These are the rules of several teachers I won’t talk over students. I rarely raise my voice above a normal “presenter” volume. If students start talking while I’m trying to teach, I just stop and wait for them to finish. What doesn’t get done in class just becomes […]
School rules vary from school to school and district to district, so these might not be true for all schools. Just all of the ones I’ve worked at: We cannot leave students unsupervised for even a minute. That’s why we’re on our phones sometimes… we’re chatting with our […]
Warning Signs No clear sense of purpose. If school administrators and teachers don’t share a common goal, they will work toward their own agenda, which will eventually create conflict. Hostile relations among staff, students, and parents. When elephants fight, it’s the grass that suffers. When the adults in […]
Opinion of an American teacher I’ve known a lot of great teachers who left the profession well before retirement age. Here are the reasons, in the order that I’ve seen them happen, from most common to least common: They have children of their own and want to be […]
Here’s how some students think: Two rest days a week is already enough to relax, do homework, or spend time with family. If we had a three-day weekend, we would get into more of a “holiday” frame of mind and struggle to focus or be productive. Yes, the […]
Overdressing for summer meetings. That usually means this is their first teaching job and they think they have to be dressed up every time they go to the school. You only have to be dressed up when there are students at the school. If it’s a day full […]
News of a teacher shortage across the nation has been pummeling us for years now, right up through a story yesterday in the Panama City News Herald about an “extreme” teacher shortage. Fewer students in teacher prep programs. Thousands of unfilled teacher vacancies in state after state. But […]
