I’ve known Cossondra George since the early days of MiddleWeb’s online community, where she was a regular and wise voice. For several years in the 2000s I was privileged to be her editor on a series of articles she wrote for Ed Week Teacher.

Cossondra has a knack for giving good teaching advice, as you can easily learn by googling her name. (The unusual spelling is a web-searcher’s delight.) And unlike the mythological Cassandra, her accurate predictions of things to come (in the new teacher’s classroom) have been embraced by many. Her insights can be found in high-readership articles like Taming the Dragon of Classroom Chaos, After the Honeymoon, Teaching Students How to Learn, and most recently Ending the Year on a High Note. Her teaching blog, Middle School Day by Day, from a Teacher’s Point of View (where you can read her current, sad posts on the dissolution of her middle school) was recognized with a 2011 Fascination Award.

Cossondra has spent her 18-year teaching career in the small town of Newberry, Michigan, where — as she tells us in this recent interview — she’s worn quite a few hats, from middle & high school special educator to content specialist, teaching her favorite subject — mathematics.

1. You’ve written several popular articles about classroom organization, behavior management strategies and your techniques for establishing student routines. Novice teachers are eager to read them, we know. We’d like to focus some questions around your advice. But first, tell us about your teaching career.

I currently teach middle and high school special ed. When I finished my bachelor’s degree in elementary education, with emphasis in math and social studies, I wanted to get my endorsement in learning disabilities. So rather than seek a full-time teaching position, I continued to work towards my masters in special education while I subbed.

Once I received my masters degree, I took a position as a middle school special ed teacher at Newberry Middle School in Newberry, Michigan. After several years as an inclusion special ed teacher, I was asked to teach 8^th grade history. While I was teaching history, I searched online for resources to help me engage students. I discovered MiddleWeb. (This was more than a decade ago!) After my one year of 8^th grade history, I was moved to 7^th grade where I mostly taught math, but some years I also taught social studies and technology classes.

Two years ago, another special ed position opened up and I took it. Now, some of my day is spent in inclusion classes (in both the middle and high school) and some in my own MS resource classroom.

As you can see, after nearly 20 years in public education, I’ve had lots of experience in the upper middle grades, in a variety of teaching roles.

2. In general, what would you say is your philosophy of teaching and learning? Talk about the fundamentals. What understandings about young people and adult-student relationships have shaped your teaching practice?

The most important thing I’ve learned about teaching is this: Building relationships with your students is the key to engaging them in the content. Until you can connect with them on some personal level, whether it is talking about football, hunting, pets, or some television show, students rarely will engage with you meaningfully about content. Once they feel a connection with you, that’s when learning starts. They trust you, they want to please you, are willing to struggle along on the journey beside you.

Teaching kids that learning goes hand in hand with struggling and failing can lead to a wonderful experience for both your students and yourself. Being honest about your own shortcomings, allowing students to see you learn and grow — learning to laugh with them at your own mistakes — will go a long way towards building trust.

3. Thinking about the first 4-6 weeks of school, what key steps do you take to establish a positive learning environment where students are respectful and eager to learn? What are the elements that must be in place, in and out of the classroom, for this to work for all students?

I’m not big on classroom rules. I think middle grades students know what is expected RULE-wise, and I enforce the basics: self-respect, respect for others and for property. Where I am really “strict” is on procedures – how we do things, when we do things, and where things belong. As our classroom procedures begin to become second nature to my students, the positive learning environment emerges.

Cossondra’s students – 2005 service-learning project

I build a structured routine of how I envision our classroom looking and functioning, and I model that over and over, helping students create their own method for fitting into the picture. I explain to them why I want things the way I want them and help them see how working together can create a more comfortable place for all of us to be.

One of the most important things a teacher can do is to meet and greet students at the door every day, every hour, by name. Smile, say “hello,” “good morning,” “Hey, I like your shoes (haircut, t-shirt),” “Don’t forget your book and a pencil…”. Anything to happily greet them as they walk in the door. I even post pictures of students from the local newspaper, along with comics, sports news, and other interesting information on the door so they want to stop, look, read and chat about what’s new.

Relationships, relationships, relationships. It really is all about relationships.

4. One of your most popular online articles is one for Education Week titled Taming the Dragon of Classroom Chaos. You admit in that article that you’re not naturally “neat.” Give us the essential strategies you use to create an “organized” classroom.

A place for everything – a place to turn in work, a place for supplies, a teacher-only space, a place for today’s handouts, a place for attendance, a place for EVERYTHING. Otherwise, I would never ever know where anything is. Learn what your weakness is, and create a location to solve that problem. Create a routine for you and your students that leads to learning.

