Several weeks ago, I first reached out to the Upper Grades Exchange readership with a question about your students’ sleep patterns. Specifically, do you think your students are getting enough sleep? Do you have students who arrive at your classroom door in the morning consistently looking like they are sleep deprived? Let’s face it: many…
classroom
Keeping Mother Nature at Bay
Mother Nature has obviously never spent time at the front of a classroom or she would know better than to send snowstorms midweek. Likewise with Monday morning ice storms and Friday blizzards. I mention this because Mother Nature has been rather thoughtless the last few weeks here in North Carolina. Just this morning, area schools…
Morning Motivators Book Giveaway
Beds. Every year, some mattress manufacturer comes up with a new way to make our beds more comfortable. We were once encouraged to sleep on mattresses filled with water. Drifting off to sleep took on a whole new meaning. In this, our Information Age, many of us have bought into the idea of sleeping on…
Happy Birthday to NCLB
Today is No Child Left Behind’s 11th birthday. And while that does not mean that we should also be singing happy birthday to the standardized test, it does mean that we’ve seen a lot more of the standardized test’s face around the classroom in the last 11 years. No Child Left Behind (NCLB) marked the…
My Idea for Rating Teacher Effectiveness
Gathered around the teachers’ dining table, you could feel the anxiety some of us had. To others, the impending event was like water off a duck’s back. It was time for classroom observations. The first time the principal told me she was coming to observe my classroom was almost enough to keep me awake nights….
Singing the Common Core Blues?
Was I destined to end up working for The Mailbox? That’s hard to say. Destiny is a difficult subject. Are teachers destined to always have to create their own supplemental materials? If I lingered around my blog for a few minutes, I bet I’d be able to make out many grumblings. With the emergence of…
Classroom Supply Anxiety
The scene: Mr. Savelle’s classroom, midwinter. Outside, the world is frigid and white. Germs, bacteria, and insouciant upper-respiratory infections stalk the land. Inside, we are bathed in hand sanitizer and going through tissues like Rachael Ray goes through extra virgin olive oil. Not familiar with Rachael Ray and her zest for olive oil? Then let’s…
The Tipping Point
At some point in a teacher’s summer, one’s thoughts turn to the coming school year. Instead of hitting the snooze button 47 times in a row, you hit it 32 times one day, then 18 times soon after, until you’re finally down to just twice. You find yourself glancing longingly at your local teacher store…
One Crazy Summer Professional Development Post
As long as we’re talking about summer—and who isn’t?—let’s talk about your plans for professional development. When I was a teacher active in the classroom, I was privileged to be living and working close to Boston, Massachusetts. For those of you who don’t know, there are about 714 colleges and universities in Boston (or so…
The Variety of Your Student Population
I was reading an article about introverts in the classroom. It got me to thinking about the indescribably vibrant cast of characters that made its way through my classroom during the years I was a teacher. From there, it was just a small leap from the microcosm of the classroom to the macrocosm of society….