Being a teacher, particularly an English teacher, means waging a constant battle against the chaos always threatening to unleash itself in your classroom at a moment’s notice. It seems like every year, we’re trying some new strategy or tool to keep things under control, to varying effects.
It’s nearly summer. Your personal calendar has a countdown to your last duty day. On your whiteboard is a countdown…
The fact of the matter is we don’t get enough rest during the school year. We drag ourselves to summer utterly exhausted and spent, with nothing left to give, and if we don’t take time to rest, recharge, and become ourselves again, we’ll start the new school year at less than full capacity.
First year of teaching and mistakes go together like peanut butter and jelly. They can be separated, but more often,…
We, like many English teachers, started our careers believing we had to cover everything there was to say about a text and include every fun idea we could think of to engage students. This approach quickly becomes overwhelming, both for us and for our students.
If we can learn to be reflective we take back our power and become better.