My best organizer is the bell-ringer assignment students find on the board when they walk in. It gets the kids engaged right away, and gives me three precious minutes to take attendance and deal with all the little nit-picky stuff that has to be taken care of some days. It takes time to create meaningful math starters or social studies questions that tie yesterday’s lesson to what we’ll do today, but the bell-ringer can provide valuable instruction as well as organizational support.

I’ve also learned to let go of things that don’t matter in favor of things that matter more. At one time, I took over writing the quote of the day on this blackboard in the hallway. It was fun but took time I discovered I needed for other things. Now I write on it once a week or whenever I get around to it. No one seems to care that there is not a fresh quote every day. Let go of things that don’t matter so much in favor of things that do.

As far as classroom organization, that will look different for everyone depending on your room, what you teach, and your style of teaching. But the basics include things like supply locations, where it is easy for students to grab their own notebook, paper, markers, etc. Organize so that it is easy for you to scan at the end of the hour to make sure things are taken care of. That kind of organizing keep me sane!

It can be little things like turning our supply cubbies on tables away from students so they don’t get filled with trash. Big things like investing in different colored Expo markers for different classes or topics so my boards are not just a huge conglomeration of stuff with no rhyme or reason. Passes hanging by the door for bathroom or hall travel so I don’t have to write on one every time a student leaves the room. Seating charts – made by me or by students, but a place for every student and that student in their place – takes care of attendance quickly, lets subs know who, what, when and where, and also helps solve the mystery of whose book, or hat or sweater has been left behind.

At the end of the Dragon article you mentioned, I wrote:

Amid the chaos that is my classroom, a sharp observer will see these little islands of organization, floating in the clutter and disarray. My students and I spend our time together engaged in learning, and for the most part, things run smoothly.

Most of the ideas in that article aren’t original with me. But I’ve certainly put them to the test! As I said there, anyone who suffers like I do from chronic disorganization can make good use of them.

5. Finally, how is teaching different today than when your began your career? And how does that change the teaching job — or does it? When you began, you no doubt weighed the positives and negatives of a teaching career and the positives won out. Do you think that would be true if you were starting out today? If not, what needs to change?

Much has changed since I began teaching. Technology has taken over every aspect of our lives, and school is no exception. Some of those changes are welcome. We have the ability to access unlimited information quickly. We have the ability to communicate with people around the globe in real time. Those new capacities make learning exciting and meaningful in ways never before possible.

On the other hand, technology often becomes a distraction for students who are not mature enough to filter out the digital buzz and focus on their learning. They think they can multi-task, texting and chatting, and still learn. For some students, this is true. Unfortunately, it’s not true for all. Many students become so bogged down in the social aspects of technology, education suddenly takes a back seat.

Teachers are being held more and more accountable for student learning and achievement. In theory, this is a great idea. I think all teachers should be held to high expectations and kept on track, and should assume responsibility for the success of students in their classrooms. But students are not widgets, and many outside factors influence learning.

We are not all-powerful, able to transmit knowledge and understanding into the brains of our students by touching a button or uttering a magic word. When students are disengaged, we can try all the tools at our disposal, spend sleepless nights coming up with new strategies and ideas, try everything and then some, and still be unsuccessful.

All students are not created equal and to expect them to all arrive at the same destination on the same time schedule is unreasonable. To hold teachers solely accountable for the outcome of that journey is also unreasonable. There has to be a middle ground of spreading the accountability to include other people who make decisions that affect learning — from students themselves, to parents, to school leaders and board members, to politicians, and to the larger community.

Teaching is a wonderful, challenging and sometimes frustrating profession. We need good teachers who will stand up for kids. If that’s you, then chances are the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Would I become a teacher again, given the circumstances in public schools today? Probably. I love my job most of the time. The kids are great. I love the light bulbs that come on in their heads, the positive bubblings they emit, and the feeling that sometimes, I actually do make a difference in their lives.

On the other hand, I would strongly caution anyone considering teaching as a career choice to make sure you are up for the long haul. The pay is marginal. The perks that attracted career teachers in the past — good health insurance, retirement benefits and job security — are no longer guaranteed. If you truly aren’t willing to work 60 hours a week, if you aren’t willing to fight with parents, administrators and politicians for what you believe is right for your students, then consider a different career option.

Teaching is a wonderful, challenging and sometimes frustrating profession. We need good teachers who will stand up for kids. If that’s you, then chances are the positives will outweigh the negatives.

