Teaching is like no other profession. While some jobs might require you to give a presentation once a month, teachers present every day. While some jobs might give you a week or so to prepare your presentations, teachers only have the time that is left after school — which isn’t much after attempting to make a dent in the forever-increasing pile of papers that need to be graded.

How are teachers supposed to have any time for themselves? Everyone says the key to teaching is “finding the balance”, but how? When? “Finding the balance” won’t come easy, but I have a few tips and tricks to aid you in your attempt to reach teacher homeostasis.

1. Don’t be afraid to say no.

If you want to sustain your enthusiasm for teaching, don’t be afraid to say no. Try to avoid diving head first into five other roles that could potentially stress you out and take energy away from teaching. Although taking on the soccer team and chess club is certainly admirable, try to remember that it is okay to say no.

2. Turn it off.

Set a time every day to turn it off. Let’s say you finish class at 3:30pm — make a rule for yourself that you will always leave school by 5:00pm. Try your hardest to avoid bringing your work home. Leave school, turn it off, and do something for yourself!

3. Sign up for yoga classes

…or any sort of class/activity that interests and relaxes you. I also recommend paying ahead of time! You are more likely to actually show up if you do this. Believe it or not, pursuing your interests other than teaching is likely to improve your teaching.

4. Sleep!

Sleep is far from overrated. You need sleep to stay energized, and we all know how much energy you need as a teacher. The purpose of sleep is to rejuvenate you! So grab a good book, get in bed, and start logging those ZZz’s.

“Finding the balance” isn’t something that will just happen, you have to make it happen. So go find it. 🙂

A positive environment in the classroom leads to endless results in all other areas. Positivity sets a tone of caring, good character, and mutual respect in the classroom. Here is one way that I strive to keep the positive meter overflowing in my classroom:

Secret messages

Students love to feel important. With thirty-four students in my classroom, it is often hard to compliment or say something kind to every student every day. To ensure all students are getting a little something every now and then, I write post-it notes to my students. I try to find a thematic pack (apples for beginning of the year, hearts in February, etc.) and then make sure to address students by their name of choice (some of my kids like to use nicknames in the classroom, which makes the note even more meaningful). On the post-it I try to write something nice about them. It could be about something I noticed from the day before, “I love how hard you tried on that math problem yesterday. Keep up the excellent work!”, or it could be just a kind word, “Your smile brightens up my day. Thank you for sharing it with us today!” What I love most is seeing the expression on their face when they read it. Students feel so special. I’ve even had kids tape their notes to the inside of their binders. It’s a sweet, quick, and easy way to let your students know that they matter.

Keeping track

How do I keep track of who has received a post-it note and who hasn’t? In the past, I have used a class list and would give a student a check once they received a post-it. Now I keep track by using ClassDojo. I have a custom behavior that I click every time I give a student a post-it note, giving me immediate information on who still needs a note!

Invitation to students

Another addition I added over the years was the idea that students could write kind notes to each other. This was even more meaningful because students took the lead in empowering each other. How awesome to come into a classroom where kids were complimenting their peers, in writing! It was such an inspiring and heartfelt moment as a teacher.

The power of kindness conquers all in the classroom. Children learn from each other and care greatly about recognition. If you’re thinking of incorporating some new ideas into your classroom next year, consider this to be one of them!

As a teacher, I have a love-hate relationship with “what-ifs.” On one hand, I love dreaming. I love wondering about what’s possible if we make changes to learning environments, curriculums, and expectations. These thoughts propel me forward and empower my students to do great things. However, “what-ifs” can also put up boundaries to innovation. What if students make poor choices online? What if the laptop becomes too much of a distraction in learning? These kinds of “what-ifs” stifle innovation and can easily paralyze my teaching.

