America has always been referred to as a melting pot, but ideally, it's a place where we strive to invite everyone to celebrate exactly who they are.As the US population is becoming increasingly diverse and technology makes the world feel increasingly smaller, it is time to make every classroom a multicultural classroom.
Read moreAP: “Where are your Next Steps Comments?” he asks me.
Me: “There aren’t any next steps. I posted their final drafts. I put their grades on there.”
AP: “But people need to see that you’re offering next steps.”
Me: “I did. That’s how they got to the final draft.”
AP: “But people need to see the Next Steps Comments. Your bulletin board is the window into your classroom.” Read more
"I forgot."
We recently sat down with anti-bullying activist Jodee Blanco, author of the New York Times Bestseller Please Stop Laughing At Me… and the recently released sequel Please Stop Laughing At Us: One Survivor’s Extraordinary Quest to Prevent School Bullying.Here are some excerpts from that interview:
What made you decide to leave your career as a celebrity publicist to become an anti-bullying activist?
When the tragedy at Columbine high school occurred, I became frustrated by the nation’s response. What happened there had nothing to do with the availability of guns. That’s when I decided to go public with my story. read more
Congrats to David Andrade and Kelly Lonergan, winners of TeachHUB's latest rounds of giveaways and contests!
A new NYC charter school and its hefty 6-figure pay checks have everybody buzzing.This unique charter school is experimenting with choosing the very best master teachers and paying them an annual salary of $125,000, to see whether it can reduce the achievement gap between low-income students and their middle-class peers. Reading about TEP, I couldn’t help but play the part of Devil’s Advocate, er... Devil’s Scientist. Read more
Among the numerous educational theories in existence today, Multiple Intelligences has gained both popularity and visibility because of its ability to successfully reach a wide variety of children.
It's time to start teaching the Google way.Though some companies have caught some heat for keeping the beta tag too long, there's actually a teaching lesson to be learned from this. Read more
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Is the school you work in like the school you went to? Do you teach the way you were taught?The question I ask is, have the kids changed or just the buzz words in education? Read more
As we approach the end of holidays, it is common to see a spike in classroom management problems as many students have a tendency to think the school year is over before it actually is...Veteran's Day has always been one of those days I never got off school, so I never paid much attention. I'm guessing even those who do get the day off don't give it the attention it deserves.
One of my coworkers just told me a story about his daughter:
Daughter: Woohoo, we have the day off!
Dad: What for?
Daughter: Veteran's Day
Dad: Do you know what a veteran is?
Daughter: No
Dad: Brief definition of veterans, and tells her that grandpa is one.
Daughter: Ok, can I put the radio back on?
Rather than let another Veterans day go by unnoticed, let's this opportunity to inform kids about the sacrifices and patriotism of soldiers and veterans. Read more
With an entire class of students’ reading levels to keep track of, it’s easy for your guided reading program to become disorganized. Sometimes it seems you spend more time cleaning than you do teaching! There are some things you can do to help.
I recently watched a feature on PBS which followed two principals over the course of a year. I was struck by a question that one of principals asked her teachers, something along the lines of, “write down the name of your weakest student and what she or he specifically needs to work on to get back on track.”
Call it "active learning," or "classroom participation" -- every teacher wants more involved students and fewer apathetic ones.
K-2: If you were given the marshmallow test, what do you think you would do? Why? 
K-2: Do you like to dance? Draw of picture of you doing your best move. 3-8: How did dancing help the football team score a touchdown? Create a name for this strategy.
K-2: What do you think makes someone beautiful?
How many of your emails and handouts have gone unread and unremembered? Probably more than you’d like to admit.
Autism and school are becoming a hot topic for school boards and parent groups right across the country and around the world.
The phrase "in these current economic times" has become a bit of a cliche lately, but that doesn't change the fact that our lives as educators will be changed for some time to come.
This week, I had to cover first period four days in a row for missing teachers. New York City has tool called sub-central which assigns substitute teachers to absent classrooms, however sometimes subs don’t show up and sometimes, teachers don’t bother to call in.
As teachers of all grade levels know very well, it is extremely difficult to teach students higher order math algorithms when they are not fluent with their basic facts (addition, subtraction, multiplication and division). If students are not automatic in responding to math facts, their attention is necessarily taken away from the multiple steps necessary to solve more complex problems.