On September 24, my district had an in-service day. The homeroom teachers in my building were piloting a new writing program and were asked to attend a training. This left specialist teachers with nothing to do, as we would not need to be trained on this new program.

We were all wondering what our duties would be for the day when we received an email from our principal encouraging us to make arrangements to observe in another district for the day. She proceeded to help us find schools to host us—fellow teachers will understand why this was amazing. When do we ever have the time to go to other districts without painstaking measures of using personal days and arranging for subs? And how many of us have principals who understand the importance of observing others in our same content area?

It’s that time again—time to move on to the next activity or learning opportunity. It is time to transition! These can be stressful times in a classroom, when disruptions increase and learning decreases. Transitions are a natural part of any classroom, so how can teachers capitalize on the opportunity to smoothly move on to the next activity and maybe learn something at the same time?

After-school programs are a wonderful thing for students of all ages—they can be fun, engaging, and inspiring. Students can meet new friends and learn even more than in their daily classes. Schools often host these programs, but the big issue they face is how to increase student enrollment. 

The key to this is in reaching the parents the right way. With a good marketing strategy consisting of content marketing, digital marketing, and visual marketing, you can attract parents. For one, focusing on content to communicate with parents is a good idea when combined with visual aspects. But in order to do that, you need to have a good content strategy.

When I began my career in education, the current theory was “Don’t smile until December.” I tried that, and I can tell you it didn’t work. The way to manage a class isn’t to pretend to be stoic and uncaring—you need to get to know your students and learn techniques to create a positive learning environment. Both rookie and veteran teachers alike benefit from learning and relearning classroom management strategies. Here are five online resources to help you with your management techniques. I hope they can be of use to you.

Exciting news: November 8, 2018 will mark the third Boxlight STEM Day (#BLSTEM)! Just like last time, students will work with their classmates in a hands-on, inquiry-based learning event designed to help them learn critical STEM skills and understand how STEM disciplines apply to the world around them. And as before, Boxlight will provide the lab experiment—the event will involve using our wireless Labdisc portable STEM lab, so it’s less “same old classroom activity” and more “exciting new real-world work.”

The event is open to every school that has the Labdisc data logger. No matter where you are, as long as you have a Labdisc, your class can join in the learning fun. This year, students will use the Labdisc to perform simultaneous experiments to observe and measure the light intensity of different light sources. Think about how incredible it will be to conduct this experiment and share data along with other science classes across the US and Latin America!

Trauma Responsive: Best Practices for All Students 

In the first part of our trauma-informed series, we defined the term and discussed best practices for working with students in trauma. For many educators, after we read the research supporting trauma-informed practices, we are quickly convinced that we need to act. The data strongly supports intervening early for students and with a therapeutic approach (instead of a punitive one). 

With the variety of options available today, education technology is increasingly becoming the solution to everyday classroom issues that teachers have struggled with for years. However, the wide range of EdTech solutions available can make it difficult to choose what will work best for your students—and experimentation with different products isn’t always possible with your school’s budget.

To help you make the best decision for your classroom, we’ve compiled a list of six tried-and-true tech solutions that other educators recommend to solve your everyday classroom problems:

Teaching and learning is the core of what we do in education. As teachers, we know that day in and day out, that is our main charge: student learning. All too often, our day-to-day goals are sidetracked for whatever reason. Some of these reasons are unavoidable, but some come from the driving vision of the district. The support for student learning that flows from the district vision, and is supported by the district-level administrators, helps to keep distractions to a minimum. The people at the top must keep “the main thing the main thing” to keep the focus on learning.

For those teachers who have been in the field of education for a while, we often feel that the pendulum in the larger world of education is swinging back and forth all the time. For a few years we will head in one direction, and then for the next few years we will head back in another direction.

Why do they feel this way? There are a number of reasons for it—some are simple, while others are more complex. Here are a few: 

In the world of education, the term “trauma informed” has caught on over the past few years. It is a term used by many to define an approach to students—particularly in how we discipline them. If you have heard the term but don’t feel as though you completely understand it, this information may be helpful to you.