Our Education Blogger is a public school teacher with over a decade of experience. She’s an active NEA member and enjoys writing about her experiences in the classroom.
Your personal life is yours, and it is precious. It is also necessary. Especially during winter break. There is no need to feel guilty about leaving work behind each day when you exit your classroom door. Enjoying your time outside of school makes you a better teacher. Relationships with students, parents, and colleagues may also improve when you maintain a balance between work and home. Over the years, I have learned, but not yet quite mastered, several ways to create a balance between my work life and home life.
Don’t Give Out Your Personal Information To Parents or Students
If you must communicate with parents and students outside of the school day, sign up for a social media account you can use for your classroom. Don’t give out your personal phone number, email address, or home address. Many parents and students are able to set respectful boundaries. However, there may be some parents or students who will abuse this communication privilege. This can sour your relationship with a parent or student if they continue to overuse your attempt to be “available.” You don’t want to find yourself in a sticky situation that could get you into trouble.
Keep Work At Work
Leave all of your grading and planning at school. Home should be your sanctuary, not a second office. Your family, pets, and brain will thank you for it.
Maintain Consistent Work/Office Hours
Try to arrive and leave at the same time each day. Make sure parents, students, and colleagues are aware of your daily “office hours.” Each day, I make a point to arrive no later than 7:15am and leave no later than 4:30pm. My “office hours” are 7:30-7:50am and 3:15-4:00pm. If a parent or student needs to meet with me, they know when I will be available.
Enjoy Family Time
Savor each moment you have with your own family. I love my job, and I adore my students, but I refuse to sacrifice precious time with my own family. I can never get that special time back. Grading papers, planning lessons, and returning emails can wait until the next day. So, file away those tender memories with your family without the guilt.
Protect Your Personal Social Media Accounts
Being “friends” on your personal social media with students and parents is not required. I am protective of myself and my family, so I stick to a few of my own rules for my personal social media account:
1) never be friends with a current student
2) students must be at least 13 years old (most social media services and apps require users to be 13 years old to join)
3) never be friends with a current student’s parent(s) or other family members
4) keep profile set to private
Social media can bring with it negative talk, upset feelings, and online bullying. I have no desire to get myself, or my family, involved in anything of the sort.
Don’t Check Work Email At Home
I review my work email on my school computer throughout the day, and in the moments before I shut the computer down to leave for the day. Then, I don’t check it until I arrive at school the following day. I used to have my work email synced to my personal cell phone. Big mistake. I found myself getting emotionally worked up at home about the occasional negative email from a parent or colleague. When there were “security” threats to our district email system (mostly viruses), my personal phone, along with all of my personal accounts, were at risk. Forget about sleeping when all I can think about is how I’m going to respond to the angry parent, or wondering if my phone would be affected because of a naive colleague who opened an email attachment from an unknown sender! Ditching my access to work email from home has significantly lowered my stress level (and I’ve even gotten a few more zzzz’s)!
Recruit Help
It’s okay to ask for help. Get a neighbor, a friend, a babysitter, or a grandparent to help you out at home if you need it. You aren’t superhuman! We all need a little extra support from time to time.
Be Realistic
Be realistic about what you can and can’t do. There may be nights that you won’t be able to cook dinner. That’s what delivery and take-out are for! It’s okay to bring a frozen, microwave meal for lunch (although that 5-minute cook time really eats into my lunch time). I promise, no one will judge you! Yes, it’s okay for dirty laundry to sit around in the hamper for a few days. You’ll get to it when you can.
Be Disciplined
Stick to it and mean it. If you crave more personal time, then be picky about your work hours, how you spend your time outside of school, and choosing to leave work at work. If you don’t think you can be disciplined, ask someone to help you by holding you accountable. Your partner or spouse can make sure you’re not checking work email, or bringing home papers to grade. Your best friend can check in on you to see if you’re keeping the right company on social media.
We’d love to hear from you! How do you create a balance between work and home?
This article is furnished by California Casualty, providing auto and home insurance to educators, law enforcement officers, firefighters and nurses. Get a quote at 1.866.704.8614 or www.calcas.com.
The stress and exhaustion of teaching can take a toll, even if you don’t realize it. Your mind is constantly running back and forth between teaching, meetings, emails, parents, and life at home. So when the weight of anxiety and stress get heavy, here are some easy self-care tips for teachers on those hard mental health days.