This past year, my school was lucky enough to pilot a 1:1 laptop program. I was a bit nervous incorporating this program into my classroom. I said to myself, “What if I can’t control all of this technology?!” Despite my worries, we went forward with the pilot program. Things didn’t go perfectly. However, through these mistakes my students and I learned a variety of life-lessons:

1. Staying on task

Before the 1:1 program students would find ways to be off task. They would pass notes or stare up at the ceiling. But now there was a beautiful shiny object in front of them at all times. We had to work together to find ways to stay focused. I loved seeing my students become more aware of their temptations and set better boundaries for themselves. They wrote themselves reminders and held each other accountable.

2. Paying attention to people

About half way through the school year, my students became obsessed with an online game. Their recess became consumed with trying to beat the high score. Even class conversations surrounded who was currently the leader. Shortly after I realized this, we sat down for a heart-to-heart. I shared with them my observations and told them I didn’t want to see them on their screens anymore during recess. I saw relief wash over their faces as I freed them up to be social again. We challenged each other to pay attention to people and have real conversations about real things. We learned why it’s important to look up.

3. Helping others improve

Going 1:1 changed our classroom environment. Suddenly everything was collaborative. Through Google Apps for Education, students were able to easily share their work with one another and receive feedback. We learned to work together and seek out many voices throughout the creation process. A proud moment was when I discovered that each student had shared their final essay with an average of four other students. They are working together to become better readers, writers, and teachers.

So yes, the “what-ifs” of going 1:1 can be scary, and I promise you students will make mistakes. But I believe it’s worth the risk. My students and I learned so many life lessons through both the mishaps and the success stories — I would say our pilot program was quite a success.

How time flies! It is the first day of school, and then before you can turn around the end of the school year is approaching. Time in the classroom is a precious commodity. Every second counts! So what are some strategies we can use to improve our time management and increase productivity for both our students and ourselves?

Take a lesson from the Boy Scouts: be prepared. Get to school early and get materials and equipment ready for the day. This way you can “hit the ground running” when your students come in, and no instructional time is lost while you are getting ready.

Encourage a climate of urgency. Have the attitude that every second is precious. Every second wasted is a second that students are not learning, and that is not ok! After all, learning is the most important aspect of what goes on in the classroom!

Have a free choice board available for early finishers. Those who complete tasks early need to be productively engaged. If they are not peer tutoring or helping another group complete a task, they should be actively working toward finishing one of the items listed on the free choice board. This could include studying domain specific vocabulary words, writing in a journal, reading a book, or whatever you deem valuable and appropriate.

Use a timer and/or music for faster, smoother transitions. Give students a time limit. It could be 30 seconds to a minute, depending on what needs to be accomplished. Reward the first group of students that has completed all of your requests. Playing a short clip of music from a computer, CD, or mobile device is also effective and fun for the students. Vary the music to fit the mood and tone of your classroom, your students, and yourself. Challenge your students to accomplish the transition before the music stops. Consider even using this short transitional clip of music as a lead-in to your content lesson. You will be amazed how much time you save!

Time students when they are solving problems or discussing lesson content with partners or groups. This keeps the pace of the lesson moving, and students aren’t as likely to get stuck or distracted. After the time limit has expired, share and discuss the completed mini-task with the class, and move on to the next part of the lesson. This method is effective because it gives students a chance to process and share the content of the lesson verbally with a group or partner in short snippets. This breaks the lesson up, and as a result, keeps students more engaged.

Utilize signals for activity changes. Students love variety, so collect some noisemakers (or even sound files on your mobile device) to use as a signal when you want the attention of the entire group. This is a time-saving, immediate way to focus the group when needed.

Remember that children thrive on routine, so stay on schedule! Even if you don’t get to the end of your lesson, find a “Plan B” stopping point, and move on to the next scheduled part of your day. You can always come back to it later if there is time. If not, at least you are getting everything in that you originally scheduled. Will you feel sometimes like you never finish anything? Yes! However, staying on schedule helps you keep a healthy pace, and exposes students to the maximum amount of content you had planned.

Being an effective time manager in the classroom is one of the characteristics of a highly effective teacher. Remember to keep that sense of urgency about time and learning alive in your classroom!

