Teacher’s Lounge Blog

Learn more about teacher preparation, test tips, online learning, professional development, and a variety of other valuable teacher topics.

Evaluate, Emphasize, & Establish Better Behavior Management This Year

August 1st, 2019 | Comments Off on Evaluate, Emphasize, & Establish Better Behavior Management This Year | Teacher's Lounge Blog, Teaching Licenses

It’s at that point in the summer when teachers are checking out sales on school and classroom supplies and finishing professional development sessions in preparation for the new year. Whether you’ve taught for decades in the same grade or classroom or you have moved to a different school or subject area, it can be overwhelming to think about 2019-2020.

Here are three simple ways to make a substantial difference in your classroom climate, maintain your sanity, and ensure student success. Focusing on behavior at the outset of the school year leads to a more productive year for everyone – you, the administration, the students, and their parents.

  1. Evaluate your expectations for behavior management and adjust, as necessary, for the grade level. Let your students (and parents) know exactly what behaviors are appropriate and which ones are not with a clear set of guidelines that you can discuss with them. This allows each family to be invested in the process, and explicitly defines right and wrong and what happens when rules are broken.
  2. Emphasize relationships with your students. This is one of the best behavior management tools you can utilize. When students realize that you really care about them, they are more eager to learn and cooperate. Get to know your students on a personal level, what interests them, and their past school experiences. On the flip side, let students and parents know more about you, too. In addition, start building a favorable relationship with parents from the first day of school so that you have a connection before problems have a chance to develop.
  3. Establish classroom procedures that support your efforts for behavior management and prevent off-task behavior before it begins. Determine exact routines for everything from entering the room to homework to end-of-day actions. Teach the routines to students and emphasize them heavily during the first few weeks of school.

While it does take extra time and effort to launch a composed, positive classroom, you will have a more successful, enjoyable, and productive year.

What is Contributing to Our Nation’s Teacher Shortage, Particularly in High-Poverty Schools?

July 11th, 2019 | Comments Off on What is Contributing to Our Nation’s Teacher Shortage, Particularly in High-Poverty Schools? | Certification Prep, Teacher's Lounge Blog, Teaching Licenses

Teacher shortages are felt in both urban and rural districts across the U.S., but according to a study by the Economic Policy Institute (EPI), the impact is unevenly distributed along socioeconomic lines. Schools that are in high-poverty areas have a bigger problem with attracting certified teachers with experience in the subject(s) they teach. This problem undermines teacher effectiveness, threatens the students’ ability to learn, and leads to greater teacher turnover.

The study is the first in a series that examines the causes, consequences, and possible solutions in the volatile teacher labor market. Not only is the deficit real, it is worse than originally thought.

When the economy recovered after the recession and school budgets increased, districts started looking for teachers again. However, they found that it was more challenging to fill those positions than they had expected. The effects have been long-reaching and continue today. Of particular concern is finding qualified teachers in special education, science, and mathematics.

Many reports from the Learning Policy Institute (LPI) indicate that the teacher shortage is not only alarming but that there are just not enough educators in specialty fields with the current wages offered. While there are many highly qualified teachers scattered throughout the country, not all educators have the certification, experience, and education requirements to meet those guidelines.

The EPI report indicates that there is an unequal distribution of highly qualified educators in schools for low-income students, and the problem is more severe than previously believed. California is especially hard-hit, according to a 2017 report from LPI where 2/3 of principals in poverty-stricken schools hired less than qualified teachers or simply left positions unfilled because they were unable to hire teachers with the required skills.

Of the open teacher positions in Illinois in 2017, 90% were in school districts with less than adequate funding. Low-income districts had 81% of the vacancies, and 74% were in majority-minority school districts.

Schools with high-poverty levels are more likely than schools in traditional districts to have educators with fewer credentials and less experience, as well as lacking significant knowledge in the subject matter they teach. These teachers are more apt to leave the education field, as well.