Thanks so much, Cossondra. We’ll watch for future advice and good luck in your next decade of teaching!

Heather Wolpert-Gawron is a middle school English/language arts and speech/debate teacher in San Gabriel Unified School District and a former California regional teacher of the year. Her popular blogs at Edutopia and TweenTeacher are frequently highlighted in various SmartBrief Education newsletters and other nationally circulated ed resource publications. Her first full-length book, ‘Tween Crayons & Curfews: Tips for Middle School Teachers, was published last year by Eye on Education. Heather is also the author of a series of guides for teachers around Internet literacy. You can learn more about her here.

Heather was one of three guest experts at our new-teacher webinar in July. Check out the archive and downloads at our webinar page.

1. It says “Middle School” in your book’s subtitle, but we know how publishers are. Where would you say the advice in your book fits on the grades 4-8 continuum? Where does your personal teaching experience lie? And how would you define a Tween?

‘Tween can be such a state of mind, can it not? I think there are “tips” in my book for most any teacher across these grades. And if you don’t find something useful now, who knows what you might be teaching next year? We live in unpredictable times.

I have taught everything from 3rd graders to 12th graders. I’ve even worked with students in higher education. I began my teaching career in elementary, but I soon found my style and my desire to teach deeper content urged me to “go up!” It’s like someone yelling, “Go West!” but, well, not.

Anyway, finding the age level you are called to teach can be a little trial-and-error. I went up to 4th grade and taught the California history curriculum of Spanish Missions (yawn) and Gold Rush (cool). I taught 5th graders American History (really interesting, but a little glossed over for this age group). In upper elementary, I found I missed the complexities of a deeper curriculum.

So I went all the way up to high school, and that was somewhat satisfying in that I was able to mine themes and topics in our literature that made students realize that words and combinations of words are puzzles to be teased apart and dissected. But I soon realized that I want the best of both worlds. I wanted Shakespeare AND silliness. I wanted middle school.

What many don’t realize is that there is a sweet spot for teachers in terms of the grade levels they teach. We aren’t interchangeable. I may have a multiple subject credential, but teaching 3rd is vastly different from teaching 6th. I may have a single subject credential in English, but teaching 8th is vastly different from teaching 12th.

All that, of course, is about human development. But it’s also true that many of the strategies that work for one age group can be tweaked and adjusted on the developmental scale so they’re effective with older or younger kids. An 11th grader is going to be just as excited about choosing their own project as a 4th grader would be. Creating a video trailer for a book, using an iPad, is as engaging to many 5th graders as it is to an 8th grader. In other words, so many strategies in my book have application across most or all grade levels.

I will say that there is the buzz of constant spring fever that sets middle schoolers apart from other grade levels. By high school, they tend to at least have made their peace with the changes happening to them. In middle school, it’s like one day they are kids and the next day they are casting themselves in the role of mature young adult. It’s confusing for them and it’s challenging for teachers. One day a student is reading Magic Treehouse and the next it’s Hunger Games.

And you, as their teacher, have to constantly adjust your game plan to match the mood of the moment and lure that particular student on that particular day into Learning with a big “L”. Tweens are slippery beasts! Don’t you love it?

2. In the first two chapters of your book, you offer a rich array of ideas about creating a high-functioning middle grades classroom and then building a community inside that classroom. What’s the most important advice here?

Heather’s classroom during Banned Books week

You know, I didn’t believe it mattered until I saw for myself the power of creating a learning community in the classroom. I really think that without community, the deepest kind of learning cannot happen. Students have to WANT to learn. Some come to you already possessing that trait; others discover it depending on the subject or depending on the teacher. Still others struggle to ever find it. Building community in the classroom, creating shared experiences, making students feel privileged to be in this very special place: that’s what pulls out the desire to learn and learn and keep on learning.

That’s also some of why building the right physical environment is so important. We don’t have room for all the details here (but here’s something I wrote about my Banned Books strategy). But it’s about making them feel that they are in a good and exciting place that’s unlike anywhere else.

And I’m not just talking about a room design that indicates learning is going on — it has to be a place that actively lures kids into learning, even when their brains want to go elsewhere: to the divorce, the lack of food on the table at home, the breakup with a boyfriend, crushing on a girl, Minecraft vs. World of Warcraft, the upcoming recital, a parent’s fight, greenhouse gases, a brother in the military, a sister going to college. There’s so much we compete with when it comes to “attention.” Putting in a little effort to give your classroom a costume of coolness will pay you back a tenfold throughout the school year.

