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I feel like this article will be very helpful when it comes to me becoming a first year teacher. I know that when I become a teacher i'm going to feel alone and i'm not going to know how to do anything. If I join forces with the veteran teachers they can help me with the navigation and help me understand the right and the wrongs.
I feel like if they are going to listen to my problems and give me the help that I need they are going to help me navigate the rights and the wrongs. They will teach me what I am supposed to do with information and how I am going to share it with other people.
If they can trust me then I know that I can trust them. If you trust each other then you guys will have each other in your corner to help me you become the best teacher that you can be.

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Making headway as a new teacher can be challenging, but the transition is easier when experienced colleagues lend a helping hand.

When I was a first-year teacher, everything felt daunting to me. What was the process for requesting equipment from the tech department? Where would I find the replacement toner for the copier? What made it more challenging was the fact that I had a floating position-I moved into a different classroom each period. On top of that, I was tasked with teaching different subjects: math and English language arts. As most teachers would agree, this isn't an ideal first-year assignment. However, I was able to complete the year because of the support and guidance from my seasoned colleagues.

The support and guidance I experienced wasn't the type that's systematically implemented in districts or school-level structures around instruction and curriculum, which is important and needed. Rather, it was more practical and more personal. Realistically, the advice helped me navigate the parts of this education system that can make it challenging for new teachers to remain in the classroom.

1. Clarify the Compensation Scale and Professional Development

My colleagues explained the pay system and elaborated how to advance to the highest salary tier by earning university or professional development credits. Human resources did touch on this in an orientation, but the repeated reminders from my colleagues motivated me.

They shared the classes they took and which ones they felt were worth the time, as well as classes that were free or at a much lower cost than the average professional development class listed through the district's site. (In my district, we must pay for our professional development classes, so there's a sweet spot in finding a course that is both meaningful to professional growth and also affordable on a new teacher's salary.)

When I voiced my displeasure at having to give up nights and weekends to work on a learning portfolio, a colleague said, "Don't you feel that you deserve to be paid as much as me for doing the same work?" That thought motivated me to finish as quickly as possible and move up the scale. If my colleagues had not pushed me to move up the salary schedule and explained how to fill out the paperwork, I would still be in the first tier.

2. Build Lasting friendships

Many of my colleagues became my work friends. We went out for dinner after work about twice a month with a large group of more than 10 teachers. We'd mostly discuss work, but we also genuinely connected as people. The classroom can feel isolating at times, but being around people who understand the issues you're facing helps a lot. When a frustration was raised, the group would listen, and if asked, someone would offer a solution, but mostly we just listened. Many of my colleagues were nearly a decade older than me, and I appreciated how they were open to new friendships.

3. Offer a Listening Ear and Encourage Reflection

In my first few years, I would often share my concerns and stresses with my colleagues who had become my friends. They'd listen carefully, and they never offered advice. Most of the time, they knew I just needed to vent. When I did ask for advice, they'd say things like "It depends" or "Everyone is different." In fact, they'd usually ask me more questions until I came to my own conclusion on how to solve my issue or how to reframe my thinking. In other words, they had me reflect on myself and figure out what I was in control of and what I could change.

For example, if I was having an issue with a student, my colleagues asked me what I knew about the student. Through reflection, I realized that I didn't know much about the student. So, I worked on developing a better relationship with and understanding of the student. When students had external factors affecting their behavior, since I couldn't change those factors, my experienced colleagues asked me how I might set up procedures to create an environment that supported all students.

4. Give Reminders About Retirement

A few colleagues were nearing retirement and were happy to share what they knew from the retirement seminars they attended. I had just begun working, and retirement was not on my mind. "You should think about it," they warned me.

They then went on to explain the different types of retirement that were offered, as well as ideas on how to invest any extra money I might have. "Don't rely on retirement and Social Security," they explained. "You need to plan your future." They referred me to our union's retirement website, which further grew my knowledge of what to expect many years down the road.

5. Filter the Mandates

When I felt overwhelmed with new training sessions and initiatives, I asked a colleague how he seemed so relaxed in those meetings. He said, "I filter what's important and what's not important for my students." He meant that he took away what was most important and relevant for his students, and then applied what was needed to his class. He didn't always do every single thing that the school was asking.

As someone who follows rules, I struggled with this, but I began to realize that over time as leaders change and priorities shift, so do some initiatives. And while well-intentioned, they aren't always what makes sense for a current group of students. I, too, learned to curate what I brought back to my students. My colleague taught me that it's part of a teacher's job to take what's useful and leave the rest of it to the side.

Being a new teacher has so many challenges, and one of the most positive aspects in this career is the true friendships that develop between coworkers.

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5 Ways Seasoned Veterans Can Support New Teachers

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Making headway as a new teacher can be challenging, but the transition is easier when experienced colleagues lend a helping hand. When I was a first-year teacher, everything felt daunting to me. What was the process for requesting equipment from the tech department? Where would I find the replacement toner for the copier?

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With this article it was talking about how women make up majority of our teachers across the nation but when it comes to administration and the higher up they only make up around 24%. They also said that it takes them 2 times for chances to get to the top than a man, they have to go through so many more obstacles to make sure that they are going to do everything the "right" way. Women have to get mentors from men to help them prepare for the education that they are going to face. I find that some load of bull women are just as capable of doing those things that men are doing. Women have paved the way over many years for the men to walk on the least that they could do is show us some respect when we are trying to make the world a better place for education.

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Championing Women as Leaders in Education

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Men in authority can sponsor women as leaders and push for hiring more women in leadership roles.

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When it comes to looking leadership their is many things that can be done to help make them more inclined to helping the teachers. with this article it was saying how they can help other teachers and they said by assembling a team for 2 K-5 teachers 6-8 teachers and 9-12 and some teachers that are apart of the special education programs and get the boards approval of coming together and finding things within the district to help them become more independent and available for other students.

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Administration & Leadership

Change is much easier when administrators lean on collective leadership and get early buy-in from key stakeholders.

In the past school year, our district decided to make a major shift in the way we teach children to read. This came in response to an abundant amount of research, including the 2000 National Reading Panel report, that supports guided oral reading with the teacher as the method overwhelmingly proven to help children become better readers.

