Top 12 Surprising Celebrity Teachers

To be a great teacher, you’ve got to know how to handle a crowd. Maybe that’s why these celebrities commanded their classrooms before finding fame.

Here are the Top 12 Surprising Celebrity Teachers:

Jon Hamm teacherJon Hamm: The dashing Mad Men star was breaking high school hearts as a drama teacher at John Burroughs High School in St. Louis. In fact, he taught The Office's Ellie Kemper, who now stars with him in Bridesmaids. Showing off his teacher skills and lifelong memory of students, he even commented Ellie's success in a Sundance interview: "It's really cool to see them blossom and find their own way in."

Sylvester Stallone: One of the most celebrated action/adventure figures of all time, Sylvester Stallone is also a director, producer, screenwriter and former teacher. The Rocky and Rambo star survived boarding schools and a special education school for "problem children" as a child, and then enrolled in beauty school after high school graduation. Stallone dropped out of beauty school to attend the American College of Switzerland, where he studied drama and worked as a gym teacher.

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Prepping Five Minute Fillers & Bell Ringer Activities

Every teacher has those times when you need five minutes to take attendance, talk to a colleague, or answer a call from the office. Try these tips so your students aren't sitting around.
Use Your Room Décor

Try using your room decorations to keep students occupied. One high school teacher covered the wall around her blackboard with quotes from literature and famous people. Any time she needed five minutes, she asked students to choose a quote and write about it.

 Other teachers do the same thing with images. Post amazing photographs and ask your students to write about what they see in the picture.

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50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

Many critics of Twitter believe that the 140-character microblog offered by the ubiquitous social network can do little for the education industry. They are wrong.

K-12 teachers have taken advantage of Twitter’s format to keep their classes engaged and up-to-date on the latest technologies. The following projects provide you and your students with 50 ways to incorporate Twitter into important and lasting lessons.

1. Tweet about upcoming due dates or assignments.

One of the simplest ways that teachers can use Twitter in their classroom involves setting up a feed dedicated exclusively to due dates, tests or quizzes.

2. Provide the class with a running news feed.

Subscribe to different mainstream and independent news feeds with different biases as a way to compare and contrast how different perspectives interpret current events and issues.

Read 50 Ways to Use Twitter in the Classroom

12 Tips for Surviving Summer School

As the school year winds to an end for the last of us still in our classrooms, we look to what lies ahead during the next couple of months.  Some teachers will take the summer off from formal work, while others will work on next year’s curriculum or take up a summer job.  For me, the summer months mean summer school.

Many of my colleagues wonder why I would want to “torture” myself with more class, more school, and more students.  Why don’t you want to take a break - do something different? Yet, teaching is what I do and have done for the past sixteen years. While I wouldn’t say it is easy, I would say that it is natural.  I have made summer school my summer job for over five years, and I have developed a pretty good plan that makes the time meaningful as well as to both myself and  students.

Whether you are a summer school rookie or a veteran, here are a few good tips for surviving summer school:

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School Adventures: Aviation School's First Class Earns Its Wings

GREENSBORO, NC - High school graduates across the country will be told the sky’s the limit this spring but for 23 students in North Carolina it’s quite literal.

The Andrews Aviation Academy in High Point will handed out diplomas to its first graduating class on June 9. Several are heading off to college to continue their aviation education, several others have plans to take to the skies with branches of the military and still others are looking to start their aviation careers.

“The Aviation Academy just offers so many opportunities that wouldn’t have been available to me,” said Colin Gunenwald who plans to become a pilot. “I’m a different person because of what I’ve done here.”

Opened in 2008 at Andrews High School, Guilford County Schools developed the Aviation Academy as a high school magnet program in an effort to promote STEM disciplines (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math), as well as capitalize on the aviation industry growing in the area. HondaJet opened its first-ever manufacturing facility in Greensboro last year, FedEx is completing one of its largest cargo hubs in the country at Piedmont Triad International Airport and TIMCO Aviation Services has been headquartered in the area for more than 20 years.