The relationship between having strong credentials and remaining in a school or district weakens in high poverty schools (EPI study). Richard Ingersoll reports that half of teacher attrition occurs in 25% of public schools in mostly high-poverty rural and urban locations.

There are no indications that the teacher shortage issue is lessening, particularly in impoverished schools and districts. The problem will only get better when leaders understand that this lack of credentialed teachers is due to increased job stress, the teacher pay gap, and demoralization, as well as a lack of training, mentoring, and suitable professional development programs. EPI plans to investigate these challenges and possible solutions in future studies.

To find an equitable resolution to the teacher shortage crisis, it is necessary to recognize why it is occurring and the unique nature of the teacher labor market. Only then will there be a solution that benefits the districts, schools, teachers, and students.

 

 

 

Teacher Appreciation Week

May 6th, 2019 | Comments Off on Teacher Appreciation Week | Teacher's Lounge Blog, Teaching Licenses

Teacher with student

Have you ever thought about Teacher Appreciation Week? When did it start? Who initiated it? What does it mean? Your school district likely follows countrywide norms and honors its teachers during the first full week of May, with National Teacher Day on Tuesday of that week.

History of the Event

Discussions about recognizing the important work that teachers do began in 1944. The 81st Congress proclaimed National Teacher’s Day in 1953 at the behest of Eleanor Roosevelt. Officially, the first National Teacher Day was established on March 7, 1980, and the first Tuesday in March was set aside to acknowledge educators for their efforts. In 1985, the National PTA initiated Teacher Appreciation Week in May, with the NEA voting to make Tuesday of that week National Teacher Day.

What happens during Teacher Appreciation Week?

Many retailers, restaurants, and other establishments offer discounts and free goodies to teachers during Teacher Appreciation Week. Generally, you must show your ID to qualify. Local PTA organizations often spearhead specific activities in their schools for teachers that may include gift-giving, a celebratory luncheon, or another special event to recognize the staff.

Many local groups within individual schools create their own “Thank a Teacher” GoFundMe operations where donations match campaigns that directly benefit teachers.

Is it a good or a bad thing?

There is surprisingly quite a bit of controversy regarding Teacher Appreciation Week. While a time set aside to honor educators for our often challenging and time-consuming work with children and young adults should be cherished – and is, by numerous teachers – others disagree.

There’s certainly nothing wrong with a free meal, a discount at a favorite store, or a heartfelt surprise from a student during Teacher Appreciation Week, but many teachers aren’t interested in being “buttered-up” once a year. Instead, they want to be respected for what they do, have enough funding to educate students with the most up-to-date technology and other educational materials, have fair evaluation standards and job protection, compensation worthy of the profession, and a voice to help make policies that support teachers and the families of the children they teach.

Teacher shortages are more common than ever, and teacher morale has continued to drop. Although teachers appreciate what parents do for us during this week, what we really want is to be trusted and respected as professionals in the educational field. Allowing us to have autonomy in the classroom and letting us influence policies that affect us directly would go a long way in bringing more teachers into the profession and boosting spirits. The students will be the real beneficiaries.

Of course, we love hearing “thank you for what you do,” and receiving tokens of gratitude during Teacher Appreciation Week. Hopefully, these positive feelings can be extended throughout the entire year. 

Effective Teaching – Measuring the Immeasurable

December 5th, 2018 | Comments Off on Effective Teaching – Measuring the Immeasurable | Teacher's Lounge Blog, Teaching Licenses

Article from the Series: Essentials for Effective New Teachers

“Development of effective teachers” has become a common goal in education—I would even say, it is a catchphrase. Internet lists of teacher qualities inspire us; merit pay motivates us; mentorships instruct us; administrators inspect and evaluate us. Responsibility for and expectations of “effectiveness” have been heaped upon us teachers.