Research also shows that students who have been taught decoding skills respond and grow as readers when exposed to higher-level texts. Ultimately, we wanted to grow strong readers by expanding their reading opportunities.

Fortunately, the district had recently made some inroads with adopting structured phonics and decoding instruction in grades K-2; however, we lacked a knowledge-building reading program, which is the critical second half of Scarborough's Reading Rope, a visual representation of the skills that are required for reading.

This was a massive shift in mindset requiring strategic planning and collective input from all stakeholders: administration, teachers, and school board. The following outlines how we tackled this challenge to put our school district on the path to structured literacy.

5 Steps to Making a Significant Policy Change

1. Ask what we know. The first step on this journey was to determine where the teachers' and principals' mindset was with our current reading program. A survey was distributed to K-6 educators asking them where they rated our benchmark literacy program. On a four-point Likert scale, 78 percent rated it at a one or two!

Follow-up discussions with principals and teacher groups identified that they had been concerned about the way we taught reading for a number of years. Teachers and reading specialists voiced concern that our approach to teaching literacy was lacking. From a leadership perspective, this was integral information because people wanted change.

2. Assemble a team. A core literacy team, the Canon-McMillan Literacy Task Force, was established, consisting of a K-4 principal, a grades 5-6 principal, our two reading specialist co-department heads, K-4 teachers, and the assistant to the superintendent for K-6.

The job for this task force was to research knowledge-building reading programs, help provide education on structured literacy to the K-6 level as well as the board of education, and recommend a program to be piloted by a larger group of K-6 teachers.

3. Inform the community and seek board approval. The task force gave a thorough presentation to our school board's curriculum committee members in a public meeting explaining our current status and the need to move to a research-supported structured literacy approach. The curriculum committee was in full support of the move after the presentation.

It's important to establish a relationship of transparency and trust with the board, as the board represents the community at large. An educated board is an informed board.

4. Put the new program to a test. After visiting neighboring school districts and researching materials, we decided to hold a pilot of two programs from Amplify's Core Knowledge Language Arts, one for grades 3-5 and another for sixth graders. The pilot group consisted of teachers from each of our five elementary and two intermediate school buildings. The pilot teachers received a full day of training and continued support in structured literacy prior to the pilot.

Increased levels of student confidence

Increased levels of participation

Increased interest and finding connections outside of school

"Struggling" readers participating and doing well in class

After teaching one extensive unit, the pilot teachers came together to share experiences. The meeting was emotional and inspiring, with one successful story after another about how students who were once struggling were now seeing success with the new program.

There were several common themes:

Two sixth-grade teachers shared how they were going to recommend a pupil focus meeting to discuss poor academic performance for a student who was struggling in his English language arts classes. However, they saw a complete turnaround in his performance during the pilot.

5. Fully implement the new program. The input from the pilot teachers clearly indicated that a knowledge reading program was what we have been lacking. We are excited to fully adopt this program with all our teachers starting in the 2023-24 school year.

If you are in a leadership position, take the steps necessary to assess your stakeholders' situation, collect input, and involve your people. Educational leadership is all about how you can lead people. There is no better way of doing that than including and valuing their input, no matter how challenging the task ahead.

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Using Collective Leadership to Make a Major Shift in Your District

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Administration & Leadership Change is much easier when administrators lean on collective leadership and get early buy-in from key stakeholders. In the past school year, our district decided to make a major shift in the way we teach children to read.

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One thing that I know about getting diverse books is sometimes it just won't be good enough for the students. I know that when it came to high school the books were already picked out for you the students didn't have a choice with what they wanted to read unless they went into the library and just got a book they wanted to read on their own. With my class i'm going to teach history and with that subject comes more hard things to read, watch, and learn about. When I get into my classroom I want all my students to know that this stuff doesn't make them bad people this is stuff that happened many years ago and they shouldn't feel bad about learning about it. When it comes to having to read things more hard I want my students to have different options they can read the 100% real or I can make a copy of just the correct points to help them so they don't have to read things like that. I don't want to change my teaching just because some people are uncomfortable that is what history is about is making you uncomfortable so that you don't make those mistakes again.

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How to Set Up a Diverse Classroom Library - The Educators Room

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Have you signed up for The Educator's Room Daily Newsletter? Click and support independent journalism! Our classroom libraries are in trouble. Just as more teachers are learning that their libraries need books that reflect their student populations, they also have to fight policies at the district and state levels that ban many of these same books from their libraries.

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When I was reading this article I didn't know that their was different ways to take notes. I never thought about the different ways that you can do something.
When I was reading about the first one I feel like that is something I would put into my classroom. I know that when it comes to history their is a lot of information but sometimes it doesn't matter but kids will write down everything and then they will memorize something that they don't need.
I want my students to be able to just listen to what I am saying and time some time and digest it and figure out what I am trying to say and then either at the end of class or the next day we come together and figure out what the "important" things are. If that means that the kids are learning something and they are understanding what the topic is I am going to do that one a lot of the time.
The second one I would use when it gets closer to a test and I would have them write down what they want their future self to see on the test, and they can use that to help them understand the information more and so they aren't going to be stressed because I know that they are taking 5 to 6 other classes they don't need to be stressing about my class they should be able to have fun in my class.

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Do your high school students think that taking notes during class means writing down everything you say? You can teach them effective note-taking skills that increase their engagement.

As a science teacher I hate lecture days. They're boring, they require a lot of energy, and inevitably I find myself repeatedly answering the same questions. Additionally, I need my high school physics students to be able to make connections between ideas, but this is often a challenge, as they tend to focus only on the surface structure.

Note-taking is seen as a passive way of acquiring knowledge. Too often, students take notes ineffectively because they believe they should copy the information. And they do exactly that, word for word. When the lecture moves fast, they're so focused on copying that they can't process the content. But it doesn't have to be this way.

Here are two strategies I use in my classroom to drive student engagement and problem-solving bell to bell.

Retrieve note-taking

Retrieve note-taking leverages the practice of retrieval. Retrieval is simply asking students to recall from their memories using only their brains.

Lecture: First, I give the lecture as normal. Much to my students' surprise and chagrin, they're not allowed to take any notes at this time. It's important that the information I present is long enough that students aren't just regurgitating information from their working memory, but short enough to allow for the rest of the activity.

