I Had a Real Teacher

The Dead of Winter

01/04/2019

You know the feeling. The Christmas holidays are over, the students are back in the classroom, still reeling from days of sugar highs and sleeping in until noon. You look around the classroom and wonder if even a fire drill could pump some energy into your students. One of your students is actually sprawled across his desk, sound asleep…you dare not look to see if he’s drooling. It’s time to do something different. You need to change things up, but you don’t know what. Once I actually brought a

Tell Your Story to Kids

11/16/2018

Stories are powerful vehicles of communication in the classroom. I remember being asked to step in for a teacher who had an unexpected circumstance to attend to one afternoon. He left no lesson plans, no agenda, and no instructions. I simply walked into the classroom and was met with 35 sets of middle school eyes, wondering how I was going to fill the last two hours of their school day. A few flittering ideas crossed my mind, but nothing of significance stuck. I knew that I had to think of

Is It Really Burnout?

10/09/2018

We have all heard about it. Teachers are leaving the profession because they are experiencing burnout; but according to Doris Santoro, it may not necessarily be just burnout.1 According to Santoro, teachers often experience demoralization, rather than burnout. She explains that teachers have a set of core values about their professional practices, and when those practices are not supported, or when those values are violated, they feel demoralized. I remember visiting the classroom of my

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I Had a Real Teacher

Rob Carey

The Dead of Winter

Tell Your Story to Kids

Is It Really Burnout?