Catholic Teachers' Lounge

Colleen and Jill are back! Find out when new episodes drop.

Use the summer to prepare kids to comfortably start the year together. Offering some short, easy connection opportunities, like popcicles in the park, is good for teachers, parents, and students.

Trying to make big changes all at once can result in undireable outcomes. Making changes, personally or professionally, can be a slow and steady process. Whether talking about personal fitness, redesigning your classroom, or getting kids to participate in silent sustained reading for 25 minutes, moderation and slow build will get you there.

The vegus nerve connects the brain to all bodily organs and is therefor affected by almost every internal and external stiumulus. In this episode, Colleen and Jill discuss the importance of knowing some basics of neuroscience to help kids with self regulation and stimuli that affect classroom performance and behavior.

Seeing and hearing an unborn baby impacts prolife beliefs and advocacy. Jill shares a story about an elementary school having live ultrasounds for the student body to experience life in the womb.

Interviews can be used as a flexible teaching, learning, and assessment tool in many classes and at any grade level. Colleen and Jill highlight ways to integrate interviews to create perspective, teach critical thinking, and more.

The methods of qualitative research apply to grading papers, too. When grading a stack of papers, how do you categorize them by what you notice? Using codes to create different learning paths based on how students responded to particular quiz questions will help to improve your instruction for the next year. Connections to standardized test data is also discussed.

Learning to write is a long process with milestones at each grade level. In this episode Colleen and Jill discuss the fundamentals of learning to write in the lower grades using graphic organizers and having realistic expectations for idea development and grammatical and structural skills.

Which is better, Advanced Placement or Dual Credit? Colleen and Jill debate the merit of offering these types of courses in high schools.

It’s important for teachers to remember that student behaviors are not personal. In this episode, Colleen and Jill reveal 5 reasons why students misbehave and detach in school.

In this episode, Colleen and Jill discuss ways to get kids to read over the summer, specifically through trickery.

A recent study has shown a drastic drop in risk taking behaviors among teens. This episode unpacks why this is NOT a good thing for kids, and how risk taking in the classroom is still important.

After experiencing “Italian for Survivors” in a high school in Perugia, Italy, Jill realizes that our students back here in the US do not have much exposure to other languages. Even students who have studied Spanish in elementary and high school have not had enough language hours to have mastered conversational Spanish when abroad. We discuss passion for language and the desire for lan...

In many schools data walls are used to show student progress and achievement. In this episode Colleen and Jill explore the idea of using data walls to show alignment of curriculum standards to help teachers plan instruction. Also discussed is the importance of connecting topics taught in different subject areas for depth of learning and remembering information.

Have you ever been surprised by a saint? In this episode Colleen and Jill discuss St. Anthony of Padua and Blessed Carlo Acutis. Those who pray for their intercessions drop them notes in Churches. Teachers can do the same, dropping letters in the mail to these places of worship.

Motivation, resources, and inspiration come to life with whatever you place on the walls of the classroom. The same goes for teachers’ lounge and the school in general. Bring your mission to life on the walls of the school.

Regular rules go out the window in the month of May for behavior rules and classroom management policies, but that doesn’t mean we can’t plan accordingly. How to make the most of the final weeks together to finish the year strong.

Keeping kids engaged during spring fever with the end of the year in sight is especially challenging. Explore several fun and easy suggestions from creative teachers.

There is no such thing as parent norms. Every family and home situation is unique, making it complicated to assume what every student should or shouldn’t do. How to work together to focus on the child’s success instead of parents’ failures and challenges.

Scavenger hunts can be fun learning tools for students, staff and even parents. It integrates movement, purpose, and a sense of adventure to share ideas and concepts in a very practical sense.

Mid-year conversations open up all sorts of new ideas and tips — especially talking to teachers who taught your students last year and teachers who will teach your kids next year. It naturally creates a two way conversation about realities and expectations.

Middle school students buddy up with younger grades all the time for prayer and camaraderie, but teachers are experimenting with literature connections as well — developing modified flip books to share stories.

Our greatest resource is also our biggest crutch. The final result of extended screen time is yet to be determined, but everyone recognizes the challenge at hand — mental health challenges, shorter attention spans, inability to work well with others, etc. Awareness is step number one.

At this stage of the year, everyone can use a refresh. This is a perfect time of year to redecorate classroom walls, declutter desks and shelves and rotate classroom resources to keep the kids interested and surprised. Lean into peers and what they learned at spring PD for new ideas.

Every school is challenged with too much to do and not enough time to do it so delegation and shared knowledge is challenge we all face. We lean in on one person to own a project, program or process all by themselves — which works great until that person leaves or retires. Learn more about building a system that cross pollinates while documenting processes so everything lives beyond any one...