The first time I tried this was when I was discussing the rules of light for curved mirrors. These notes included sentences that described each rule, as well as visual representations. Because it was the first day of the unit, I added this lecture to two smaller chunks-first for concave mirrors, then for convex ones. This kept the volume of content manageable for students.

I've also done this with complex problem-solving. Most recently I shared with my calculus-based students that we would be having a notes day. I was going to present the derivation for an electric field in standard lecture format while students copied the example. This example was similar in structure to a previous derivation for electric force. One of my students was happy that she wouldn't "have to do much." I decided immediately that we would do retrieve note-taking. Due to the many similarities to an earlier problem of the previous day, I presented the entire problem rather than in chunks as I had done for the light lecture.

Retrieve: Next, I ask my students to write down everything they can remember. I emphasize that it's OK if they remember only one thing. Since this is a science class, we leverage multiple representations-drawings, words, equations, or any combination.

Collaborate: This is where the magic happens. After exhausting their memories, my students discuss their notes with their peers. Through discussion, they add or change their notes as needed. Because each student will remember different parts of the lecture, this activity brings the class together as they piece together the entire content from the lesson.

Additionally, through these conversations, students immediately are tasked with thinking about and explaining the ideas from the content or problem. Points of clarification emerge within student groups, and they feel like they have to remember; they're not asking me to tell them the answer. The best part is that since the focus has shifted from furiously copying all of the details to spending time with the content, students begin to see the big picture.

'Notes to your future forgetful self'

The second strategy is one I've adopted from Building Thinking Classrooms, by Peter Liljedahl. Instead of telling students to copy their work into a notebook, I prompt them to "write notes to [their] future forgetful selves."

Recently we discussed solving motion problems with an energy approach. In these problems, students were expected to define the types of energy present at the start and end of the motion in question, which then created the mathematical model necessary to solve the problem.

The following day, students gathered in groups of three at vertically mounted whiteboards around the room. I presented a problem of an object moving with some initial velocity, then going up and around a track with a vertical loop. This problem required the core skills from the first day, but also required the students to dig into their prior learning about circular motion, which increased the complexity.

When the writing slows, I tell my students if they are "done or stuck to take a walk" and discuss with their classmates. This process takes much longer for them than solving the problem in a traditional lecture, but I hear my students coming to their own realizations through discourse. It also allows me the opportunity to see where their thinking and misconceptions are in real time.

When my class has finished the problem, I prompt them to "write notes to your future forgetful self." I follow this up with "What was something that made you say 'Aha' as you were working?" "What was a conversation you had with a peer that reminded you of an idea you did not think of initially?" "These are the kinds of things you should document so you can work on your homework tonight."

In a traditional setting, I might have students sit back and wait until I finish, then pull out their cell phones to snap a picture of the problem. Surprisingly, while I observe students referring to boards as they write notes, few feel the need to pull out a camera.

The first time I tried these strategies, I was anxious about the amount of time they took. The payoff is worth the time. Not only are my students working through later problems more efficiently, but also they're working more collaboratively and trusting their own genius.

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Do your high school students think that taking notes during class means writing down everything you say? You can teach them effective note-taking skills that increase their engagement. As a science teacher I hate lecture days. They're boring, they require a lot of energy, and inevitably I find myself repeatedly answering the same questions.

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If this is going to be as big as everyone thinks it is I am going to be so excited. I know that those teachers and staff in the Los Angeles area are fighting for all of the other teachers in the world. If this goes either good or bad I am going to have something amazing to share to my History students. They are going to learn about something that was so important to not just them but to all of their teachers that they have had K-12. If this goes good for those teachers they are paving the way to get teachers back, to have more staff, to live on more then just 200 dollars for 2 weeks and sometimes 200 for a month.

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School workers and teachers in Los Angeles are poised to go on strike for three days starting Tuesday, shutting down schools and forcing about 430,000 students to stay home.

The strike would be a significant show of educator activism, the largest this year so far-but likely not the last. Experts say that teachers' unions in large urban school districts are becoming increasingly militant as educators push forward both pocketbook demands, like salary increases, and broader social initiatives.

SEIU Local 99, the union that represents 30,000 cafeteria workers, bus drivers, custodians, and other employees in the nation's second-largest school district, is seeking a 30 percent pay increase, more full-time hours, and paid training, among other demands. United Teachers Los Angeles, the teachers' union that represents another 30,000 educators and is separately in the middle of contract negotiations, is joining the strike in solidarity.

The Los Angeles Unified School District has offered the school workers a 5 percent pay increase for this school year, another 5 percent increase for next school year, and additional one-time bonuses both years. Certain high-demand workers-including nurses, counselors, and special education teachers-would receive additional "market-driven" pay increases.

Superintendent Alberto Carvalho, who has helmed the Los Angeles Unified district for a little more than a year now, has called the proposal "historic;" the unions disagree, arguing that the district has threatened and harassed workers for engaging in union activity.

In 2019, Los Angeles Unified teachers went on strike for the first time in 30 years. Educators picketed for six days, fighting for pay raises, smaller class sizes, more support staff, and commitments from the district to invest in social initiatives, such as the creation of community schools and the elimination of random searches of students. That expansive approach to contract negotiations, known as bargaining for the common good, secured support from the community-and the strike was largely successful.

That strike was also part of a historic wave of teacher activism in 2018 and 2019. There were statewide work stoppages in a half-dozen states, as well as additional big-city teacher strikes in Chicago and Denver.

The pandemic temporarily halted the labor turmoil, but there's been a resurgence of activism over the last year. Minneapolis teachers went on strike for three weeks last March, and this school year brought teacher strikes in Seattle and Columbus, Ohio, as well as several other smaller districts. Support workers, including cafeteria workers and bus drivers, have also gone on strike.

To understand how the Los Angeles strike fits into the broader landscape of teacher activism and what might come next, Education Week spoke to Bradley Marianno, an assistant professor of educational policy and leadership at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, who studies teacher strikes. This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

How does this strike compare to the 2019 teachers strike in Los Angeles?

The conversation is again about educator wages-this time initiated by SEIU, but I don't think it should be lost that UTLA is also is the midst of bargaining negotiations and has been pushing for a 20 percent raise for teachers. These economic conversations have carried over from the 2019 strike.