When we turn the calendar page to June and reflect on the school year, would any of us be so bold as to say, “I was an effective teacher this year”? The ageless question haunts— “How would I even know if I had achieved this enigmatic quality of ‘effectiveness’?”

As an educator, I have wrangled with how to gauge my own effectiveness against the measuring rods of the stakeholders—the students’ expectations vs. the research.

When Pearson surveyed students ages 15-19, they found that students value a teacher’s “ability to develop relationships with their students; patient, caring and kind personality; knowledge of learners; dedication to teaching” etc. https://www.pearsoned.com/top-five-qualities-effective-teachers/ Educational research indicates that effective teachers have a broad base of knowledge, plan, communicate, measure learning, create an environment for learning, and behave as professionals. http://www.ascd.org/Publications/Books/Overview/Qualities-of-Effective-Teachers-3rd-Edition.aspx

Caring, understanding, and dedication are hard to measure; so, I’ve started looking at what I can measure.

Is it possible that the most loving, most caring thing I can do for my students is to start class on time all 180 days?

When I’ve required and evaluated weekly milestones that led up to a synthesized final project, have I demonstrated my knowledge of learners?

Does my ability to avoid getting sidetracked demonstrate that I love teaching and I love my subject matter too much to surrender my class time for an inferior cause.

Does my strict adherence to the highest standards of ethics show students the proper boundaries of the teacher/student relationship?

When I hear out my students without over talking with my agenda, have I demonstrated that communication is both speaking and listening?

I’m not sure…

Becoming “effective” can feel unattainable; however, I can start class on time; I can give assignments that set students up to succeed; I can keep class engaging and fast paced; and I can behave ethically. I can learn effective teaching practices.

When I measure my effectiveness as an educator by observable and the measurable practices, I can see where I’ve failed and where I’ve succeeded. Then, I become the learner and start working again on consistently demonstrating the teaching practices that work.

Effective Teachers Organize

September 17th, 2018 | Comments Off on Effective Teachers Organize | Certification Prep, Teacher's Lounge Blog, Teaching Licenses

Article from the Series: Essentials for Effective New Teachers

Any healthy list of “Factors that Overwhelm New Teachers” is incomplete without a mention of “the stuff.” The combined accumulation of what you bring to the classroom and what you inherit from your predecessor may have you spiraling. You’ll need to get organized for the sake of your own efficiency, but most of all for the sake of your students.

If you find yourself standing in the middle of your classroom asking, “Does this stuff exist so that I can organize it or so that my students can use it to learn,” it’s time to make a change. Let me assure you—there’s a better way. It is not a sin to throw deadweight educational resources away. You may not want to purge too much your first year, but no one wins a prize for the storage closet with the most stuff.

Let’s look at the why and how of organization.

  1. Believe in the value of organization. If all new teachers really bought in to how vital classroom organization is to student learning and behavior, you would have no problem investing the time to get meticulously organized. Think back on the annoying issues you dealt with in student teaching. Not the giant issues such as fights—but the daily problems that wore you down and ate away at your effectiveness. How many of those could you trace back to poor organization? Were you able to solve any problems by rearranging desks or systematizing a transition?

For many students, breakdowns come in transitions. When transitions feel less like transitions and more like routines or habits, students feel safe in knowing the next step. The room stays calm and peaceful and is less likely to erupt in chaos.

