Teaching is one of the most challenging, underrated, and often deeply rewarding professions a person can choose. There is a lot you can learn from trying to teach a room full of (mostly) interested students that can help you in everyday life. Here are some of the biggest lessons I have learned over the years:

Teacher Appreciation Week is here and companies across the country are showing the love! We know how busy teachers are, so we’ve rounded up the best teacher deals and freebies so that you can take full advantage. Whether you want to treat yourself or stock up on supplies, we’ve got you covered! 

Diversity continues to increase in public schools nationwide. One in four school children are listed as a first- or second-generation immigrant in the US, and 350 languages are spoken in homes across our nation. It is so important to teach tolerance, empathy, and acceptance to prepare students for a diverse world.

One excellent way to do this is to expose your students to a variety of cultures. This year, I spearheaded our first Culture Night. Our school population includes many different cultures, and we really wanted to build community and appreciation with our families.

For some, the month of May signifies that another school year is just about ready to wrap up. As educators and students alike look forward to what summer brings, this can be a challenging time to continue engaging students as their interests and motivations may be a bit more unfocused.

Need some inspiration to engage your students this month? Here is our collection of themed lesson content for May:

Whole-class learning is a key aspect of the modern classroom. This practice is designed to put students at the center of the educational environment so they’re more engaged, more collaborative, and more motivated. The teacher still drives the instruction and facilitates the learning—whole-class solutions simply make teaching easier and learning more exciting.

Many students grasp new ideas more quickly through whole-group learning, especially if the material is interactive and engaging. Ready to bring whole-class learning to your classroom? We’ve created a resource library to help you select, implement, and provide whole-group instruction—no matter your budget or needs.

The typical classroom has changed a lot over the past few decades. With all of the exciting new tech innovations that have emerged, the chalkboard no longer reigns supreme.

In most schools, we have plenty of data. It is usually assumed that more data means better outcomes for students. This very well could be true, but I believe most schools are DRIP (Data Rich, Information Poor) schools. We have the data, but what does any of it mean? Using data helps us to guide both learning and instruction, but it has to have context. Teachers must know how to reference the data and how to form context around it.

Collecting the data is the easy part. Assessments abound all around us, and we layer benchmarks on top of formatives on top of summatives on top of progress monitoring—not to mention classroom assessments. It takes a great deal of time and resources to administer all of this, but unless these numbers turn into action, it becomes a giant waste. 

Every year, there are dozens of educational conferences and expos in the US that bring educators together to discuss best practices, test new tools, and make connections with fellow educators. One look at a calendar of all of the year’s upcoming conferences might just seem like a jumble of strange acronyms. With so many different conferences to choose from, it can be hard to decide which conferences you should attend.

As most adults know, creating a budget is an important step to having financial stability. It can feel like a downer at times, but it is the responsible thing to do.