A General Tip:
It’s true when people tell you that “Every day is a new adventure.” My mentor warned me of this prior to my first day of teaching, but of course I shrugged it off as nonsense. However, after the first five minutes of class, I realized how true it was, and I clung to the sentence the rest of my time as a teacher. I think what’s most important about this advice is that if your teaching isn’t adventurous (and if you’re not having fun), then your students won’t be on the safari with you. And what fun (for you and the students) is that?

The Specifics:
—Try to add cultural elements into your lessons as often as possible. Your students will love this! First of all, it shows that you respect their culture. Second of all, it’s automatically a topic of interest for them. And, finally, students in the class who aren’t of the culture you’re studying will become more culturally aware. I once talked about Chinese New Year after spending a summer in China. I brought in red envelopes and talked about how children receive these from their parents and relatives during this holiday. They are filled with money, and they represent a wish for a happy and healthy new year. This “lesson” only took five minutes, but it made my students’ eyes light up in appreciation.

—Try to speak slowly, but avoid speaking loudly. I used to always hear the “Speak slowly and loudly” tip before I started teaching. It’s rather insulting if you think about it. Your students aren’t hard of hearing, but chances are, they are taking notes. This is why speaking slowly is a good idea.

—Try not to assume that your ELLs don’t know the grammar rules. If they don’t know them, you’ll know because they’ll have questions, be taking notes, or do poorly on quizzes and/or tests. Instead, do a diagnostic paragraph (or request sample sentences) during the first class to see what the majority of your students have already learned. Then you don’t have to waste class time going over that material.

—Try not to give them too much drill work. If you can recall being in school, then I’m sure you remember how boring drill work was for you. And it still is! Instead, try giving them practical practice. For example, you can ask them to attend a baseball game (preferably a Padres game—they’re my favorite!), listen to some of the language used, and write down the sayings they hear (especially anything that has an unclear meaning). Then you can go over some of the sayings in class. You never know—some of them may be idiomatic (a perfect addition to a lesson)!

—Try to share some catchy tips with them, like mnemonic devices (e.g., FANBOYS). My mentor created a list of “31 Flavors of Instructional Verbs.” On this list, definitions and examples were given for thirty-one verbs. These really helped my ELLs whenever they were instructed to write paragraphs.

Remember to enjoy your journey in the land of ELLs, and if you happen to have a round-trip ticket, I hope you’ll pay me a visit and share with me your experiences and tips. In the meantime, enjoy the adventure!

As the husband of one such teacher, I get to experience the daily uncertainty firsthand. And the intrigue only begins when my wife (let’s call her “Mrs. M”) gets that 6:00 a.m. phone call. What school? What time? What grade level? Will she be singing and teaching sight words to excitable kindergarteners, or will she be multiplying fractions and discussing ancient civilizations with sassy sixth-graders? Either way, her workbag has to be packed and her clothes have to be hanging on the door, ready to go. That 6:00 a.m. phone call sometimes doesn’t come until 7:15.

When she arrives at the school, there are more questions in need of answering: Where is the classroom? Does she have bus duty? breakfast duty? recess duty? lunch duty? And, most importantly, of course, just who are these 30 small people with big personalities who are about to walk through the door?

A clue to how the day will go usually comes in the form of the notes the teacher has left. Are the lesson plans for the day included? Do copies need to be made? Did the teacher leave instructions about the classroom policies for bathroom breaks and pencil sharpening? (Maybe. Probably. Almost never.) And will the activities scheduled for that day actually take up the allotted time? Here’s where being the wife of an editor of educational materials can be a real bonus.

Two series of books that Mrs. M swears by are the Mind Twisters series and the Mastering Skills series. The Mind Twisters books give her plenty of ready-to-use, content-based time-fillers that get students to use their critical-thinking skills. Best of all, the students like doing these puzzles, riddles, and mazes so much that Mrs. M can use them as rewards for good behavior. The Mastering Skills books are handy because they’re great for reviewing grade-specific, standards-based skills.

The single most valuable resource Mrs. M has at her disposal, though, could be the Substitute Teacher Handbook. This one-stop guide is brimming with teaching strategies, classroom-management tips, and emergency curriculum, and it includes entire sections on working with special populations and being a professional substitute teacher (including FAQs and legal responsibilities).

While there is nothing that can make a substitute teacher’s job easy, there are resources like these that can make the substitute teacher more prepared. And you don’t have to be an expert in fractions or the Peloponnesian War to know that being prepared is at least half the battle.

Often I would choose a novel to read aloud to seventh graders. You’d be amazed at how attentive they were as they listened for about 10 minutes at the end of the hour. I’d usually choose something that had some action in it and something they could relate to. Hatchet was one of my favorites. One time I read James and the Giant Peach to them. They were truly mesmerized as they tried to visualize the giant peach flying through the sky.