But this strike differs in a few key ways: For UTLA, it's a sympathy strike, and that is legal under California law. UTLA won't essentially face any punishment as a result of engaging in a strike, because they're doing so in sympathy with another union that has alleged unfair labor practices, which is one of the allowances for sympathy strikes.

From a bargaining negotiations standpoint, though, this allows UTLA to essentially go on strike without having to declare it themselves. I think it allows them to put pressure on their current collective bargaining negotiations without having to go through the full impasse process in those litigations to declare a strike.

SEIU and UTLA have sometimes differed publicly in their positions regarding school board members and whatnot. They're not always in agreement with one another, which is another reason why this strike is somewhat interesting. But because UTLA is in the midst of these new bargaining negotiations, they can hop on board and support SEIU while at the same time putting pressure on their own negotiations.

Could UTLA initiate another strike as those negotiations continue?

There very well could be another strike following. It puts Superintendent Carvalho in a tricky position to want to wrap up both the SEIU negotiations as well as the UTLA negotiations without another disruption in schooling.

What makes this strike work is the fact that UTLA is willing to walk out in sympathy. Schools may have still shut down if just SEIU was picketing because of the need for bus drivers and cafeteria workers to make all of the important things that schools do work. But it makes it even more forceful that UTLA is joining, and I think it signals down the road that, "Hey, we could still walk out if you don't also meet our salary demands."

How does what's taking place in Los Angeles connect to the national picture of teacher activism?

I think we continue to see the trend of progressive union caucuses in large urban school districts using more militant tactics to push forward bargaining for things. UTLA, [the Chicago Teachers Union], Minneapolis-those unions continue to garner a lot of the attention, and it's because their more progressive caucuses have maintained power and are increasingly militant in their efforts to put forward worker demands.

You'll see that, among all of those unions, the scope of collective bargaining has expanded beyond just your typical bread-and-butter [demands for] wages and working conditions. The traditional union militant tactics of strikes are increasingly being used by these groups as an effort to bring forth these new negotiation ideas.

Could we see a return to pre-pandemic levels of teacher activism, such as state-wide walkouts?

Some of those walkouts in 2018 were a response to governor and legislative changes in red conservative states. I think what we're seeing Republican governors do now is engage in essentially state-level negotiations with labor groups-not formally, but informally. In states like Utah and Florida, you're seeing governors propose substantial salary increases for educators while at the same time passing these more controversial privatization bills that would face a lot of opposition from labor groups.

I think we're seeing governors and state legislatures respond to some of those [2018] walkouts and saying, "Well, maybe there's a different way we can go about bringing about some of the reforms we would like to see, while at the same time avoiding the large-scale walkouts." Whether or not that works remains to be seen. But I think for the short term, we're going to see mostly bargaining negotiations strikes [in districts], and Republican governors try to offset unpopular reforms with their labor groups by also offering salary wage increases at the state level.

How much power do teachers have right now, given the concern over shortages?

In general, teachers' unions and teachers have more bargaining power when it's more difficult to find teachers. And that's certainly the case right now. And then I also think district budgets are in a tricky position. Right now we're coming off of a substantial federal investment in education, but of course had some strings attached with that pandemic-related funding. At the same time, a lot of urban school systems are dealing with declining enrollment, so they're losing funds at the same time.

You have a murky budgetary picture coupled with rising union power as a result of shortage situations, which could strain collective bargaining negotiations. I think we'll see more of those local-level conflicts between locals and school districts, and less so of the state-level walkouts that we saw in 2018 and 2019, unless state unions grow increasingly frustrated with Republican-related reforms related to vouchers or [parents'] rights.

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Los Angeles Educators Are Set to Strike. Will Teachers Elsewhere Follow Suit?

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School workers and teachers in Los Angeles are poised to go on strike for three days starting Tuesday, shutting down schools and forcing about 430,000 students to stay home. The strike would be a significant show of educator activism, the largest this year so far-but likely not the last.

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Within the education system teachers as the ones that see everything need to be fixed but we don't have anyone tell about things that need fixed. One of the things that don't get fixed is teacher salary, technology, supplies. Those things sometimes have to come out of the teachers pay to make sure their students are getting the tools they need to be successful. With voting teachers can try and help that stuff go away. If we vote for the people that want to help teachers get higher pay and help them get supplies for the students and help with the technology that can be a complete game changer for everyone. When you start to look at the things teachers need to pay for to make their classroom more successful what are they going to be left with? barley enough to pay for their home and support their family. If we vote for the right people to help us we can be the change that we need. We need to start voting for the people that are going to push the laws to make sure we are getting fair pay and getting extra money for supplies and the things that we can't control.

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Have you signed up for The Educator's Room Daily Newsletter? Click and support independent journalism!
I recently learned a new statistic that deeply surprised me: In the past three midterm elections, 33% of the teachers in my state's union did not vote. Although this generally matches or beats the state-wide voter turnout trends - 64% of Minnesotans voted in the 2018 midterms, and only 50% voted in the 2014 midterms - I was still shocked to learn that one-third of teachers in the state have been sitting out of midterm elections. This November, thousands of local and state positions across the country are up for a vote. From governorships to school boards, state attorneys general to county judges, so many positions on the ballot will have a real effect on teachers, schools, and students. As the November 8th midterms rapidly approach, it's time for teachers to recognize the power of our voting block and to make sure we are active voters in our communities.

Vote to Support Education Initiatives

Overall, teachers as a voting block share a common stance on many issues, including education funding, student mental health, and collective bargaining. At a baseline, teachers see the effects of underfunded schools every day. Teacher wages have not risen to match inflation and the cost of living, and in many states, pay for educational support professionals and paraprofessionals is not a liveable wage. Our schools lack supplies, technology, counselors, and aides, but per-pupil state aid has continued to fall over the last 20 years.

Governors and state legislatures directly affect education funding - they set state budgets and determine how much state money to invest in public schools. There are governor elections in 36 states this November, along with key seats up for grabs in all 50 state legislatures. These state-wide positions will shape the future of public schools across the nation, and it's fundamental that teachers show up to vote for their futures.

