The term growth mindset is on fire in educational circles today. But how does one go about teaching growth mindset? What does growth mindset actually mean? The true definition of a growth mindset has been investigated for decades. With the original intent of researching how individuals responded to failure in mind, Dr. Carol Dweck was … Read more
Over the past few years, “testing” has become a bit of a dirty word in education. What used to be for placement or just checking to make sure students were hitting certain benchmarks has become an orchestrated production. Different states have different requirements, but the sheer volume of testing has increased greatly. With the focus … Read more
Throughout our brain breaks series, we have been discussing various ways to incorporate brain breaks into the classroom. We have discussed books (ad), classroom activities, and places like YouTube. There is one place that we haven’t discussed, and it is versatile in more ways than just with brain breaks. It is by using an Amazon … Read more
Kindergarten is such a fun age. As each school year progresses, the pure desire to learn and the love that is exerted from these children can make anyone who witnesses this happens heart burst. However, anybody who has been to any kindergarten class with several students in it knows one thing: these children are not … Read more
Odds are, no matter what topic you’re discussing or what grade levels you teach, you will not have 100% of your students master the skill the first time you teach it. This isn’t because we’re all terrible teachers; it’s because students learn in different ways and at different paces. This means that you will always … Read more
Teaching When You Have Nothing Left | Jenn Breisacher New Book by Jenn Breisacher Teaching When You Have Nothing Left How to Beat Burnout and Build a Classroom That Runs Itself From the educator who is in the trenches with teachers just like you. Get your personally signed copy before 7/1 Ships the week of … Read more
I remember the first time I tried to teach the Age of Absolutism to a room full of 11th graders who were far more interested in whether we’d have a snow day than in the power structures of 17th-century France. I had spent hours crafting what I thought was a brilliant lecture, complete with detailed … Read more
I remember the first time I handed a blank map of Europe to a class of high school sophomores and asked them to sketch the borders from memory. Most couldn’t place Poland relative to Germany. A few labeled France where Spain should be. One student, completely earnest, drew a single large blob and wrote “USSR???” … Read more
I still remember the first time I projected an image of Michelangelo’s Creation of Adam onto my classroom screen during my second year of teaching World History. A student in the back row, the kind who had perfected the art of looking attentive while mentally checking out, suddenly leaned forward. “Wait,” he said, squinting at the nearly … Read more
I still remember the exact sound. It was a Tuesday in late October, second period, my 9th-grade world history class. We were mid-discussion about the Treaty of Versailles, and for one of those rare, precious moments, nearly every student was locked in. Hands were going up. Students were responding to each other without my prompting. … Read more
The classroom discipline plan you used five years ago probably won’t cut it today. I have worked with many K-12 teachers over the past several years, watching talented educators struggle with behavior problems that their training never prepared them for. The old model of posting classroom rules, listing consequences, and hoping that punitive measures would … Read more
School budgets are stretched thinner than most taxpayers realize. A single classroom set of calculators can wipe out an entire department’s discretionary fund for the year. A class set of novels for a literature unit often comes out of the teacher’s own paycheck. I know this because I lived it. The natural reaction is frustration, … Read more