Board AB

I heard that people who teach elementary school especially the lower grades have to have a different lesson every 20 minutes. As a high school teacher for many years, I thought how difficult that must be.

In the last ten years though I began to put that idea into practice with teens. Both in my math classes and in the three years that I taught the course I created (Strategies of Success), I began to change things up every 20 minutes or so. I found the variety and change of pace to be really effective.

One strategy that was very effective especially in math (although it could apply to pretty much any discipline) was what I called Board AB. I would name the rows A or B alternately. I would have all the A's go to the board at once (I had boards both in the front and back of the room). I would give a problem and everyone would do it at the same time. B's would get to watch A's and learn from them if they weren't sure how to do the problem, no student felt alone at the board, and I got to find their mistakes and correct them long before a quiz or test. I would do a couple of problems with this set up, then the A's and B's would switch.

This strategy which I developed while teaching hyper 8th grade students worked equally well with honors juniors and seniors who are tired of sitting at the desk all day long.

More on this next time...

Short Attention Spans

Have you noticed that your attention span is not what it used to be? I know I have. I'm not sure why our attentions spans have shrunk so much but it's a widespread situation to be sure. It's obvious if you watch television. They no longer have 60 second commercials. Most are 10 to 15 seconds. Most commercials, entertainment news shows, reality and game shows keep changing the camera angles (why do we want to see things on a tilt??) and the music so that we won't be bored and switch channels. The TV stations are so afraid we're going to forget to watch one of the shows that reminders pop up constantly while we're watching something else not to mention the overwhelming number of promos extoling the virtue of the next television event (when did people guessing what suitcase has a million dollars in it become an event??)

This phenomenon certainly affects teaching. I was trained to talk to my students explaining my subject material while writing on the board. I don't think that works any more. How can we expect a teen with all the challenges they have in their lives and with all the media they're exposed to listen to an adult talk about a subject they're probably not interested in?

More next time.

We need to share ideas

Anyone who has taught for awhile has developed some strategies that work for them in the classroom. The first year of teaching is probably the toughest because although teachers have gone through student teaching, there is nothing like having your own classroom and your own students. That first year is unbelievable because you have no real experience and your training is mostly from the college classroom which is far removed from what's happening in front of you every day. I still can remember how difficult my first year was. I was lucky enough to take over the schedule of someone who had a little more seniority so I didn't get the schedule that newbies often get - the toughest classes. I survived that first year...but barely. I wished colleges had given me some practical advice in handling teens, not just the academic theories.

As we spend more and more time in the classroom, we find techniques that work for us. What we don't often have though is contact with other teachers so we can learn from them and share what we've learned. There are teachers in my school I never had a conversation with although I worked with them for years. What amazing changes we could make if we had the wise advice of fellow professionals! Instead we each reinvent the wheel in our classrooms year after year.

The web and especially blogging now offers a chance to discover and share teaching advice. My hope is that teachers will send me their favorite classroom tip (or several) and that we can learn from each other to make our teaching lives easier, more productive and better for our students.

I'm teaching myself this blog technology so that I can find a way to share what's on here with as many teachers as I can. Tomorrow I'll share one of my secrets in the classroom.

Welcome to the SOS for Teachers Blog

I've created this blog to share some of the ideas I have for improving education in high school in the United States. Teaching is one of the toughest and most important jobs there is. It is getting more and more challenging every day as new technologies make access to teachers more available. Laws are changing that require more and more paperwork and leave less and less time for creating meaningful lessons. Something needs to be done for our kids, our teachers and our schools. No one person has all the answers but I believe I've found a few. My new career is to continue to seek out solutions, secrets of success if you will, and share them with educators in this format and with teens and parents in the other blogs I plan to create.

I am a 28 year veteran of the teaching profession and I'm also a business owner. My experiences both in business and in the classroom have allowed me to discover new ways to teach and new ways to cope with the stresses of the job. Our goal as educators is to help kids and that's always been of primary importance to me. I want to help educators do their job more effectively so that our teens can grow and thrive both in school and out. I also want to support educators (and parents...we're all in this together) as they create the future of our country one classroom and one day at a time.