As a teacher, you love what you do and want to make sure everyone is taken care of, but don’t forget about yourself. Find a support system in other teachers to talk about their ideas, get exercise, and drink plenty of water. Share with us your tips you use for self-care.
This article is furnished by California Casualty, providing auto and home insurance to educators, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and nurses. Get a quote at 1.866.704.8614 or www.calcas.com.
It’s time to get your classroom into the winter holiday spirit! Check out our favorite, educational, winter holiday videos, lesson plans, and games below!
Holidays are a topic occupying the thoughts of children — and teachers — during much of the year, but especially during November and December. This theme can provide a wonderful opportunity to introduce students to customs and cultures that may be unfamiliar to them and to help them recognize festivals as communal celebrations of culture.
Lesson ideas for using BrainPOP to teach about holidays, winter holiday activities for kids, and winter holidays background information for parents and teachers.
How are special days celebrated throughout the world? Every culture has its own special
traditions and reasons for celebrating and, in this project, students will learn how holidays and
festivals are celebrated all over the globe. Students will explore celebrations, traditions and
symbols related to a holiday or festival from their home countries and then investigate those from other parts of the world. In a culminating activity, students will share their information and create symbolic representations of their researched holiday from across the globe. This project is designed so that it can be done as a single classroom project with students collaborating in pairs or small groups and using various sources such as books, the internet and the ePals student forums for research, or, as a collaborative email-based project.
December is a month full of special days. Education World offers resources to help educators teach about all those special days. The resources include holiday lesson plans, holiday art and gift projects, and additional holiday resources.
Educational Games
Christmas Lights Math (abcya.com)
It’s time to put up the Christmas lights! But wait! Before you can put up the Christmas lights, you must correctly answer as many math problems as you can in one minute. You can practice addition, subtraction, multiplication or division facts. The more math problems you solve correctly, the more lights you will be given to decorate your house!
A Blocky Christmas is a challenging holiday puzzle for kids grades four and up. Players must use the keyboard arrows to move the puzzle pieces into place. There are sixteen levels of play!
Christmas Word Search is a fun holiday activity for children of all ages. Puzzles can be created two ways: a small grid with shorter words or a larger grid with longer words. This feature will allow younger children to enjoy the puzzles too! You can print or play online.
The Christmas edition of Sugar, Sugar is a challenging logic puzzle with a physics twist and a holiday theme. Each level of the game is a puzzle that requires planning and strategy.
Factory Balls is a logic puzzle game that will challenge kids and adults. The object of Factory Balls is to create balls with designs that match the Christmas ball in each level.
Civiballs Christmas is a challenging physics puzzle for kids of all ages! The object of the puzzle is to cut the chains and get the colored balls into vases of the same color. Trial and error will lead to solutions!
This article is furnished by California Casualty, providing auto and home insurance to educators, law enforcement officers, firefighters and nurses. Get a quote at 1.866.704.8614 or www.calcas.com.
Our Education Blogger is a public school teacher with over a decade of experience. She’s an active NEA member and enjoys writing about her experiences in the classroom.
I know it sounds a little strange, but this one helps me stay on track. Each day I have a specific task I aim to complete. For example, on Mondays I plan out my math lessons and on Fridays I re-evaluate my upcoming lessons in case we lagged behind or got ahead that week. Also, I always reserve about 10 minutes each plan time for parent or colleague communication (save the lengthier conversations for an after-school conference).
Plan time is a vital part of a teacher’s day. It’s when the “magic” happens, or at least, it’s supposed to. If you’re like me, plan time mysteriously disappears, taken up by “quick” conversations with a colleague, getting students caught up on work, or communicating with parents, leaving you with little to no time to plan before your next class begins.
After a decade of teaching, I feel like I’ve finally figured out how to make the most of my plan time. While some are blatantly obvious, these 6 little nuggets of wisdom may be just what you need to take back your plan time.
Use A Planner Find a tool to help you plan your week, month, year. Having everything in one place, and being able to see a week, or month, at a glance is helpful. Create a digital template, or make one by hand. Choose from one of the hundreds of editable lesson planner templates available like this basic lesson plan template from Angie Amos on Teachers Pay Teachers.
Shut Your Door
I know. It’s hard. You don’t want to seem unfriendly or unwelcoming. However, if you are swamped with grading and planning, this is one step you can’t avoid. If you feel it necessary, you can even make a little note to stick on your door explaining that you’d LOVE to visit, but you have work to complete. Uninterrupted plan time is precious!