The school district is looking to partner with those aviation industry leaders as well, giving the companies a chance to help educate their future workforce.


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Teacher Reminder: Students Didn't Choose Their Parents

“They did not choose their parents..."

“They didn’t choose their genetic pool.”

“They couldn’t say I want two college-educated parents who love me, care for me, and make education my priority.”

These words were spoken at the 2011 PLC Summit I attended in Arizona. I realized after hearing this statement, that many times, I get frustrated with my students about things over which they have no control. And I'm resolving to change my ways.

When students come to school without school supplies, when their parent doesn’t sign a form, or misses a scheduled appointment, or has made the child stay home to babysit, again.  These are things that the student can not control, but yet, year after year, my frustration is placed on a  child, who is probably just as frustrated as I am!

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6 Common Teacher Interview Questions and How to Answer Them

When you get a call from a school administrator inviting you to interview for a teaching job, how do you feel? Happy? Elated? Excited? Nervous? Scared stiff?

You don't need to worry about the interview if you're a well-prepared, qualified candidate. Preparing for a teaching interview is a lot like studying for a test. You can review commonly asked questions, think about what you'll say beforehand, and go in to do your best. If you prepare beforehand, the interview questions will seem routine and familiar. You'll have answers on the tip of your tongue, ready-to-go.

Below is a list of six commonly asked teacher interview questions from my eBook, Guide to Getting the Teaching Job of Your Dreams. How would you answer each question?

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7 Surefire Tips to Find a Teaching Job

Have you just completed your teaching degree and are looking to start your career? Are you a seasoned teacher who is looking for an exciting new challenge? Or are you a professional outside of the education industry who is looking to make a career switch to a teaching position?

Finding a new teaching opportunity can be a daunting process, especially since seasoned teachers with tenure or long-standing success at a school are typically automatically re-invited to teach each school year. The result is that available teaching positions may be limited, and the competition for these positions fierce.

A big part of the job search process is knowing where to look for teaching positions.

The following tips and tricks are designed to take some of the headache out of your search, by giving you some guidelines on steps you can take to land your ideal teaching opportunity.

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Top 12 Things Teachers Miss During the Summer

12. Holiday-themed bulletin boards, student projects around the room and the other evidence of your teaching brilliance.

11. Small presents and the occasional gift cards from grateful students and their parents.

10. The ever-present stash of snacks and baked goods in the teachers lounge.

9.  Being too busy at school to spend all your money at Target. Why is it impossible to walk out of Target without spending 5x what you meant to?

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Teacher Quiz: What's your summer persona?

As teachers, our jobs are a big part of our identities. Summer break can reveal a whole new side to teachers.

Teachers, take the quiz to determine YOUR summer persona!!

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5 Reasons Summer Is Overrated for Teachers

My older brother has a tradition.  Since I began my first teaching job over six years ago, my brother has made sure to call me at around 6 o’clock in the morning on the first Monday of summer vacation to complain about how unfair it is that I am able to sleep in while the rest of the world has to work.  Usually, I grumble back at him that he is free to quit his job and become a teacher anytime he wants to before hanging up on him.

This year, I found myself lying in bed pondering the pros and cons of summer vacation. Don’t get me wrong, there’s a lot to love about a ten-week (or so) break from your job, but the more I thought about, there certainly are also reasons why teachers think summer break is overrated…

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40 Alternative Assessments for Learning

When people think of assessment, pencils and bubble sheets may be the first things that come to mind. Assessment does not always have to involve paper and pencil, but can instead be a project, an observation, or a task that shows a student has learned the material. 

In the end, all we really want to know is that the skill was mastered, right?  Why not make it fun and engaging for students as well?

Many teachers shy away from alternative assessments because they take extra time and effort to create and to grade. On the other hand, once the assessment guidelines and grading rubric are created, it can be filed away and used year after year.

The project card and rubric can be run on card stock (one on each side of the page), laminated, and hole punched with other alternative assessment ideas.  Keep them all together in a binder or with an o-ring.  Assessment just became a snap!

