Where there are challenges, there are also opportunities for creativity, novelty, and adventure to put a barricade between us and burnout. Stephanie Farley offers strategies to help teachers avoid or at least soften the sense of emotional exhaustion that leads to collapse.
School is a naturally stress inducing place for many students, so working to alleviate those feelings will only make our classrooms happier and more productive. Educator Stephanie Choate writes that Martha Kaufeldt’s De-Stress the Test helps with test anxiety and much more.
Collaborating Through Collective Teacher Efficacy Cycles is an invaluable tool that can help jumpstart school-changing collaboration, says Cathy Gessenheimer. Drawing on Hattie’s research, the book by Faddis, Fisher and Frey has links to more than 35 videos and other resources.
Patty McGee invites teachers to infuse some “Harry Styles magic” into social-emotional learning. In countless ways, Styles’ lyrics can be surprisingly fun and effective to build emotional IQ, acting as springboards for exploring and learning about our emotional landscape.
Students in the middle grades think in polarities and will go to great lengths to avoid embarrassment, writes author and school counselor Phyllis Fagell. But with the right supports, they can learn to take risks – asking questions, joining discussions and learning more.
A Learning Culture / Making Questions Count
by MiddleWeb · Published 08/30/2023 · Last modified 09/16/2024
What teachers do the first weeks of school has a dramatic effect on student engagement and achievement the rest of the year. Building a classroom culture of learning and questioning – co-created with students – paves the road to success. Jackie Walsh and colleagues show us how.
Mona Iehl’s Word Problem Workshop lesson plan helped her realize that teaching math was just like teaching everything else. You have to allow students to bring themselves to the work – letting them use what they know and are able to do to figure things out. Then you step in.
Civics advocate Shawn McCusker doesn’t agree with a noted professor’s premise that there’s no hope for democracy, but “I do agree that our failure to prepare our citizens for the responsibilities of democracy is an existential crisis.” Learn what he urges educators to do.
Collaborative instructional practice evolves when we define our value as co-teachers based on our service to students, not by our location in the room, writes language specialist Tan Huynh. How and where can each teaching partner best serve the learning needs of the moment?
We’ve had so many good reviews of insightful and helpful books during the past 12 months. Here are 20 frequently clicked examples, all written by our pool of educator volunteers across a range of topics, that MiddleWeb visitors found informative and often illuminating.