Avoid Scheduling Meetings
Some of us have little control over this one. However, in my building, our plan time is OUR plan time. Plan time isn’t allowed to be used for IEP meetings, conferences, or evaluations. If you can, request that meetings be held at times other than your plan time.
Delegate Work If you have teacher’s aides, use them (please don’t ask your paraprofessional if they can help you with work, their job is to help students). If not, ask a parent volunteer to help throughout the week. Jobs like making copies, cutting, stapling, sorting, and hanging papers on bulletin boards are ideal for aides or volunteers. These tasks take up a surprisingly large amount of time, so let someone else help you out!
Recruit Student Help
Use peer tutors to assist students who have been absent or who need extra help with assignments. Offer peer tutors an incentive for their help.
Each school year and each day are different. See what works best for you. Don’t be afraid to protect your vital plan time!
This article is furnished by California Casualty, providing auto and home insurance to educators, law enforcement officers, firefighters, and nurses. Get a quote at 1.866.704.8614 or www.calcas.com.
Our Education Blogger is a public school teacher with over a decade of experience. She’s an active NEA member and enjoys writing about her experiences in the classroom.
Creating the “perfect” classroom seating arrangement is one of the more challenging aspects of teaching. It seems to be a never-ending puzzle! A good classroom seating arrangement allows students to be focused on learning, and that can only occur when other nuances are addressed.
Consider each student’s needs and challenges. Students who are easily distracted should be placed in an area of the room that provides the least amount of possible interruptions. If a student has visual or hearing complications, seat them where they can easily see and hear instruction. A student who needs to leave the room during class time for other services (speech, gifted, etc.) may prefer to be seated near the door to avoid feeling uncomfortable when leaving. A talkative student may need to be situated with as few classmates as possible. Do any students have physical limitations that requires equipment or accessibility?
2. Peer Tutors
Are there students in your class that could potentially be peer teachers to others? Seat these students near others who struggle academically or behaviorally. Be sure to spread them out among your seating arrangement. Don’t overuse this strategy, as it may be uncomfortable for your stronger students. They don’t ALWAYS have to be a peer teacher, sometimes they just enjoy being a student.
3. Student Organization
Allow your less organized students a little extra space. This may be at the end of a row or the corner of a group. If their supplies happen to “overflow,” it won’t cause problems with neighboring students. This is a bigger deal at the elementary level if students keep their supplies in their desks.
4. Teaching Style
Think about your own teaching styles and the desk arrangements that will benefit your instruction. Do you spend most of your time lecturing from a certain location in the classroom? What about classroom technology, like projectors, SmartBoards, or access to laptops? Is group collaboration often used?
Here are a few Free Desk Arrangement Generators to check out:
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Classroom transitions can be time-consuming and steal away precious teaching time. Whether it’s lining up to go somewhere outside of the classroom, or changing to a different activity, trying to get all students to “switch gears” can be a tricky task. We can’t expect students to have smooth transitions if we don’t have a structured process and clear expectations. This 4-step guide can help make your classroom transitions more efficient, so you can spend more time on what matters!
4 Helpful Steps for Classroom Transitions
Prepare Students to Wrap Up Use a countdown. Allow students time to wind down from their current activity or assignment. This step can be done with an actual timer, lasting the length of a song, or a virtual stopwatch displayed on the screen. When time is up, students should be prepared to end their current activity.
Explain And Transition Directly and explicitly, tell students what will be happening next (“put away _____, get out _______, line up to go to _________”). Initiate this process by using a word other than “go.” I like using the words “transition” and “let’s get prepared.” If needed, use another countdown.
Monitor Take note of students who are transitioning correctly and praise them. Reteach students who seem to struggle with any of the transition steps.
When Things Go Wrong Author Todd Finley offers advice for troubleshooting classroom transitions in his Edutopia.com article “Mastering Classroom Transitions.” If transitions take too long, Finley suggests making it a challenge to beat another classes’ time. When student behavior is a problem when lining up, place stickers or dots on the floor several feet apart for students to stand on. Combine a visual timer and a verbal countdown for students who don’t want to quit what they’re doing. For younger students, distraction can derail any transition, so singing a song may help keep students on track.
As for any process that is new to students, it’s always a good idea to use reminders, even if you think students have it down. Practice, rehearse, and practice again.
