Stress, excessive workload, unrealistic mandates, and daily expectations can add up to burnout. Jenny Grant Rankin’s First Aid for Teacher Burnout combines strategies to alleviate stress, streamline grading, tame technology and practice self care. Essential reading!
Miriam Plotinsky asks for a mindset shift toward student autonomy and then focuses on creating deeper relationships so that students have a safe space to take risks. The goal? A less micromanaged, more student-directed learning environment, writes teacher Rebecca Crockett.
The life skills students learn in our classes prepare them to thrive in the real world. Middle grades teacher Laleh Ghotbi shares some lessons from her effort to use weekly community-building circles in her classroom to help students learn to respect their differences and focus on common values.
Choice in reading is about student autonomy and motivation. It’s especially effective with kids who don’t like to read. Stephanie Farley’s well-honed system lets 8th graders read any text they choose AND meets standards – even though they never all read the same book.
Compassionate discipline calls us to action, writes SEL & the Brain expert Marilee Sprenger – actions much different from our usual vision of discipline. Showing compassion and managing our behavior can help our students recognize their own emotions and regulate themselves.
To guide middle grades students into paying more attention to poetry – and reconsidering their often negative attitudes about reading and writing poems – author and teacher Linda Rief suggests kids create heart books, do quickwrites and illustrate lines of their own work.
In Becoming Active Citizens Tom Driscoll and Shawn W. McCusker offer a compendium of the latest approaches and ideas in civic education. Their ideas equip teachers across academic disciplines with the tools to navigate this ever-changing landscape, writes Sarah Cooper.
Many of today’s middle schoolers lack a full understanding of the Holocaust. Media literacy consultant Frank Baker seeks to deepen their knowledge and awareness by sharing the survival story of one American family in a nonfiction graphic novel format students will be drawn to.
Help your middle graders grow academically and behaviorally with these monthly SEL themes and activities developed by middle school teacher leader Kasey Short and her counseling colleague Janani Buford. Just right for busy teachers to incorporate into their advisories!
While logic and skill are two important elements in advancing math knowledge, students also need to be immersed in the language of math to succeed. Kathleen Palmieri brainstormed with her fifth graders to develop fun strategies that help them understand and apply math terms.