After a year of giving up our Saturdays, we were cranky and our heads felt stuffed with information. Many of us were bogged down in job hunting, interviewing, and finishing our field-study projects as we prepared to complete our administrative credentials. Bill Tschida came in to teach our very last class, and he opened the session by handing out Hershey’s Kisses, representative of what he called “gold nugget” tips. The chocolate perked us up immediately and the advice that Bill gave us was applicable not only to administrators, but to teachers – our most important educational leaders.

The following are Bill’s “gold nugget” tips for educational leaders:

1. If it’s not in writing, it doesn’t exist

Whether it’s a complete change of job position, title, responsibilities, and salary, or important information you want to pass onto colleagues and parents, words aren’t enough. Even when we trust our employers, it’s details of your employment should be put into writing for clarification and permanence.

2. Whenever you write anything, pretend it will be on the front page of your daily newspaper

We constantly remind our students about the pitfalls of social media, warning them against “sexting”, racy photos, or inflammatory statements on Facebook and Instagram. We need to heed this same advice. Whether it’s a picture or an off-color email, our jobs and reputation can become irreparably tarnished with the push of the “send” button.

3. Treat all people with respect at all times

Students should be respected. They do not deserve to endure unnecessarily harsh criticism because we are in a rotten mood. Our school custodians, classroom aides, security guards, bus drivers, and cafeteria workers are just as intrinsic to students’ educational experience as teachers and administrators are.

4. Make sure that all confidential matters remain confidential

This is a no-brainer when it comes to IEP documentation and personnel files. However, this also applies to conversations between admin, educators, parents, and in some cases, even students. When in doubt, just ask.

5. Be proactive, not reactive

Great leaders in organizations and classrooms are visionaries. They always look ahead and anticipate small issues before they become unsurmountable problems. It’s not sustainable or professional for anyone to spend their day putting out fires.

6. Listen to what your staff and colleagues have to say, even if it’s hard to hear

Squeaky wheel staff members can be a challenge for everyone, but effective leaders know how to uncover the kernels of truth in their criticism and take away valuable information. We can’t make everyone happy all the time, but we can and should always strive to grow and improve.

7. Be genuine and honest in all of your interactions with others

Leaders assume a great deal of personal responsibility. Owning your words is a huge part of this. Your colleagues, students, and parents will always forgive you for making mistakes, but once we breach trust, that’s incredibly difficult to remedy. Tell the truth even when it hurts.

8. Sleep on important decisions

We save everyone time when we delay decisions by a few hours and think about our options, rather than giving a knee-jerk response and having to backtrack and fix mistakes. Take your time. Nothing is ever so dire that it can’t wait for full consideration.

9. Follow through

People are capable of inspiring and driving innovation. But sometimes people stall or even jump ship when faced with the details. As effective leaders we should harness this creative energy and support all staff to ensure that timelines are established and goals are met. When they make a pledge they keep it. Strong leaders display commitment, ownership, and reliability.

Sharing is a basic social grace encouraged and taught at the earliest age. As children grow, they are urged to share at home and in school. It is a vital life skill that children need to learn in order to play cooperatively and make friends. In fact, the children who consistently do not want to share in peer circles commonly become isolated later in life.

Sharing, or collaborating, in today’s educational market has become a veritable basic skill. We, as teachers, are encouraged to collaborate on everything from teaching styles to assessments, from data analysis to Mother’s Day projects. Why the big push? One major reason is the same reason we want our students to work collaboratively in pairs or groups – they learn best from each other. Subsequently, so do we!

As teacher evaluation styles, programs, and models evolve over time, although different and varied, each has a tried and true common ribbon running through it: collaboration. Teachers are now being held accountable for collaborating with colleagues and team members.

In a departmentalized world, collaboration could be as simple as meeting and incorporating bits of what other team members are teaching into your lessons. However, teachers must collaborate to glean information about content presented to students from each other, and then commit to delivering it to the students in a way that will be more meaningful to them, facilitating content retention. For example, if fifth graders are studying World War II in Social Studies, students solve math problems about World War II, write persuasive essays after studying about World War II propaganda, read texts about World War II in Reading class, and complete language tasks centered around that topic.