Vote to Protect Collective Bargaining

But what power do state lawmakers really have? Take Iowa, for example. For 40 years, Iowa had a collective bargaining law in place that protected union negotiating. In November 2016, however, Republicans won a majority of seats in the state senate and maintained a majority in the House and the Governor's office. Just two months after the new legislatures had been sworn in, House File 291 became law and stripped unions of most of their bargaining rights. Public-sector unions are now limited to negotiating base pay and are banned from negotiating issues such as health insurance, leaves of absence, and evaluation procedures. Tammy Wawro, president of the Iowa State Education Association, said during the debate on the bill, "This isn't union-busting. [This bill] goes further. It's profession-busting." It's true - states like Wisconsin have seen the deterioration of the teaching profession after Republican Governor Scott Walker signed Act 10 into law, effectively eliminating collective bargaining for most unions.

In the last year alone, we have seen numerous examples of why collective bargaining and negotiation are some of the most important political levers teachers hold. In Columbus, striking teachers were able to negotiate a 4% raise, class-size caps, parental leave programs, and HVAC upgrades. In Seattle, teachers negotiated better pay and workload protections for school staff after a 5-day strike. Here in Minneapolis, educators went on strike for two weeks to secure higher pay for paraprofessionals and protections for teachers of color. Teachers' unions don't just fight to make their work environments better; they fight to make schools better and safer for students and staff as well. Just as we have seen nurses' unions fight for better working conditions and better pay, we must recognize the importance of collective bargaining not just for our professions but for the communities and schools we serve. Collective bargaining is a right we cannot lose, and that means, for the most part, voting for left-wing candidates who pledge to protect it.

Vote Democrat to Protect our Schools

So let's just say it - for the most part, Republican candidates are proposing tax cuts, less education spending, and programs that could undercut public education altogether, like vouchers or school choice. Here in Minnesota, Republican gubernatorial candidate Scott Jensen has said some pretty alarming things about education. He's called public schools "broken," and claims vouchers are the only way to fix them. Furthermore, conservative PACs are spending millions on school board races and promoting new talking points such as " parental rights." On the other hand, teachers' unions have overwhelmingly endorsed Democrats in both primaries and midterm elections. Therefore, if we want to maintain both the ideals of public education and our livelihoods as professionals, teachers need to vote on November 8th and make our voices heard.

It's Okay to Talk About Voting
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But this is where it gets tricky - mixing politics and teaching. Teachers are programmed to be non-partisan, which we often confuse with being apolitical. Voting itself is non-partisan, but it is political. Unfortunately, culture wars surrounding partisan flash points like Critical Race Theory and gender identity continue to blur these lines, seeking to further politicize our professions. But wearing an "I voted" sticker or talking about elections with our colleagues is not partisan in the least. We can start by encouraging our colleagues to vote or check in to see if they have a voting plan. Simple questions in the copy room like "Do you know where your polling place is?" or "Did you know that early voting is now open?" can lead the way into more complex conversations about voting. I even think that pointing colleagues in the direction of research about key state-wide races and encouraging them to vote for Democratic candidates in order to protect unions and school funding is appropriate. Although we as teachers have been taught to shy away from anything political, voting is a political act, and we need to make sure we are taking a stand together.

This brings me back to the original statistic that led me down a rabbit hole of voter statistics. In the past three midterm elections, 33% of the teachers in Minnesota's teachers' union did not vote. Although it matches overall voter turnout trends, why was this statistic so soul-shaking for me? Perhaps I live in a bubble of social studies teachers who spend our lunch hours talking about politics, world affairs, and voting. There are so many reasons why people don't vote - a lack of candidates that resonate with their stances on key issues or the everyday life circumstances that get in the way. Recent right-wing propaganda about stolen elections and voter fraud serves to politicize and limit voting even further. But I thought that teachers, who intrinsically care about the well-being of our students, schools, and communities, would turn out to vote in higher numbers than the public. We need to be active teacher-voters to protect our collective bargaining rights so that we can make changes for the well-being of our students, schools, and communities. So check in with your colleagues, and make sure they are registered to vote. Ask them if they have a voting plan. And be a teacher who votes.

Kristen Sinicariello is currently in her seventh year of teaching at a high school in Minneapolis, Minnesota. As a Social Studies teacher, she is passionate about taking a diverse approach to history while helping students unpack bias in a rapidly changing world. Before stepping into the classroom, Kristen spent time as an outdoor educator and wilderness guide, and continues to find most of her opportunities for learning and personal growth in the outdoors. Currently she also keeps busy as a girls soccer coach, a union communications leader, and a Social Justice Club supervisor.

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Teachers Should Vote - The Educators Room

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Have you signed up for The Educator's Room Daily Newsletter? Click and support independent journalism! I recently learned a new statistic that deeply surprised me: In the past three midterm elections, 33% of the teachers in my state's union did not vote.

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I feel like this one is so important to talk about for the reason is, teachers are starting to leave that job because they aren't getting the support of the higher up people, like principles and administration and then the superintendent.
When I picked this article I never even thought about how teachers can look at other teachers and help each other out. In this article it was giving me a different idea on how I can look at my co workers when I become a teacher.
When you are giving each other evaluations you aren't going to hurt their feelings you are going to make sure they know what they did good and what can work on and they can help each other find that work on picture.
when I become a teacher I feel like I will ask my co workers to sit in on a class to make sure I am doing everything in my power to help teach and learn about stuff that I might want to work on.

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Are principals the best people to do teacher evaluations?

Not necessarily, a study published in this month's Educational Policy journal suggests.

The study found that peer-led evaluations left teachers with more positive feelings and more motivated to make job-related changes compared to evaluations conducted by principals and other administrators.

But it wasn't just that teacher-led evaluations left teachers feeling better; those done by principals left teachers objectively feeling worse and less likely to make adjustments.

"It wasn't a neutral kind of thing," said Timothy G. Ford, an associate professor at the University of Oklahoma. Ford co-authored the paper, "Does It Matter Who Evaluates Teachers? Principal Versus Teacher-Led Evaluation and Teacher Motivation, " with Alyson L. Lavigne, an associate professor at Utah State University.

"A lot of the times...teachers were coming away--with worse feelings around their competence and their motivation toward teacher evaluations and teaching, and then they were making fewer changes to their practice. They are not really changing what they did after those encounters."

