My third-period sophomores were presenting their history projects, and I couldn’t stop glancing at the classroom across the hall, where students were completing a similar project. Through the window in my door, I could see my co-worker’s students. They were standing at the front of her room, speaking with real authority, answering questions from their … Read more
I’ll never forget the look on my juniors’ faces. They filed in, grabbed their daily schedule sheet from me at the door, and sat down. But instead of the usual quiet rustle of backpacks and notebooks, I heard whispers. “What are we doing today?” “I don’t know, but it’s never boring.” One kid actually said … Read more
I was standing at the front of my fourth-period U.S. History class during the second semester of 2015, feeling pretty good about myself. I had spent the weekend crafting this incredible lesson on the New Deal, complete with primary sources and a mock congressional hearing. My sophomores were going to be so into it. About … Read more
My good friend, Dr. Joe Lizza, runs campus activities at Rowan University, and we chatted on my podcast about student life a while back. He told a fascinating story during the interview. It turns out, during the first months of COVID, when everything shut down, his team discovered that a surprising number of college students … Read more
I remember sitting in my classroom at 4:47 p.m. on a Tuesday, staring at a stack of essays I hadn’t touched in three days. The hallway had gone quiet an hour earlier. My coffee was cold. I had a splitting headache that had started somewhere around second period and never let up. A parent email … Read more
I was one of the teachers who signed up to do after-school detention. It was easy money, but patterns began to emerge the more frequently I sat in. It seemed to be the same community members from our student body appearing over and over. They weren’t bad kids, but they were definitely frustrated, overwhelmed, and … Read more
The first time I really understood what testing does to a kid’s brain, I wasn’t even teaching my own subject. I was proctoring a state reading assessment for a group of sophomores, walking the rows as you do, when I noticed one of my history students staring at his screen with that glassy, thousand-yard look. … Read more
I remember standing in the hallway during passing period, coffee in hand, when a student I’d never taught came up to me and just started talking. About her morning. About a fight with her mom. About how she didn’t know if she could make it through the day. I didn’t know this kid, but she … Read more
I remember the exact moment I realized something had shifted. I was teaching my World History class, and we were discussing primary-source accounts of the Rwandan genocide. A student raised her hand and asked, completely matter-of-fact, “Why didn’t they just move to a different country?” No malice. No coldness. Just a genuine question that revealed … Read more
I remember sitting at my desk during planning period, staring at a stack of unit tests on the causes of World War I. For weeks, I’d watched my sophomores confuse long-term causes like militarism and the alliance system with short-term triggers like the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. I’d seen it in their document analyses, … Read more
As teachers, we know we teach students much more than the curriculum. Beyond fostering a love of learning, we also help students become well-rounded individuals ready to meet the world head-on. We are just one piece of the puzzle (it certainly takes a village), but this leads many educators to find ways to incorporate student engagement … Read more
When teachers are trying to ace their T-TESS observation in the classroom, they often struggle with student engagement. Luckily, teachers can use simple strategies to boost engagement and get the most out of their Texas teacher evaluation. The T-TESS teacher observation system is a comprehensive evaluation tool that measures teacher effectiveness in Texas. T-TESS training … Read more