have lasting impressions on our students. What message are we portraying when we rush through our curriculum? What message are we portraying when we rush through our assessment? What message are we portraying when we rush through our interactions with students and parents?

I think these questions are something as teachers we all need to think about. Then we need to take a deep breath and slow down.

Teaching: What it Means to be a Professional

The other day in the grocery store I overheard two moms talking about their local school. As usual, being an educator, my ears perked up, and I guiltily admit that I started to eavesdrop on their conversation. One of the mothers was explaining to the other how she could never get in touch with her child's teacher to discuss concerns because the school was always closed so early. The other mom agreed and they earnestly began a diatribe against teachers. Steadily my ears got hotter and hotter and I threatened to step into the conversation when one of the mothers threw out, "Those people have the easiest job. They get there at eight and leave at three, take summers and all holidays off and get paid for it! No wonder education is going downhill."

At that point I had two levels of thought going on in my head. On the first level I was furious with these mothers who had not the slightest clue of what is really involved in quality teaching. However, at the same time, I had to remind myself that I did not personally know the teachers under discussion by these two. I can only speak for my own self and my level of dedication and professionalism. The two moms ended their conversation and headed off in two different directions. I, however, stood rooted to the spot as emotions and thoughts roiled around in my brain.

This conversation against teachers started a chain reaction of reflection for me in regards to teaching as a profession. Obviously these two mothers were of the opinion that teaching is merely a job and a part-time one at that. What gave them this impression? Also, why do so many in the community at large have these same feelings about teaching? Oh, anyone who hears I'm a teacher will say to me, "Teachers have the toughest job. I admire you for what you do." But everyday conversations, media reports, and even certain legislations, tend to belie that comment. Why is it that teaching is considered more of a job (or glorified babysitters) than a profession? As educators we consider ourselves to be professionals, yet others in the community rarely give us the same designation. Why is that?

Although historically there are many reasons for the current attitude towards teachers, I believe that it is in no small part related to our own behaviors and attitudes about teaching. How then, can we demonstrate that we are professionals? I believe that being a professional educator requires:

• A professional appearance and demeanor
  
• A sense of dedication
  
• Continued training
  
• Collaboration with others
  

 

What do you think?