On top of that, Ford and Lavigne found that the kind of carrot-and-stick measures built into many American administrator-ledteacher-evaluation systems-such as salary increases for a job well done, or, on the other end, the possibility of punishment or termination-also did not motivate teachers.

Their study is based on an analysis of responses to questionnaires on teachers' perceptions of their evaluations and whether the feedback led to positive changes in their confidence, motivation, satisfaction, practice, and use of student assessments. The survey also asked principals how often they used measures such as bonuses and job changes as part of their evaluations.

"This goes back to basic psychological research, and that these sort of strategies are very harmful for long-term motivation of individuals," Ford said. "If the goal is to create a sort of self-propelling practice-this idea of we want this practice to continue, we want it to be helpful and useful-then using external rewards or punishment systems, we continue to see that these are harmful practices to have."

To be clear, Ford added, "not every application of external rewards or punishment" was bad. Rather, it's "how it's done and in what context that creates the challenges."

Is it better for principals or teachers to do evaluations?

Even though the peer-led evaluations led to more positive feelings and motivation, it's hard to conclude from their research whether it's better for principals or teachers to do evaluations, Ford said.

It's possible that some evaluative tasks, such as classroom observations or feedback sessions with teachers, would be more appropriate for principals, depending on the school culture, while others may be better suited for teachers, he said. Veteran teachers, for example, may have more content knowledge expertise to help younger teachers improve. How the evaluation is framed and how teachers feel about it matter, too, he said.

It's also not really about whether principals were doing a good or bad job evaluating teachers, but whether they were the best people in the school to do it.

"There is an assumption that because they are the authority figure that they need to do it," Ford said. "It goes back to the idea of what is the purpose of the evaluation. If the purpose is to make teachers better, then I think, maybe, the principal is not the right person, necessarily, to do that. We have enough valuable resources in each of our schools in the form of experienced teachers, who've been there and have done that."

While those teachers may still need training on how to provide meaningful feedback to their peers, for example, "they understand what it's like to be a teacher and receive feedback, and they can be trained in ways [to do so]," Ford said.

"If as a leader, you've cultivated a culture of support around feedback and evaluations, maybe not even calling it evaluations, but simply providing feedback and receiving feedback, then I think principals can play that role. That's maybe the role: It's more of a facilitator of the evaluation that happens in school than the person who does it."

The most challenging part of evaluations is not the amount of paperwork or the time it takes to complete. It's the quality of the feedback, he said.

Schools with a culture of improvement and trust and that embrace feedback and mentorship may be more conducive to peer-led evaluations.

"So much of giving good feedback and having it used depends on the context and the space that's created around it," Ford said. "I think a good leader is going to look at a peer-led system and say... 'Is this really appropriate right now? Are we equipped to do it in this way?' That's the role of the leader in this."

But another thing to consider is the ultimate goal of evaluations. Models that center teacher growth and development may be more effective and should be prioritized over those steeped in high-stakes accountability.

"Those two purposes of evaluations-the summative and the evaluative-often can be at odds with each other, but they don't have to be."

Leveraging teacher expertise

The furor over teacher evaluations, which peaked during the Obama administration's Race to the Top competitive grant program, has died down. The grant prompted many states to implement complicated teacher-evaluation systems, many of which heavily weighted students' test scores and included performance-pay incentives as well as the threat of dismissal. They transformed principals' job s seemingly overnight, requiring them to spend a lot more time in classrooms and filling out complicated and time-consuming rubrics on teacher competency.

Changes in federal policy since then have given states more flexibility on how to evaluate teachers. But many of those Obama-era policies still remain in place, Ford noted.

The analysis uses data from the 2013 TALIS [Teaching and Learning International Survey] collected from lower secondary schools (the equivalent of middle schools) in the United States and in other countries that use both administrator-led and peer-led evaluation systems. The survey asked teachers and principals in countries that are part of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development about school conditions.

Ford and Lavigne analyzed data from 36,411 teachers from 2,759 schools in 11 countries. The data were collected at the time states were implementing the Race to the Top-era teacher-evaluation systems.

The researchers found that in the major areas where teachers were assessed-observation of their teaching practice, content knowledge, and analysis of student test scores-evaluations led by teachers resulted in more positive feelings of motivation, satisfaction, and changes to practice than administrator-led ones.

The study has some limitations. One is that the data are nearly a decade old at this point, and may not capture changes that have taken place since.

Another is that the researchers do not have additional insight into what the schools meant when they said "teacher-led" or "administrator-led." For example: What exactly were teachers or principals doing during observations, feedback sessions, or content discussions, and did some schools have more expert teachers than others?

And the data were collected at the middle school level, where subject-area expertise may be more important than in elementary schools, according to the paper.

The paper recommends piloting randomized experiments of teacher-led evaluation programsto get comparison data on the effectiveness of both teacher-led and more traditional, administrator-driven evaluations.

But more important, Ford said, would be including teachers in developing these systems, a recommendation he said that's not going to be popular.

"There is a sense that if you give somebody control over a system that's designed to evaluate them, they're going to exploit it, or they are going to take advantage of it," he said.

"My recommendation would be bring teachers more into the conversation, see how they'd like to be evaluated, what they want to do," he added. "Most teachers do not object to being evaluated; they really object, a lot of times, to the way it's done and how they feel at the end of it."

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Principals or Peers: Who Should Evaluate Teachers?

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Are principals the best people to do teacher evaluations? Not necessarily, a study published in this month's Educational Policy journal suggests. The study found that peer-led evaluations left teachers with more positive feelings and more motivated to make job-related changes compared to evaluations conducted by principals and other administrators.

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With this article it is talking about how things shouldn't be taken away they need to be talked about.
When I get my classroom and we are going to read something that isn't for everyone we need to be able to talk about those things and not have people feel uncomfortable and have them want to make that topic disappear.
I want the children in my class room not feel uncomfortable about a topic I want them to understand that those things were important in shaping History and those are the events that people need to know about so that we don't repeat them or we aren't going to be uneducated in those topics when someone wants to have a discussion about them.

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Books Are Meant to Be Discussed, Not Banned
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Last summer, I served on the jury of my first murder trial. We heard all kinds of griping testimony, viewed extensive forensic evidence, and witnessed dramatic outbursts from the defense lawyer, who deemed everything the prosecution presented as "hearsay." The experience gave me an idea I wanted to try with my 8th-grade students as part of our novel study; we put a banned book on trial.

