TheApple

Now that the Presidential election is over and our country will be under the direction of a new leader, are you wondering how it will effect your job as a teacher or the way children are educated? There are many issues to consider, as education is the foundation for the knowledge that forms how our economy runs. According to Barack Obama.com, ...

Pearson recently released My Voice Student Aspirations Survey. The survey focused on eight areas of student aspirations: Belonging, Heroes, Sense of Accomplishment, Fun & Excitement, Curiosity & Creativity, Spirit of Adventure, Leadership & Responsibility, and Confidence to Take Action. The survey questioned more than 400,000 students in grades 6-12, representing 569 different schools and 32 different states. Each student answered 57 ...

Let’s face facts, discrimination, sexism, racism, ageism, classism – all the “isms” that separate people and lay the groundwork for hate, are based on a philosophy of “us” versus “them.” This philosophy is fully grounded in the focus by many of the differences between people as opposed to the characteristics they share. For example, racists cannot accept the fact that there ...

“Penny Pingleton, you know you are punished. From now on you're wearing a giant P on your blouse EVERY DAY to school so that the whole world knows that Penny Pingleton is permanently, positively, punished! Well that’s a bit harsh, don’t you think? Well this is clearly something that only happens in Full Feature Film Turned Tony Award Winning Musicals Turned ...

Most teachers love teaching. But not all teachers teach for the same reasons. Teaching is a difficult, challenging, time consuming, exhausting, sometimes discouraging, often frustrating, and at the same time wonderful endeavor. Think about whom you are working so hard for. Choose from the list below, or add to it, then leave your comment stating why below. h3. The Students? The ...

You've completed your lessons for the day, but you still have some time left and a group of eager students with nothing productive to do. What can you do in this time to keep your class under control until the bell rings? Here is a list of 10 things to do when you only have 5 minutes left in class. h4. ...

From elementary to high school, managing behavior is by far the most difficult part of being a teacher. Problem behaviors come in a variety of forms, from a young child hitting to a teenager disrupting your lesson. Children also come to school with a variety of emotional and life challenges, which may make their problem behaviors seem complex and difficult to ...

Aha! After many painful hours of searching YouTube for awful teacher-student interactions, I found a clip to illustrate how I might do an observation and consult with the teacher. This is a clip from a mockumentary (fake documentary) in England of a teacher-student interaction gone awry. It isn’t that far off from some teacher-student interactions I’ve observed. And if you are ...

Last week, someone asked me, “How do you work on social skills with your students in the classroom?” I have had Social Skills as a separate lesson from the curriculum when I felt that we needed intense instruction on a specific skill. I will show you how I taught two skills in my class but the lessons can be adapted to ...

The single most important element of a successful classroom is a teacher who designs assignments that keep the students engaged in learning. It helps if these assignments are also fun to complete. Disciplines issues including acting out, tardiness to class, and even failing students can be minimized and maybe even eliminated IF you, the teacher, think innovatively and make a focused ...

I am now a “consulting teacher” in my school district. So far my understanding is that a consulting teacher works with another tenured teacher who is in danger of losing their teaching position. Sounds to me like a teacher coach. Could you imagine marching into a colleagues classroom dressed in gray sweats and blowing a whistle? But I digress. All teachers ...

The holiday season and the end of a year usually triggers one of two behaviors in people. The first is to be reflective on the last year, taking the time to evaluate our successes and failures. Over at the Curriculum Matters blog, Kathleen Manzo points out that is exactly what the U.S. Department of Education is doing, with EdSec Spellings and ...

For various and inexplicable reasons, teachers everywhere report that they are busier than ever this year. We feel as if we are rushing through our school days, frantically trying to find a balance between school responsibilities, home chores, and the enjoyment of a life that a steady career in education should bring. Many of us arrive at school early dragging in ...

Some days it feels like the sharks are circling. Teaching is a challenge, especially the first few years. But for some, the dangers are more daunting than for others. Here are some colleagues whose first years were truly extreme, but they survived—and they're still at it. h3. Stage Fright During her first few weeks of teaching, Connye Lacombe struggled to be ...

Few students have ever gone through school without the experience of laboring on an assignment only to have it returned covered in exasperated red ink. Several years ago the trend was for teachers to forgo red ink-as if those terse comments would somehow be less harsh in purple, green, or orange. Today’s educators, however, know that there are many different ways ...

Remember the game of musical chairs? It's the game where children dance around a circle of chairs to music. When the music stops, kids rush to sit in the chairs. There are never enough chairs for everyone, and the slowest children are out of the game once the faster children have found seats. The game is set up so that for ...

As I walked to my school in the heart of the inner city the day after the election, I saw a sign that the day before, had GUNZ tagged on it, and it had been painted over to read OBAMA! Today, I saw a billboard that had previously been completely defaced with graffiti, covered over with posters of Obama, with “Change” ...

Don't you hate it when you have to eat your words? Today was one of those days. I had to take my own advice and I hated it. As usually happens, an administrator plopped a kid in my office and wanted me to see why he was fighting so much lately. He is a 7th grade boy and had just gotten ...

Is your glass half full or half empty? Do you look at what children can do and what they cannot do? The critics claim you can only look at what a student can do. The deficit model is a theory that higher education can afford but K–12 cannot because of No Child Left Behind (2002). Most of the criticism is coming ...

The latest issue of "Technology Counts" released a study that grades state schools on technology in three different areas: access to technology, use of technology and their capacity to use technology. It seems that no one mentions education these days without talking about the use of technology, so the study drives home how far education has come. Since 1994, schools overall ...