Literature was my favorite thing to teach. I could get all kinds of fascinating conversations going when we read books like The Cay, Anne Frank, The Twenty-One Balloons, and A Wrinkle in Time. Activities that linked the books made them all the more interesting to the kids. They’d weave a place mat while blindfolded when we read The Cay and create their own tesseract for A Wrinkle in Time. I’d have them keep reading response journals and I’d read them periodically. It was gratifying to see how they enjoyed the books.

Right now I have Neil Gaiman’s The Graveyard Book on my desk waiting for me to read, and The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins is in my briefcase. These are two books teachers tell me I need to read. I wonder if I were in a classroom if I would be teaching these. What else would I need to read? What are kids favorites as opposed to what is required? And is there a required book these days? So what do you think I should read? What about your students reading? What do you want them to read and what must they read? With so many books out there, maybe I’ll get a new sweatshirt that says “So Many Books, So Many Questions.”

We then proceed to the banquet hall next door, where we enjoy a wonderfully spooky potluck lunch.

Nowadays, many schools don’t observe or celebrate Halloween. Many adjustments have been made over the last few years, not only to respect the belief systems of our multicultural student populations, but also to accommodate the need for more time to spend on curriculum. What are some other changes that you have noticed in recent years that have affected how celebrations are viewed in schools? What do think these changes are driven by? Do you agree with the stand your district takes on celebrations in school?

In “Focusing the Brain,” an article in Educational Leadership, Marilee Sprenger suggests that because students have multiple technological devices and often use more than one at once, they’ve become “passive viewers.”¹ Instead of thoroughly reviewing, absorbing, and then reflecting on information, students are skimming, scanning, and then quickly moving on to the next task. Sprenger illustrates this through Emily—an average teenager who is “focusing on her homework assignment.” Naturally, while researching the Civil War, she is listening to Coldplay, sending instant messages, answering her cell phone, and text-messaging. Sound like someone you know? Actually, it sounds like a lot of people I know.

Just the other night, I was sitting in my room with my laptop open, listening to Swell Season, reading recipes online for turkey brine, and answering my husband’s shopping list questions, all while watching Glee—well, sort of watching (but not really reading or offering many grocery options for my husband). It’s terrible! Last month I was reading Real Simple and was delighted to find a spoof on multitasking. The author, A. J. Jacobs, vowed to go “cold turkey” from multitasking for a month. Instead, he would focus on one task at a time. He called it Operation Focus.² Of course, more often than not, he failed (though, not without a valiant effort). We all do. How can we not? We’re surrounded by gadgets, people, TV shows, and, if you’re a teacher, activities, realia, and STUDENTS! You might be the worst violators of multitasking out of everyone (Be proud!). But, here’s the thing, if you can isolate the times that require focused attention and truly deliver, then it’s OK to multitask every other time. The key is balance. This is the lesson that has to be passed onto students. Remind them that it’s OK to focus on one idea at a time. Advise them to reflect after each time they’ve read something, so they can really absorb it. And if these don’t work? Banish the techno-toys! (Just don’t take mine away.)

———————————————————————————————————————————–

¹ Marilee Sprenger, “Focusing the Brain,” Educational Leadership 67, no. 1 (2009): 34–39.
² A. J. Jacobs, “How I Stopped the Multitasking Madness: One man’s quest to go from manic multitasker to Zen unitasker in one month flat,” Real Simple (September 2009): 198–202.

Reading the resolution also made me take a look at some of my favorite TCR writing books. Through the years I have worked on a goodly number of them. For the youngest writers, I’ve always liked Emergent Writer’s Workshop and Beginning Writing. I like the practice that these books allow our littlest scribes. For all grade levels, our Meeting Writing Standards books are excellent. Featuring straightforward lessons and activities for writing stories, reports, poetry, letters, and narrative, expository, persuasive, and descriptive pieces, these books are comprehensive in their coverage of the various types of writing. Meeting Writing Standards books help students to hone their authoring skills. For lots of fun and getting kids involved, Get Up! Get Noisy! Get Writing! has all types of engaging writing lessons. My favorite lesson in this book is called “Picky, Picky! Just Pick One!” It turns fiction writing into a game of chance as students draw their story elements, including characters, setting, and objects, from a grab bag.

So grab hold of the opportunity to celebrate the National Day on Writing, no matter what subject or grade you teach, by giving your students the chance to write.

First, we all agree that we want our students to listen and learn, right? Well, parents and teachers need to do likewise; they need to listen to each other’s needs and goals (for the children) and find things that they can do each day to support them. Focus on what positive steps can be implemented each day.

What can teachers do?

Take small, constructive steps each day in the classroom. Build on what you know works.

• Set things up that are attention-getters. Create an inviting Creative Writing Center or a Game Area for skills practice. If students are excited to do one of the activities, they will look forward to doing more and will encourage others to participate.

• Ask parents to keep you posted on activities or topics their children enjoyed doing in class and try to incorporate them into the regular curriculum.

• Find out which things you do are most interesting to students. You might be surprised. It might be sharing stories about your own children or pets, or perhaps it was the goofy way you acted out a story. Did you solve a math addition problem using the grapes in your lunch? Find the elements of your teaching style that most engage students and build upon them.

