Into each job, a few extra responsibilities must fall. Here at The Mailbox, this is true for editors who are also social media gadflies, singers, Twitterati, and webcast hosts, just for starters. And this is certainly true for teachers. By the time I entered my second year in the classroom, I had become a technology…
Teacher Appreciation
Answer the Teacher Prep Critics
I took a nontraditional route to teaching. I’m sure you’re not surprised. After a decade as a cubicle dweller, two untimely layoffs within a year were enough to make me finally take the step I had been contemplating for a long time. With little advance preparation, I took the Massachusetts teaching licensure exam, which, when…
First Friday Giveaway!
If for one year you could teach anywhere in the whole wide world, where would you choose to teach? London? Alaska? Bermuda? You tell me (and, of course, I’d love to hear your reason!) right here at the blog before midnight EDT, Sunday, October 13, and you’ll be entered in this month’s First Friday Giveaway….
Your Turn
I worked for a principal who was noted for saying she wished she taught in an orphanage. Her reasoning, of course, was that she easily could achieve longer school days without the occasional meddlesome parent. I suspect she may have also preferred it if all the teaching staff lived in nearby barracks, where we could…
Let’s Make a Plan
One of my favorite websites is all about pencils. I’ll let that sink in for a moment. Talk about straddling the borderlands between past and future! A website about pencils. I don’t even know what to compare it to, but it’s a regularly updated blog about pencils, notebooks, and the collision of the old and…
Gooey Gray Mud
If you had told me that walking knee-deep through the gooey gray mud of a tidal basin during a cold New England April would be one of the highlights of my high school years, I might have laughed. Right in your face, in fact. That’s if I had been paying attention. (I was not…
Name That Student
It’s the day after Labor Day in the US and that means just about everyone is back to school now. The question is: how quickly can you learn to recognize all your new students and match the right face to the correct name? Every teacher has a special trick for getting student names right, even…
Building Bridges
Team-building exercise. Three words. One hyphen. Plenty of trepidation. I’m not a fan of team building. I should be, but whenever I hear someone at the front of a room I’m in use the words “team-building exercise,” I look for the nearest exit. If you’ve got a few hours, maybe we can trace the origins…
Anticipation
Some things are hard to wait for. Water to boil. Toast to brown. The new season of The Walking Dead to start. George Lucas to apologize for Star Wars episodes I, II, and III and give us the movies we really wanted. Not to mention the moment when your collection of new students turns into…
Mr. S. Is Here
Each summer, as the calendar quickly slipped its way toward the second half of August, time neared to gather my personal effects and bring them back to school. I had a small box with the personal items I liked to have on my desk. Foremost among these items, besides a few photos of family, was…