Self-contained teachers can also collaboratively plan by meeting and discussing content presented to students. One effective model is for each teacher on the team to plan a subject for the group. Division of subjects is directly affected by the number of team members involved. For example, if you have a four person team, teachers could choose to plan either reading, math, language, or science and social studies. Each teacher is charged with preparing plans in their subject area for the entire week ahead. This would include writing the lesson plan, differentiation of tasks, and gathering any materials that might be needed, such as copies, specific texts or manipulatives, etc. Teachers would then collaboratively plan the week ahead by presenting their packets to each other, explaining important details, and fielding questions.

Present and future evaluation programs are now going a step further in the direction of collaboration to include a teacher-leader-mentor piece. Top notch educators are now being required to be mentors to each other, sharing ideas and disseminating information on best practices, modeling techniques, and teaching others how to be highly effective.

What we are building, in turn, is a new generation of highly skilled, superhero teacher-leader educational coaches. This group of educators is characterized by and committed to highly effective teaching strategies, a love of lifelong learning, and most importantly, a willingness to share.

The word “hashtag” was recently added to the dictionary. It has revolutionized the way people share, organize, and archive information on social media sites.

One hashtag in particular, #satchat, is near and dear to my heart. It has given me an opportunity to connect with current and emerging school leaders in the wonderful world of Twitter. Each and every Saturday at 7:30am EST educators use the #satchat hashtag in their tweets to share ideas and resources on specific discussion topics. Throughout the week when the actual discussion is not taking place, educators use the #satchat to gain access to timely information and best practice ideas. Hashtags have enabled educators to customize their learning. So let’s take a look at the power of hashtags in education.

There are so many hashtags to follow. Are you a school leader? Try out #satchat. Parent? Check out #ptchat (Parent-Teacher). Educational junkie? No doubt you will love #edchat. Addicted to educational technology? Follow #edtechchat. I could go on and on. Whether it’s a state oriented hashtag, like #iaedchat (Iowa), #njed (New Jersey), or #arkedchat (Arkansas), or a subject specific hashtag such as #sschat (Social Studies) you have so many options at your fingertips.

The great thing about hashtags is that they are applicable to a number of social media sites. Utilizing your search box feature will help with finding resources related to a particular hashtag. A very popular Instagram hashtag educators use is #teachersfollowteachers. Whether you are looking for a classroom decoration idea or want to see what a particular learning experience looks like, Instagram provides educators with an opportunity to grow in ways once thought unimaginable. Educators can actually see what other teachers are doing in their classrooms.

Hashtags are sometimes overwhelming, especially across multiple social media sites. That’s why it’s imperative to use a tool like Tagboard to stay on top of things. Tagboard is a collection of social media posts that share a common hashtag, helping you stay connected and organized. Hashtags can also have a profound effect on stakeholder engagement. Classrooms, schools, and districts should strongly consider utilizing hashtags to activate stakeholder interest in school happenings. For example, Joe Sanfelipopo, Superintendent of Falls Creek School District in Wisconsin, encourages the school community to stay connected and promote initiatives through the #gocrickets hashtag.

So what do you say? Take a chance and start a hashtag to tell your school’s story and promote all that’s right with education.

It was report card time and I wanted to share with my families how grades were determined in the behavior section. My behavior grades were based on ClassDojo. One parent mentioned that I seemed to use the negative behavior feature far more than the positive. I went back to my reports and noticed this parent was correct. I had far more negative activity than positive. My focus was off and I needed to find a way to use ClassDojo in a more positive manner.

After a long dialogue with my class, we came to the idea of “First to…”. We turned ClassDojo into a reward game. We would clear all points and then set a goal for how long it would take for all students to earn 10 points. If it took 10 days to earn ten points, we would clear points and set a new goal: 8 days to earn 10 points!