Why Some Texas Schools Are Banning "To Kill a Mockingbird"

Oscar Wilde once said, "The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame." Recently, school districts across Texas have banned a range of books they deem immoral or inappropriate. The Texas Education Agency (TEA) has issued guidance to schools for banning books deemed inappropriate because they possibly contained explicit material, racial issues, and/or LGBTQ characters. As the Texas Tribune reported, "School districts are not required to adopt the agency's recommendations but can use them as guidance as they develop new procedures or alter their policies for selecting or removing library books." So, technically, the fate of books is in the hands of school districts.

The Problem With Book Bans

My professional belief is students need choice. Students need to discover characters they can relate to and identify with. As a teacher, I always Inform students of the content of a YA-type book because a few students are not permitted to read books from this category, and I respect that. As a mom, I did not have a problem with my children reading such books because it gave us a chance to discuss as a family the situations in the books and reaffirm that our values are different, but it showed them that there were other viewpoints in the world.

While I support student choice, the issue of families exercising choice is double-edged. I oppose the unilateral decision of banning a book for everyone when there are families which allow their students to read the titles in question. I do not believe it should be a one size fits all ruling. The whole situation reminds me of an old episode of "The Waltons." You see, because of WWII, the citizens of Walton's Mountain decided to destroy all books from German authors or in the German language. John Boy interrupts a book burning and asks a woman to read a book written in German about to be tossed into the flames. She reads, "In the beginning, God created the heavens and Earth." One by one, people drop their books as they realize they are making judgments without evidence. This was the big picture I wanted my students to grasp.

We began our journey after a book tasting of sorts. I offered my students two choices of currently banned books in Texas: "To Kill a Mockingbird" by Harper Lee because of its use of the N-word and "Fahrenheit 451" by Ray Bradbury due to graphic content and vulgarity. Students overwhelmingly chose "To Kill a Mockingbird" because they performed the play two years before. Even though they were already familiar with the content, I still felt slightly nervous. Luckily, I currently teach in a private school, so we are not as affected by rulings coming from TEA as my public school friends.

Preparing to Put "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Trial

Before we began reading this book, I shared statements from several districts which have banned this book. Then I privately spoke with my Black students to see if they would feel uncomfortable reading this. They assured me they were fine with it. However, my one rule when we read aloud, we did not say offensive words - period.

As we read, students kept a dialectical journal (a T chart where text evidence is written on one side and commentary is on the other side, all providing evidence for and against banning the book). Why did I decide to have them collect evidence for both sides of the argument?

Recording evidence from both sides provided them with a counterargument.

It kept the debate from becoming too biased by allowing them to see both sides of the story.

The evidence could be used as witness testimony when we "went to trial."

I would not reveal which side of the courtroom they would represent until a few days before the trial.

On the reveal day, students formed teams to collect their best evidence and write a closing argument. I thoroughly enjoyed listening to the discourse between the students. Side note - this experience would be a great choice for a formal observation. Evaluators definitely would witness total student engagement, high levels of critical thinking skills, and student-directed discussions.

To further prepare my students for building their case, we watched the closing argument scene from the movie version starring Gregory Peck. I asked my students to pay close attention to the facts he presented. Everyone also noticed the counterargument, which I pointed out is key to winning their case.

Afterward, students found various arguments to support their claims. Some students noted the White savior aspect of the story. The White savior has been a popular trope in literature portraying White people rescuing a Black person. It appears not only in "To Kill a Mockingbird" but also in "The Help" and "The Blind Side." The second most popular argument compared banning books like "To Kill a Mockingbird" to erasing history. Students opposed this practice because they argued that we must learn from history. A few of their examples included cities tearing down Civil War statues and renaming schools. They combed the internet, collecting their evidence from a myriad of sources, including videos of school board meetings from across the nation regarding the topic of book banning.

The Court Date

If you visited my room on this date, you would see it arranged in the style of a courtroom, complete with a judge's bench where I presided as judge. I wore my black graduation robe and found a gavel in the "theater prop room to set the tone. (Yes, students addressed me as Your Honor).

Students huddled together, checking over their evidence before our "trial" began. Students had rules of the courtroom to follow. Obviously, you had to present facts - meaning text evidence - when you appeared before my "bench." If either side felt as though evidence had been omitted in a point, they could "Object!" on the grounds of hearsay, speculation, or circumstantial evidence. This made them double-check their evidence more. In the midst of the trial, students would ask to approach the bench to ask for rulings (decisions), etc. They were also allowed to call witnesses from their peers.

A "Not Guilty" Verdict for "To Kill a Mockingbird"

As our trial drew to a close, students became the jury and could offer a verdict. Both sections of my 8th graders offered alternatives to book banning that seemed reasonable. They believed there might be adult themes in the book, so make sure vulnerable children are not permitted to read it. Schools could provide a warning like some programs on Hulu or Netflix do. However, no one said "To Kill a Mockingbird" needed to be completely banned. It just needs warning labels for families to decide if it is the right choice.
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In the end, I felt as though my students made more level-headed suggestions than adults they noticed in either articles or videos. They learned in a highly interactive way to provide true text evidence that was relevant and purposeful. In order to ensure success for my students, I visited with them prior to our "court date" to make sure they were on track, but ultimately their work was 100% in their hands.

Will I do this again? Absolutely! For my 7th-grade students, we decided to take a different approach and put Jonas from The Giver by Lois Lowry on trial to determine if he was justified in taking Gabriel and leaving the village. Holding a mock trial for a book or character taught my students to provide evidence to support their claims because sometimes students only want to provide an opinion without proof. It also gave them a taste of real-world collaboration toward a common goal. It is always interesting to see who emerges as a leader in these situations because everyone has an equal voice. I am so glad I took the opportunity to try it out, and I hope you will too.

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We Put "To Kill a Mockingbird" on Trial - The Educators Room

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Have you signed up for The Educator's Room Daily Newsletter? Click and support independent journalism! Last summer, I served on the jury of my first murder trial. We heard all kinds of griping testimony, viewed extensive forensic evidence, and witnessed dramatic outbursts from the defense lawyer, who deemed everything the prosecution presented as "hearsay."

