Teachers Need Teachers

Being a new teacher is difficult for everyone, but SPED teachers have a unique set of challenges that most of us gen ed teachers never realize. Part teacher, part curriculum writer, and part parent liaison (among other things), SPED teachers wear many hats. In this episode, Brandie Rosen and I discuss not only the challenges but how to attack these without losing your mind.   How to reach Brandie:...

We will all have special ed, or SPED students at some point in our classrooms, and we often feel lost in terms of how to support them. New teachers especially struggle since they struggle to know things like accommodations and IEPs. So I brought on special education expert, Brandie Rosen, and we discussed all things SPED.    Check out my new YouTube Channel! Your Own Damn Way Got questions, feedba...

As a new teacher, can you imagine how awesome it would be if your classroom basically ran itself so that you could focus on small group and individual instruction? There are obviously a ton of ways to get a classroom to run smoothly and to keep students engaged, but what if you could do it while teaching them about personal and fiscal responsibility? In this episode, Thom Gibson describes just how...

In the last episode, we discuss how to pay off debt and save for an emergency fund, as well as the need for a budget, and today we discuss our financial future - which can be difficult for some to consider when they’ve got another 30 years of teaching to go! But it’s so important that we start early because when it comes to retirement savings, time is your friend! So Rob discusses how to plan so t...

A lot of college graduates find themselves entering the professional world without a solid financial base. They have this newfound money that they’re working their butts off to earn, and they want to live it up and have fun. This is exactly what I did, and luckily, I managed to start saving for retirement. However, a lot of financial pitfalls that come with this type of lifestyle such as consumer...

Many new teachers get to the point where they're just DONE with their teaching situation, or maybe just teaching in general. While most of you are still excited about teaching since you've just started, there are still some of you that are already overwhelmed and just over it all and are wondering what to do next. You may be wondering if teaching is still right for you. You may have hated the firs...

For new teachers, it can seem like they’re the ONLY ones having a tough time with a certain aspect of their teaching, and they’re often too ashamed or embarrassed to talk about it. These frustrations can really weigh on them and make them feel like failures. In this episode, I discuss the common struggles I hear about AND have experienced so that you can end 2019 knowing that you’re not alone and...

There isn't ONE TEACHER who hasn’t received an email, phone call, or message from a parent who is concerned or upset about something that a teacher did. For new teachers (and veterans, too), this can be really intimidating or worrisome because not handling it correctly can make the problem worse. How can you respond without losing face? In today’s episode, I’m covering the steps that you should ta...

As much as I’d like to think that I have my systems down pat after 18 years, there are STILL times when I get behind on my grading. This can be really overwhelming because it just piles on and it seems like you’re never going to get out from under it. New teachers find this especially stressful because they're also trying to figure out everything else that has to do with teaching! On this episode,...

No matter how much time we spend planning a lesson, there WILL be lessons that don’t work quite how we had anticipated. This is especially true if you’re a new teacher because you’re still figuring out lesson delivery and pacing, student engagement, and classroom management. But how do we handle this when we're supposed to stay on pace but only a few of your students are getting it? On today’s epi...

Once the holidays hit, it can be a time of panic for teachers. With a quick glance at their pacing guide, they realize that they're more behind than they'd anticipated. They ask themselves: Do I have enough time to cover everything I was supposed to? Am I on track? If I didn't get to everything, how am I going to cram it all in? These are questions that at some point we all ask ourselves, and it c...

Imagine if teaching only involved the part where you're interacting with students. Things would be much easier, right? But the reality is that there are so many facets of teaching that pull at us, and unless you're hyper-organized, it can be easy to get overwhelmed by it all. I know that there are many of you that are FAR more organized than I am, but I really want to help out the rest of us that...

Math tends to be one of those subjects that kids either understand and love or are completely befuddled by and hate. New math teachers often find themselves struggling between teaching procedures versus concepts. Unfortunately, there's still a lot of controversy in terms of which way leads to greater student success. In this interview, Robert Kaplinsky of openmiddle.com lets us in on why Common Co...

In the last episode, we covered why teachers should incorporate station rotations into their teaching, the logistics of planning for them, and how they can help with differentiation and classroom management. But if you've done them in the past and they were a disaster, chances are you didn't set them up properly. Today I bring Laura Kebart back to discuss how to use stations for small group instru...

A lot of teachers have different strategies for cooperative learning or to facilitate more engaging learning experiences. One that most know of and not enough try is station rotations. I'd seen these done with various teachers and even dipped my toe in a bit, but I wanted to know more about how to do them effectively. So I invited my friend, Laura Kebart from languageartsteachers.com , who is an e...

New teachers come out of their practicum excited and ready to dive head-first into teaching. But they often run into the problem of trying to decide which schools to teach at, being a positive force for students with difficult home lives, and a long list of other serious issues. How do they know if a school is right for them? How can they handle being a long-term substitute or start in the middle...

New teachers often come into teaching already supporting LGBTQ rights and have good intentions to demonstrate this support but can fall short on implementation. How can they start eradicating cisnormativity and heteronormativity that has been institutionalized for many students? How can they create a safe space that goes beyond rainbow flags and stickers? In part 2 of my interview with Cody Miller...

Even though it's 2019 and it seems like there would be more acceptance and inclusion of the LGBTQ people, there is still a lot of work to do. And while I personally support those in the community, I wanted to know more about how I can do a better job as a teacher. So on Part 1 of my interview with Cody Miller, an assistant professor in New York who gives professional development on these issues, ...

Student loan debt is no joke, and it creates so much anxiety for just about everyone, ESPECIALLY newer teachers. Programs like Teacher Loan Forgiveness promise to help with this burden, but it barely helps to bring down the tens of thousands of dollars in debt that teachers have. And misinformation about the best way to pay back these loans results in teachers losing thousands of dollars. Why does...

The large majority of new teachers have some form of student loan debt are probably trying to figure out how they’re going to pay it off with their new salary. What if I told you that some of you could pay as little as $100 a month AND have all of your debt taken care of in 10 years? Sounds too good to be true, right? In this episode, Travis Hornsby from the Student Loan Planner tells us not only...

Educators that teach teenagers have a unique challenge: their students want the same type of love and praise as before, but now they also want more autonomy. This means that the typical model of teachers setting the rules and students complying becomes more complicated as teenagers begin to question and challenge their teachers. What can new teachers do to ensure that they're respecting the needs...

For many new teachers, lesson planning ALONE is a huge source of stress and anxiety. Not only is there a billion other things to do as a teacher, but there's the tiny detail of knowing how and what to plan. Yes, you definitely learned about it and even did some practice lesson plans. But now that you're faced with your own students (and possibly teaching a grade that you weren't prepared for), it'...

Many teachers have students work in groups on assignments, but there are also quite a few that limit it. They don’t like the potential for chaos and bad behaviors, so for the most part, they avoid it. However, it’s impossible to keep students on-task and in silence for an entire class period. Those students may seem like they're paying attention but are in fact playing the role of a student who’s...

One of your strongest and most helpful allies as a teacher are parents. They can rescue you when you need help creating materials for your class, volunteer to help chaperone events, and run fundraisers for your classroom. They can also question your teaching practices, make excuses when their child misbehaves, and go over your head and complain to your administrator. Either way, it's important tha...

Having a solid classroom management plan is ESSENTIAL for a successful year. No amount of curriculum planning will be effective if you have multiple students disrupting the learning. So now that you have a plan, how do you implement it? What are the possible things that could go wrong, and why do they happen? In Part 2 of this 2-part series, I dive into how to train your students to follow your pl...