Over the past few decades, more and more information has been unpacked around the area of sensory issues with students. Some of this has come from research about the autism spectrum, while some has come from other areas of the medical field, including allergies, processing disorders, and the like.

In a classroom, it can be difficult to not only understand all of these needs, but to also help students who have them. Teachers are not medical experts by any means, but with a little background knowledge, it can be easier to understand our students and how to help them. In our three-part Sensory Series, we’ll be exploring the different ways to approach varying sensory needs.

We are constantly striving to enhance the learning process, but one of the biggest challenges we may face when trying to effectively teach our students is their behavior. Students come to us without the ability to cope and manage in the classroom—they can often struggle to focus and attend to the learning. Some of these behaviors and more common and more extreme than they were in the past.

Because of this, it is important for teachers to be ready for these students stepping into their classrooms. Having a plan is always important, so here is a guide for how to put together a data-driven behavior improvement plan for an individual student.

I often hear from parents, “Why didn’t they teach me the things I really needed to know in school, like how to do my taxes and responsibly handle money?” These parents obviously felt something was lacking in their education and don’t want their children have the same experience.

Coaches are busy people. They need all the help they can get to save time and maximize their impact on their teams. And when it comes to competition, they also need to find any way they can to gain an edge over the other team.

My experience has been that some coaches are very comfortable with technology and understand how it can help their team. However, there are still many coaches who aren't familiar or comfortable with technology and still use a pencil and a clipboard. Although “old school” methods do work, coaches can make practices, games, and post-game analyses more effective by utilizing technology.

The beginning of the year is the best time to set goals. It is not only a clean slate for all the kids and the teachers, but there is a great deal of openness to achieve and grow. The whole year is in front of us!

First, let’s make sure we understand why we should set goals. Goals are important not just for growth, but for clarity of priorities. Like Steven Covey told us in The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, we should all begin with the end in mind. By doing this, we know where we are headed and where we want to go—it gives us a target for the rest of the year. As we make progress (or don’t), we can adjust the goals as we go. But unless we know a destination, we can’t start down a path.

As we look at our classrooms to arrange them for the start of the year, we should ask ourselves this reflective question: “What type of classroom do I want to create?” Or even better, “What type of learning environment do I want my students to experience?”

There are different answers to these questions, and multiple answers are correct. As a teacher, you must first teach from the heart—from your own heart, and not someone else’s opinion of what teaching should be. The environment that is created should not be gathered from Pinterest, but should sprout from your own philosophies about teaching and effective learning.

Whether you're a building principal, department head, or member of a grade-level team, there's a good chance you'll be working with new teachers as you start the school year. Being strategic and systemic as you meet with the teachers can be an important first step to starting the school year off right.

Each year, we plan a theme for our school. We use this theme throughout the year for many things around the building: bulletin boards, locker tags, the newsletter, and individual student displays in the classroom. Some teachers are “all in” with the theme and their classrooms are completely decked out, while other teachers don’t decorate as much.

Over the years, I have found—and there is research to support this—that there is a power to a common language and common behavioral expectations across a school building. If teachers, secretaries, paras, and custodians are all on the same page when it comes to expectations for behavior, the school runs more smoothly and unwanted behaviors decrease.

Lives are busy and people are busy, so we have to make sure we plan in advance if we want parents and patrons to be engaged in our schools. Parent engagement can take on many different shapes and sizes—for all the different parents we encounter, we receive varying preferences for how they like to communicate.