This system allowed students the opportunity to reflect on their behavior. They could ask questions like, “How was my day? What might be some things I did today to earn a Dojo point? What might be some things I can do today to earn a Dojo point?”

We also acknowledged students that made it to a certain number in a given amount of time. For example, students competed to be the first to make it to twenty-five points in a month. When student’s reached 25 points, we celebrated as a class and acknowledged students at the end of the month.

While it was still necessary to give negative points at times, the positive points began to outweigh the negative. The shifted use of ClassDojo motivated my students and instilled reflection within their learning day. Moreover, parents were much more excited about their child’s progress and ultimately more supportive of me as a teacher!

When and if you decide to use ClassDojo with your students, it’s a good idea to think about how you will use it first. Do you have a projector that you can display ClassDojo on? If so, how often will you display it? Some teachers have it up all day, while others choose to display it at specific times, like first thing in the morning. Whatever you decide, I recommend following these steps:

1. Create buy-in

Let students design their own avatar. They’ll be much more enthusiastic if they can personalize their character. Get them involved in the process of creating a classroom culture, let them help choose which behaviors will go on ClassDojo, and what they need to do to earn points. Let the students have a voice in when they think people should lose points as well. Ultimately, you will make the call when it comes to awarding points, but giving kids ownership of the development process will increase buy-in. You can also check in with your group ever so often to discuss what is working and what is not.

2. Be consistent

Whatever you decide to do, stick with it. If you say you are going to give a prize to students when they reach a certain goal, follow through! On the other hand, if you say you are going to take away points when something happens, do it. Make sure your plan is feasible. If you promise to give points for certain behaviors, set up your space so that you can easily give points at any given time. If you have to find a computer and log in every time you want to give a point, you are unlikely to follow through. I recommend using the mobile app for this reason.

3. Make it a part of the culture

ClassDojo is a tool that works best when used in tandem with other classroom management programs. I used ClassDojo with my classroom economy last year. My fifth graders loved it. When they earned a certain amount of ClassDojo points they were able to “cash out” and get a cash bonus in their class bank account. We had an auction every month, giving students had a tangible reward for their behavior that was reinforced with ClassDojo. There are endless ways you can adapt this tool to fit your classroom management needs.

Gone are the days when you only had access to parents via one-way monthly newsletters or twice-a-year parent teacher conferences. Thanks to technology you can easily keep in touch with your students’ parents all year-round.

Here are some tips to get your communicating with parents in the digital world:

Keep a Class Blog

Rather than sending home a monthly or weekly newsletter to parents that might never make it out of the bottom of your students’ backpacks, try starting a class blog. Set a schedule for posting and share that schedule with parents. Allow moderated comments on the posts to get parents involved with the classroom.

Have your students do most of the blogging. Assign one student a week to be the class chronicler. Have that student take photos, record interviews with other students, and summarize what the class learned. Weebly is an easy platform for students of all ages to use.

Get your class blog linked to your school’s homepage to show all the exciting work your class is doing!

Use a Messaging Service

Sending individual texts or emails to parents is time consuming and not very private. Let a messaging service, such as ClassDojo Messaging, do all the work for you. Once students and parents opt into the system, it allows you to easily send text message blasts to update all parents at once, or you can privately message them to keep them up-to-date on their child’s progress. You don’t see their phone numbers and they don’t see yours. This is a great option for families who may not have home Internet but do have smartphones.

Set Up a Class Social Media Account

If parents don’t want to have their phones buzzing all the time, consider starting a class Twitter account or Facebook page. You can use the page to share updates, photos, and links to student work. If your students are under 13, be sure to set the account to private. To view the page, all parents will need to have Twitter or Facebook accounts (many of them probably already do). Before setting up any class social media accounts, review your school’s Privacy Policy and check with administrators.

Make Parents Feel Welcome

Let parents know that your classroom is a welcome space for them. Consider inviting parents to your classroom on days when students are giving presentations or sharing projects. Working parents can use Skype or Google Hangouts to visit virtually.