• Determine the class leaders. Who seems to like order, remember rules, have a wide circle of friends, etc.? Let them be your first group leaders. Encourage and support them in guiding the rest of the class, rather than trying to do it all by yourself. (I distinctly remember a few students who could get the room in order in no time, hands on hips and all, and they were only 4 1/2!).

• Be patient with parents. When a parent points out a problem area, acknowledge their concern, briefly explain what is being done, and ask what he or she thinks might alleviate the problem, and if they can possibly help. You’d be surprised at how many parents are willing to help if asked to do a specific task.

• Finally, treat meetings (especially the problem ones) with parents like you would any business meeting in which you are seeking a positive result. Be calm, give input, and then offer possible, realistic solutions.

Hopefully, enough mini solutions will add up to build a stronger, supportive bond between parents and teachers and a safe, educationally sound environ for students at any grade level. Usually, getting a few enthused kids on board in the classroom is the same as getting a few parents on board. Every little bit helps, and every teacher feels better and more motivated when the positive feedback straggles in!

The questions asked of our dance lessons,– “What will I learn in this lesson? How can I understand all this new material? Is it at the right skill level for me? Will it capture my interest?” — are the same questions that students can ask of any lesson that comes from our books.

After the questions comes the practice — be it for dance, multiplication, or handwriting. Then there’s a whole new set of questions: “Do the lessons have meaningful practice? Is there enough practice for a specific skill? Are the standards being met?” The list of comparison goes on, but the lesson that I have taken from this is that my being a student has informed my work as Editor in Chief in an educational publishing house.

It’s not the dancing, which is great fun, but the process that I have to go through, just like any child in a classroom, that has brought a new dimension to dance. It is rather exciting to realize that something that I’m enjoying so much has brought me to a new level of thinking about our books. The lessons in our books need to continue to reflect this process so students can continue to learn at the highest level possible.

Fake it.

When I taught in the classroom, I loved doing art activities with my students to mark the changing of seasons (since we couldn’t see them in our hot, dry climate.) Now, since I’m not in the classroom anymore, I decorate my cubicle each season. (Why yes, my coworkers do think I’m crazy.)

One project I’ve recently discovered is how to make fabric pumpkins. This is similar to the paper bag pumpkins we’ve all made, but much less messy and quite frankly, a whole lot cuter. I think it would be a fun activity to do with kids.

The only materials you need are the following:

• toilet paper or paper towel rolls
• plastic bags
• sticks
• fabric

You can find fabric quite inexpensively at places like Walmart, which has a $1/yard table. You can also ask for donations of fabric. Heck, if you want to use all recycled materials, use old shirts.

(I have raffia shown because I was thinking of using it for a bow; it is not necessary.)

Depending on how many rolls you can get, you might need to cut the toilet paper rolls in half to make smaller pumpkins. For a full-sized roll, I cut a square of fabric roughly 12 inches on each side. You could actually use less than this.

Take a toilet paper roll and wrap about 3-4 plastic bags around it. (For smaller pumpkins, you only need one or two.)

Now take the corners of the fabric and tuck them inside the top of the toilet paper roll.

Once all the corners are tucked in, fold in any fabric edges that may still be sticking out.

Place a stick inside the roll to make a stem (and to keep the fabric in place). If you want it to be more secure, you can glue the fabric inside the roll.

I also added a piece of a plant to make it look like it was from a vine, but you can also use leaves or anything else to dress it up.

On this pumpkin, I used rolled-up paper to make a stem.

You’ll notice I also didn’t stick to a typical pumpkin color; don’t worry if you don’t have all orange fabric. Let the kids mix it up!

These are a fun, colorful way to add a bit of fall to the classroom, as well as encouraging students to use recycled materials in a non-traditional way.  Happy Fall Y’all!

As Editor in Chief, I am always on the lookout for new material. At TCR we look for standards-based lessons that are presented in a clear-cut, easy-to-follow way. They need to be educationally sound and classroom-ready. So if your lessons meet this first criteria, read on.

Before you submit anything to any publisher, you need to do your research. If you are interested in getting something published, here’s your assignment. Read the following. Answer any of the questions.

1. What are the current trends in education that you are on top of in your own classroom? What do you currently teach that can be a book?

2. Study the market before submitting anything. The best way to do this is to visit your nearest teacher supply store. Spend some time there looking through books. Which publisher does the type of book that yours is the closest to? You might want to buy a few and look at them for format, page counts, and writing style.

3. Before sending your manuscript, find the publisher’s submissions guidelines. Ours are located here. There is a one-page description about how we best like to see material submitted.

4. Know that you may have to kiss a lot of toads before your book gets published. If your book is rejected, it is oftentimes because the company already has something similar. You might want to try another publisher.

5. Keep track of who you have sent your manuscript to. It takes time to read through all the submissions. It may take up to six months until you hear from someone. Most publishers have a review process, and it may be that you have just missed the last one. Practice patience.

Do your homework. A little time well spent by you will save you time. And trust me, the person on the receiving end who is responsible for acquisitions will remember you with fondness for having completed your homework.