Here are 40 alternative assessment ideas to get you started!

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Summer School Teaching Strategies Students Love

Summer school stigma: the idea that no one wants to be in summer school, not even the teacher.

If you ask me, summer school gets a bad rap. Those who look at summer school with the "glass half full" perspective will see a chance for teachers to step up as leaders and get some freedom from the binds of forced curriculum. They’ll also see a chance for struggling students to work in smaller classes with personalized instructional strategies.

Instead of focusing on the stigma of summer school, it’s time that you and your students start taking advantage of the great opportunities summer school provides.

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Top 12 Things Teachers WON’T Miss During Summer

12. Scrubbing red (or purple) ink off your fingers after 9 months of copious grading.

11.  IEP meetings, staff meeting, parent/teacher meetings, and the like.

10.  The stress, dear God, the stress.

9.   The battle scars of a classroom – dry erase marker stains all over your hands, thigh-level bruises from running into desks, and a chafed nose from more colds than you can count.

8.   Eating your lunch in exactly 17 minutes.

7. The vacant stare of students who are sleeping with their eyes open while you’re giving it 110% on the most brilliant lesson ever taught.

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The Empty Desk: A Story of Classroom Community

As educators, we are often faced with situations that a college education cannot prepare us for.

This story is about an experience that taught me a lesson I could not learn in school and showed me the importance of establishing a community in my classroom.

Sean was a crack-up kid in my American Literature class.  The class clown, Sean always had the last say, and thrived on being the center of attention.

While lecturing the class on Romanticism, Mr. Sean was having the time of his life, 3rd row, 2nd desk to my left.  When I cut my “momma eye” at him, his smiling eyes met mine. Defusing my emerging anger, he looked at me and said,

    “I love you, Mrs. Roberson!”

    “I love you, too, Sean”, I replied.

Saved by the bell, Sean and the kids raced for their lives into the hallway while I stood there wondering what just happened.

Read The Empty Desk: A Story of Classroom Community

Teachers on Twitter: It's All About The Hashtag

Back in the Fall I wrote a  3 part series on Twitter, about how I completely changed the way I do professional development on Twitter.

In a nutshell, I no longer start with signing up and tweeting the first day. I always show how to use Twitter without ever signing up. I believe it's important to establish the value in using it rather than using it and attempting to find the value.

What a lot of people don't realize that Twitter is a very powerful search engine. Just like Google, if you know how to use the search effectively you can find pretty much anything. And one of those effective ways is leveraging the power of hashtags.

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Cool Teacher Infographics

If you're like me, data makes you drowsy. To wake up your boring stats and have important info make an impression, infographics are the way to go.

While great as a learning tool, they can also illuminate some hard-hitting issues in education. Check out these teacher-related infographics!

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5 Ways to Promote Summer Reading

You and your students have worked too hard this year to let the “summer slide” erase their reading progress.  Rather than just assign books for the fall, the most effective way to make summer reading a reality is to MAKE IT FUN!

Try these five simple strategies to spark your students’ interest in summer reading.

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Top 12 Ways Technology Changed Learning

In the 21st century, technology has changed the ways in which we communicate and go about our lives. Very few educators would disagree with the notion that technology has dramatically changed the teaching and learning process.

With the help of some fellow teachers, here is a short list of the top 12 ways technology has changed the way we learn:

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The Inspirer: A Teaching Dream Deferred

At six, maybe even younger, I knew I wanted to be a teacher. I have proof. Teaching was in my heart and in my soul. I was called; I didn’t answer.

Instead, I worked in a monotonous job in corporate America. I was lost. I had no purpose or drive. Miserable had become my middle name. For many reasons, I didn’t think it was possible to change careers. There were too many obstacles, so I let the misery fester and run. I was good at my job and took every training job I could in the company because at least I’d be teaching.

Years passed…more than a decade, while I just sat at that desk falling deeper and deeper into the gray world in which I lived. Langston Hughes described my world:

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