  1. Create obvious spaces. At least half of your students, and more like three quarters, will not have a natural bent toward organization. For many students, a file is a file, a tub is a tub. Organizing books by reading level or matching scissor bin #1 with table #1 is not intuitive. You’ll do everyone a favor by making your organizational system simple and eye-catching. Think through traffic patterns. At first glance, it may seem obvious that you would keep all the scissors together on one bookshelf. However, if you observe that your “supply helpers” tend to congregate and get into mischief when sent on their mission to secure scissors for their tables, you may want to re-organized. Keeping all supplies for each work station strategically place in opposite corners of the room may turn out to be a better strategy. Avoid clutter. Students lack the ability to discriminate between one heap of clutter and the next. Avoid clutter.
  1. Walk through your day. Think through all your normal procedures; for example, passing in homework. If you say, “Pass in your homework,” you can expect to see papers flying through the air, kids bonking the student in front of them on the head, kids up out of their seats taking a stroll. You’ll wonder if you said, “Please mutiny,” by mistake. Instead, think how to minimize confusion and get the job done—Homework on the front desk before class begins? Wait for the homework behind you and pass the stack up together? Choose a strategy that works for you. Model it. Enforce it until it becomes routine.
  1. Find an organizer. If you’re not by nature an organizer, borrow the skills of someone who is. Remember the dad, Mr. Gilbreth, in the old classic book Cheaper by the Dozen. He was obsessed with efficiency—to the point of having all twelve children’s tonsils removed at the same time. You don’t have to go to that extreme with your students, but it may be worth talking to a seasoned teacher or your mom or…

At the beginning of the year, keep things simple. As students (and you!) master the simple, add more complexity. A commitment to organization, efficiency, and peace will make a measurable difference in your and your students’ days and year.

Effective Teachers Evaluate

July 17th, 2018 | Comments Off on Effective Teachers Evaluate | Certification Prep, Teacher's Lounge Blog, Teaching Licenses

Elementary Teacher

Article from the Series: Essentials for Effective New Teachers

Is it fair to say that every on-the-job minute of a teacher’s life is spent evaluating? Never a moment passes that a teacher is not called upon to evaluate student learning, classroom atmosphere, lesson delivery, behavior, and more. Based on these evaluations, teachers are expected to use their quick wits and their long term planning strategies to optimize student learning in the moment and over time.

Let’s consider a teacher’s responsibility to evaluate.

Assessment of Student Learning

In both traditional and modern settings, a high priority has been placed on determining how well students have learned their lessons. In recent years, this process of evaluating student learning has fallen under the broad heading of “assessment.”

Teachers are responsible to assess individual students. Teachers assess before and after teaching. Teachers are deemed to be more effective when they use a variety of assessment tools from informal self-assessment to peer evaluations to highly-structured standardized testing.

High stakes educational testing has increased the pressure to ensure that students can demonstrate their learning on state tests. Results of large-scale assessments typically get back to teachers after instruction for that year has ended. The tendency then becomes to look at the group results and wonder what went right or what went wrong. The answer lies in the individual results. Class results can only be improved as individual students achieve. Take a minute to look at the results of the individual, and then consider what led select students to soar under your care.

For a new teacher, authentic assessment can be a greater challenge that state testing. It calls upon the teacher to have a clear picture of proficient work. For example, a second-grade teacher may know that students need to have a command of language. Does that mean they need to use plural possessives ending in s correctly in writing? How many supporting details in a descriptive paragraph should be expected of a second grader? In order to accurately evaluate, a teacher must have a clear picture of proficiency at the grade level.

Evaluation of Teaching Strategies

Teachers are wise to reflect on each lesson, that is, to analyze the effectiveness of communication in taking students from the known to the unknown. To teach effectively, you need to take a close look at formative assessment results. Discover the students’ prior knowledge and get busy structuring a lesson that will convey the student to the new content.

You may have the privilege of teaching the same content to several different classes. If you find that one class embraces your teaching and one struggles, you could draw the conclusion that your teaching is fine and the problem lies with the students. A more mature (though exhausting) outlook is that now you must specialize your lessons so that all classes can learn. You may have to design different activities, enrichment, or additional practice for your classes. While your primary responsibility during a class period may be instruction, evaluation is your constant companion.

Reflect and Modify

The most important piece of evaluation is what you do with what you’ve learned. Whether your powers of discernment are geared to students, classroom environment, your delivery, or some other aspect of education, your next step is to process your findings and decide what (or who) needs change and what will flourish with more of the same.