3. Then you move on to the (drum roll) Tween Brain. Is that a scary place? We’re pretty sure you did a lot of extra research as you prepared to write this chapter. What surprised you? You know, the big Brain Aha’s.

I drew a lot on the science behind Dr. Judy Willis’s research. She’s a neurologist turned middle school teacher and she gives magnificent tours of the adolescent brain and the science behind improving its functioning. She was one of the first people in education, at least that I heard of, talking about the flexible IQ and the plasticity of the brain. It’s a very powerful and encouraging thing to know that the brain can become more than it currently is, for anybody. Teach that fact to middle schoolers and they don’t feel like it’s too late for them. (Here’s an Edutopia video interview with Judy, who is someone I really respect.)

4. Next comes data and assessment. Let’s skip that. Just kidding. Although we’d bet some readers do. Why is it that teachers don’t get excited about assessment for learning? What’s the case you make that might change some minds about that?

It’s very releasing, if given the chance, to change how you do your own student assessments. Recently I began focusing solely on Project Based Learning, and I think I got the best from more students this year than ever before. There are lots of resources on the Web about creating PBL units with the assessments — the learning progress — built right in. Here’s one: a Top 10 Tips guide from Edutopia, edited by my fellow blogger there, Suzie Boss.

For me, PBL is not just about accelerating achievement, important as that is. PBL follows my creed as a teacher — it makes me happy. I’m not only satisfied – but happy. I love thinking about the PBL lessons. I love learning about options for doing things, options I can pass on to students. I love learning from the students themselves.

The key to good teaching is to capture that same feeling in any lesson you teach, whether its a PBL unit that you yourself designed or a unit everyone in the school or district must accomplish. In almost any lesson there’s something interesting to tap into — a hook to create enthusiasm for the topic, both for yourself AND your students.

It’s not all about enthusiasm, of course, but I think excitement as a teacher can help bridge many gaps and get us through some mandated curriculum. Sometimes that’s what teachers have to do: find that hook that excites you about an otherwise boring or counterproductive obligation of a lesson. How can you find this? That’s where collaboration comes in. A single teacher can’t do it all; collaboration is what helps fuel our imagination, innovation, and inventiveness. That’s when we turn to fellow educators in our school or to our Personal Learning Network and communities of practice on the Internet. If you learn to reach out to other teachers effectively, there’s always someone out there with a good teaching idea you’ve never thought about. Look at this infographic about Connected Educators, created by my colleague Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach.

5. Last question – and 11 chapters to go! Okay, let’s do this. Give us 11 bullets, one for each remaining chapter, with the big message behind each. Then we’ll count on the newbies to check out your book for themselves if they want to survive (or just be more successful) in the coming year.

• Chapter 5 – Be transparent with students about why they must learn something and make lessons really relate to life outside of school.

• Chapter 6 – Use targeted strategies to pull out the deepest thinking from students. Help them freeze the “tickertape” going on at all times in their brain that makes connections 24/7. Help them harness that screenshot and leverage it to benefit their work.

• Chapter 7 – Give students the tools to show the highest level of content they’ve mastered by teaching them to communicate that content in high level and multiple ways. In other words, teach them how to teach.

• Chapter 8 – Build a classroom library. No matter your subject, build a classroom library that reflects your interests and you’ll find students that will relate to you and your content in a deeper way.

• Chapter 9 – Differentiate. Give choices. Honor the individuality in every classroom.

• Chapter 10 – Teach students how to question. Teach them how to develop high level questions and you will have developed an authentic assessment that recognizes the value of learning through confusion.

• Chapter 11 – Use social media and teach Internet literacy. Let them communicate online and you will be extending the school day substantially. Give them the tools to make good decisions online.

• Chapter 12 – Use specific strategies to deal with the mass of grading and feedback required to monitor students’ understanding. It can get crazy! Forgive yourself for needing to use some tricks to deal with the workload that comes along with teaching.

• Chapter 13 – Be flexible. Don’t enter teaching thinking it is a static, never-changing profession. Enter it with the knowledge that you will need to roll your dice and bend this way and that from year to year, unit to unit, and era to era. Learn to bend and you won’t break.

• Chapter 14 – Publicize your efforts. Don’t be modest. Scream from the rafters about what your students have accomplished.

• Chapter 15 – Take care of you. Pamper as needed, and whatever you do, keep learning…

Thanks, Heather. We’ll keep up with your adventures via your blogs at Edutopia and TweenTeacher!