Articles / New Teacher Advice / Teacher Self-care
by MiddleWeb · Published 06/23/2020 · Last modified 06/28/2020
How do we ‘not take things personally’? We take feedback seriously but not to a point of diminishing our value. Teacher educator Victoria Lentfer, author of Keep Calm and Teach, shares ways to prepare for the stress and anxiety novices may encounter in the school environment.
African American History / Future of History
by Lauren S. Brown · Published 06/19/2020 · Last modified 02/15/2022
The Chicago district where Lauren Brown teaches has wrestled with issues of equity centering around race with new urgency in recent years. Amid the pandemic and the rising Anti-Racist Movement, she believes part of the answer is deepening curriculum and teaching Black history throughout the year.
Students at ages 9-13 still want to hear their teachers read aloud, want to sit on the rug, want to engage in stories. Jennifer Sniadecki and Jason DeHart share evidence that picture books are also an effective way to teach figurative language and other ELA standards.
Future of History / Pandemic Learning
by Sarah Cooper · Published 06/14/2020 · Last modified 10/19/2022
With her eighth graders’ online history podcast project now complete, Sarah Cooper shares six takeaways that have helped her imagine not only how to improve this assignment in future iterations, but how she can continue to grow as a teacher facilitating remote learning.
Video documentation is a powerful tool in news reporting, whether it’s done by professional journalists or by ordinary people with instant access to video cameras. Frank Baker looks at the history of news video as a “primary source” for historians and middle grades teachers.
STEM educator Anne Jolly reflects on the core skills embedded in an Education 4.0 vision for future learning – a vision that reshapes the way we think about the rapidly changing job market and calls on schools to be intentional in helping students acquire these skills.
In response to the murder of George Floyd, people have offered lists of actions to take to fight racism. Rita Platt adds another: Get anti-racism books into your community. Read, talk and share. Help people deepen their understanding of white privilege and systemic racism.
Articles / Listening / Speaking Skills
by MiddleWeb · Published 05/31/2020 · Last modified 02/03/2024
The experience of students and teachers doing whole class and small group work online underscores the need to emphasize speaking and listening skills now and for the future, writes principal Matt Renwick. He shares his school’s low-key, standards-friendly teaching ideas.
I Will Screw This Up / Remote Teaching
by Dina Strasser · Published 05/27/2020 · Last modified 09/03/2020
If you’re like teacher Dina Strasser, you may be wondering if your online classes add up to teaching. Yes, she says. You’ve adapted on the fly – suddenly providing virtual school to students who just weeks before greeted you at the classroom door. See if her real-life snippets match your experience.
Social Emotional Learning / The Unstoppable ML Teacher
by Tan Huynh · Published 05/25/2020 · Last modified 06/18/2020
Social-emotional learning is not a program we add on; it’s a mindset we teach with. Tan Huynh unpacks five strategies recommended by the Institute for Positive Education that can help teachers cultivate an SEL mindset, whether we’re teaching in physical or virtual spaces.
