Have you signed up for The Educator’s Room Daily Newsletter? Click here and support independent journalism! As teachers, we’ve all seen it before. You’ve taught a lesson, modeled the practice together, and then all the students get started. Or, at least most of them do. Sitting there quietly, hoping not to get noticed, is a […]
Instructional Coach Files
Posted inClassroom Management
8 Tips So Your Substitute Plans Don’t Suck
“I find your lack of substitutes disturbing.” Read that in a Darth Vader voice the next time you have to take off, and you’ll feel exactly the type of difficulty that I mean. It’s been 6 years since I wrote my story about how “Lack of Subs Is the Canary in the Coal Mine,” and […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Finding the Gold in Each of our Students in a Virtual Setting
Melissa Childs is an Instructional Coach and a Special Education teacher at Salmon River Middle School in Fort Covington, NY. Melissa is a School District Leader certified and is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Educational Leadership. A reporter once asked Andrew Carnegie how he had been able to hire 43 millionaires. Carnegie responded that […]
Posted inCOVID-19
The Late Work Policy Debate in the Midst of COVID-19
In 1987, my husband and I moved back to our hometown to care for my parents. Long story short, my mom had cancer that kept showing up in different places and eventually she passed away a few weeks after scans revealed cancer had moved to her lungs. I had also returned to school to finish […]
Posted inInstruction & Curriculum
Rebranding the Dreaded Essay: How to Demystify Essays and Make Them Meaningful During COVID-19
Whenever students hear the word “essay,” they groan, eye roll, and plead for something, anything else. Similarly, most adults I know remember high school or college essays they grudgingly finished just under the wire; late-night coffee, obsessive word counting, and a fair amount of teacher-specific bs-ing. It’s clear “The Essay” gets a bad rap, and […]
Posted inAsk a Teacher
Jake Miller Interviews (A Different) Jake Miller Re: Online Learning
I’m here today with Jake Miller, host of the fantastic Educational Duct Tape podcast, to the man with the same name AND profession as me on ways to guide us on keeping kids first and using technology in our new, COVID-19-pushed learning environment, not to mention ways to apply this learning regardless. @MrJakeMiller (Me): […]
Posted inConfessions of a Teacher
On Being Radicalized: A Teacher’s Struggle
My whole life I have wondered how people become radicalized. What prompts someone to follow what started as logical beliefs to a dangerous extreme? It has always seemed so irrational to me. Now, I think I get it. The current political climate is testing me, radicalizing me, despite my best efforts to the contrary. There […]
Posted inSpecial Education
The Importance of Communication For IEP Students and Parents
I realize that I am a little on the eccentric side. I like it there, without the boundaries and regiment of the real world. And since I see things from a different perspective than most I also enjoy some things that many teachers find to be less enjoyable. One of those things is IEP meetings. […]