6 Important Questions to Ask Your New Teammates

6 Important Questions to Ask Your New Teammates

If you are starting the year with new colleagues, or even if you have been teaching with the same teachers for years, but you want to hit the “reset button” to re-evaluate and discuss how you work together, use these 6 talking points to help you set the expectations for how to collaborate well with your (new) team.

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Distance Learning Tips

Distance Learning Tips

While you and your students may not be physically together, making relational connections is more important now than ever. So the question is, how do we create and maintain those relationships with our students?

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Starting a School Year in the Classroom During a Pandemic

Starting a School Year in the Classroom During a Pandemic

Who could have ever predicted that we would be starting the 2020-21 school year with a majority of schools operating completely virtually? Who could have anticipated the various new regulations and mandates that educators are required to follow in order to provide a safe environment for our students? Never before have we felt such a seismic shift in education in such a short time. The entire landscape has changed, and we have to rethink everything we do in and out of the classroom. It is overwhelming to say the least.

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The Secret to Starting a Successful Teachers Pay Teachers Store

The Secret to Starting a Successful Teachers Pay Teachers Store

Go from Teacher to Teacherpreneur by learning the secrets of how to make your TpT brand stand out from the crowd while following my easy peasy instructional guide on how to reserve the BEST TpT store name. It’s SIMPLER than you think!!!

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Train Your Students to STOP INTERRUPTING Each Other

Train Your Students to STOP INTERRUPTING Each Other

We all know it is natural for the majority of students to interrupt while they’re having conversations.  They want to be heard, and they want to ensure their friends and peers affirm their own point of view. SO THEY SAY THEIR OPINION AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE OVER ALL THE OTHER STUDENTS AT THEIR TABLE.  The struggle is real, am I right teacher friend? So I created a Talking Stick to help scaffold my students’ development in learning how to LISTEN and allow one person to talk in a team at a time.  

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No Prep Student Conferences

No Prep Student Conferences

Have you ever struggled to get your students to take ownership of their learning progress?  Have you ever assumed that students were going over their graded work with their parents each week and carefully reviewing things they did well on and things they still needed to work on?  Well, I have experienced both of these issues and I found that in reality, only 2 or 3 households in my entire classroom were actually using their graded work sent home as a launch pad for helpful discussion and progress monitoring.  I knew something had to change. I couldn’t just expect the intentionality to happen automatically between students and their families, I had to create a precedent, a routine in my own classroom with my students that they would be more likely to recreate at home. 

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Are Your Students Setting SMART Goals?

Are Your Students Setting SMART Goals?

We all have goals, whether it’s to lose 10 pounds, read more novels, or organize that overly filled teacher supply cabinet.  Once we create goals in our own minds, we are way more likely to actually see them through when we tell someone about them. So, imagine you choose a goal and share that goal with a life coach.  And, let’s say the life coach holds us accountable to our goal by checking in regularly, asking us about our intentional steps we are taking to make progress toward that goal, giving insightful feedback about our plans to meet our goal, helping us set realistic deadlines by which we want to have the goal met, and giving encouraging words that motivate us to reach it.  Do those things impact the likelihood of meeting the goal you set? The answer is of course, YES.  

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