What a crazy, crazy time we’re all living through right now. I think it’s safe to say that none of us could have expected the drastic measures that have been taken in recent months to try to treat and slow the spread of the COVID-19 virus on a global scale, let alone that schools everywhere would be calling for closures. If you’re a teacher now finding yourself thrust into a distance learning environment, or if you’re a parent now finding yourself in a homeschooling environment, then I wanted to do what I can to help. That’s why I reached out to my Teachers Pay Teachers community and rounded up FREE resources to share with you.
6 Self-Care Activities for Educators
If you’ve been following me for a while, then you know that in the spring and summer of this year, I released three new journals, all of which are focused on self-care habits, gratitude, and happiness for educators of all types. This is something that I want to talk more about, which is why I’m going to publish a few blog posts about these topics so that I can share more of my thoughts about why self-care is important for educators and share ways to make it manageable and achievable while you’re working full-time in a school. In this specific blog post, I’m highlighting some of my favorite self-care activities from my Free Self-Care Challenge for Educators, so please keep reading to get more insight about why I suggest these activities for you.
Back to School Activities for Teachers
Dare I say it? *whispers* It’s almost time to go back to school! 😬 Please don’t hurt me; you know it’s here. Alas, summer break is coming to an end, and stores everywhere are reminding us that kids and teachers alike will be heading back to their schools over the next several weeks. While I’m no longer in the classroom and am therefore missing out on this annual fun fest that is going back to school, I do have a couple of engaging back to school activities for teachers from when I was still in the classroom a few years ago.
42 Ways to Amplify Student Voices in the Classroom
Happy back-to-school season, teacher friends! Somehow 2018 is positively flying by, and it’s already time to prepare to head back into the classroom (if you’re not already back in it)! Recently, Teachers Pay Teachers hosted their annual back-to-school site-wide sale, and I ran a giveaway during that time to gift three teachers with TpT gift cards. My prompt on the giveaway post asked teachers to share how they plan to amplify student voices in the classroom this year, and I received some really awesome responses that I wanted to share with you in this blog post. Keep reading to get ideas for how to make sure your students get time to talk — and to be heard — in your class this school year.
Teaching Wonder in 6th Grade
If you’ve been a human in the last several years, then you’re aware of the knockout, well-loved novel Wonder by R.J. Palacio. The book was first published in 2012, and I was in the second half of my M.Ed. program at that time. It just so happened that there were a few of us from my cohort all placed at the same middle school, with four of us actually on the same 6th grade team (and one more on the other 6th grade team). While I was in the social studies classroom on that team, one of my peers was in the ELA classroom, and she taught Wonder to our students that spring, when it was brand-spanking-new.