Real teachers grade papers in the car, during commercials, in faculty meetings, in the bathroom, and (at the end of the six weeks) have been seen grading in church. Real teachers cheer when they hear April 1st does not fall on a school day. Real teachers clutch a pencil while thinking and make notes in…
The Awakening
By Sonny Carroll There comes a time in your life when you finally get it… When in the midst of all your fears and insanity you stop dead in your tracks and somewhere the voice inside your head cries out- ENOUGH! Enough fighting and crying or struggling to hold on. And, like a child…
The Best Teacher Ever
There is a story from many years ago of a primary school teacher. Her name was Mrs. Thompson. And as she stood in front of her 5th grade class on the very first day of school, she told the children a lie. Like most teachers, she looked at her students and said that she loved…
Kids Are Quick
TEACHER: Maria, go to the map and find North America. MARIA: Here it is. TEACHER: Correct. Now class, who discovered America ? CLASS: Maria. Kids are quick (2) TEACHER: John, why are you doing your math multiplication on the floor? JOHN: You told me to do it without using tables. Kids are quick (3) TEACHER:…
A Horse’s Tail
Does the statement, “Because we’ve always done it that way”… ring any bells? The U.S. standard railroad gauge (the distance between the rails) is 4 feet, 8.5 inches. That’s an exceedingly odd number. Why was that gauge used? Because that’s the way they built them in England, and English expatriates built the US Railroads. Why…
A Teacher’s Survival Kit For Everyday Living
TOOTHPICK Reminds us to look for the good qualities in our students. You may be the only teacher who says something positive to them that day. RUBBER BAND Reminds the teacher that they have to be flexible. Things don’t always go the way we plan, But flexibility will help to work it out. BAND AID…
Reconsidering Silent Reading
The influential 2000 National Reading Panel report Teaching Children to Read examined 14 experimental studies that sought to determine whether encouraging reading had an impact on improving reading achievement. Following their analysis, the panel concluded that the collective results did not provide clear evidence that encouraging students to read more actually led to improved reading…
A Learner-Centered Syllabus Helps Set the Tone for Learning
At its most basic level, the syllabus is used to communicate information about the course, the instructor, learning objectives, assignments, grading policies, due dates, the university’s academic integrity statement, and, in some cases, an increasingly long list of strongly worded admonitions on what is and isn’t acceptable behavior in the college classroom. For some faculty,…
Flipped Classrooms and Flipped Lessons: What Does It Mean for Parents?
What is a flipped classroom? A flipped classroom flips, or reverses, traditional teaching methods. Traditionally, the teacher talks about a topic at school and assigns homework that reinforces that day’s material. In a flipped classroom, the instruction is delivered online, outside of class. Video lectures may be online or may be provided on a DVD…
BullZip PDF Printer
BullZip PDF Printer by BioPDFBullZip is another PDF tool that works as a virtual print driver and uses Ghostscript to convert documents. Like Doro, it also allows you to convert printable document or image to PDF format but on top of that, it also lets you add watermarks, merge PDF files and even add protection to…