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Something that I want my students to know when I become their teacher is they never have to hide anything from me. If they don't like me or they hate the way that I am teaching it is their right to tell me. It is our right to come together to figure out the problem. The 6 year old that shot his teacher felt so overwhelmed with what was happening and didn't have anyone to talk to but I want my students to always know I am never to busy for them to talk to me.
If that means that I need to stop my lesson to step outside the room and talk with someone I will. That is something I wish I got more in high school was the teachers that actually wanted to listen to what their students had to say.
I want my students to know that I will never push them aside or make them feel small, and if I do I want them to tell me because I don't want a student to ever do what this child did, the kid didn't know any better no one was in his corner, but I know that I will be in my students corner 24/7.

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Have you signed up for The Educator's Room A 6-year-old shot his teacher. Daily Newsletter? Click and support independent journalism!
A 6-year-old shot his teacher?

Since Friday I have been repeating this over and over in my head, like the broken record of phrases I use to redirect students back to important tasks. At times it comes in the form of a question. Other times it comes as a yet unbelievable statement of fact. My usual broken record phrases are far more trivial:

"Let's get our paper out, Bryan?"

"Let's get our paper out, Bryan."

But now, the record player of teacher phrases I commonly use isn't just broken inside my mind, it's jagged and twisted and it feels rotten. It's far more complicated than it used to be. It used to feel necessary. Now it feels wrong. My broken record is turning again and again, leaving me with other phrases, scaring me with other thoughts. They are questions mostly, that also continue to repeat, over and over and over again in my mind.

How does a 6-year-old get a gun to shoot his teacher?

How does a 6-year-old bring it to school without shooting himself in the process?

How does a 6-year-old hold a gun, point it at his teacher, and pull the trigger?

How does a 6-year-old feel when he does that?

How will that 6-year-old feel about shooting his teacher when he is seven? When he is 8? When he is 18? When he is 30?

Who is responsible for a 6-year-old having access to a gun?

What will happen to a 6-year-old who shoots his teacher?

What will happen to a 7-year-old who shot his teacher when he was 6?

What should happen to a 6-year-old who shoots his teacher?

What happens to the teacher who is shot by a 6-year-old?

How does that teacher feel if that teacher survives?

Will that teacher survive?

How would a school prevent a 6-year-old from shooting his teacher?

What will happen to the entire school, the staff and the student body after a 6-year-old shoots his teacher?

What will need to be done to make them okay afterwards?

What will happen to other students who learn that a 6-year-old shot his teacher?

What will happen to teachers who learn that a 6-year-old has shot a teacher?

A 6-year-old Shot His Teacher: Can We Stop the Broken Record of School Shootings? Click To Tweet

The record player in my mind spins, and it spins and it spins. All of my other teacher phrases since Friday seem gone, and although the player is broken, it's still spinning with these same questions I really do not know how to answer. I know how to put an end to the broken record of my mundane teacher phrases. The answer to those dilemmas are more straightforward. I can get Bryan to take out his paper. I know how to differentiate instruction during writer's workshop. But these questions, I have no answers to.

Why do I feel like I need to answer them?

Why do I feel like I don't want to answer them?

These questions are not questions I want to think about in addition to all of the other ones my job entails.

Except for one.

I know there is one question that must be answered. One question, repeating over and over again, I do want answered.

There is one question that spins and spins, repeats and repeats, and I feel that if we don't answer this one soon, if someone doesn't answer this one soon, it won't be long before we are asking even worse questions, impossibly worse questions, although I cannot yet imagine such questions, I know other questions are there, waiting for us to continue to do nothing.

Waiting for us to simply call this senseless, when there is sense here to be made. Waiting for us to spread hope and prayers over a problem that so clearly needs real change. Waiting for us to excuse how a 6-year-old brings a gun to school and points it at their teacher. Waiting for a society afraid to confront the realities of another preventable shooting and has continued to allow it to happen.

Waiting for us to argue back and forth, instead of taking action.

Like we've done so many times before.

And that is why the question that I fear the most, but the one I know we cannot ignore is the one that repeats itself in my mind, again and again, like the next shooting, and the next, and the next. A 6-year-old shot their teacher last week. Our record on school shootings isn't tragic. It's broken.
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When are we going to keep our children and our schools safe from guns?

When are we going to keep our children and our schools safe from guns?

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A 6-year-old Shot His Teacher: What Will We Do? - The Educators Room

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Have you signed up for The Educator's Room A 6-year-old shot his teacher. Daily Newsletter? Click and support independent journalism! A 6-year-old shot his teacher? Since Friday I have been repeating this over and over in my head, like the broken record of phrases I use to redirect students back to important tasks.

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The reason I picked this article is because when I become a teacher I want this to change. I feel like in the day in age people have all this fog in their mind and they don't think about anything before they do it. I want to be able for all my students to come to school and feel safe and happy to want to be there.
I look at the high school I went too and we didn't have many POC but the people that we did they were always the ones that got the target on their back not the actual problem students. Those students don't deserve to have that target on their back they deserve to get an education just like everyone else.
When I become a teacher my classroom with me a 100 free judgement zone. None of my students will feel like they are harmed or that they have a target on their back. If someone comes in and wants one of my students I want to know why, because I want it to be a real reason not some lame reason just for the student to feel like they are helpless. All my students will have someone to voice for them even when they don't want me to. My students deserve to have someone in their corner no matter what they did in the past, when they are with me it won't matter.

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The reason that I choose this one is because in schools the teachers don't really have much trust for their students. One of the things it talks about is trusting your students more. That is something that I want to be able to do, I want my students to trust me too that I am doing what I am supposed to be doing not because I am mean but because I am trying to get them to the best mindset and education that they can have.
The other thing that they talked about was how you need to include your students more. I know that when I am teaching and I am bored with what I am teaching I know that my students won't be that excited about it either. How I am going to make sure we are still get that required information but doing it in a fun way is talk to my students about what we can do it make sure that it is fun for everyone. I think that if I included them in that decision their voices will be heard and they will gain some more trust about what I doing as a teacher.

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A big part of working with students is creating an environment that makes them feel safe to stretch and make some mistakes along the way.

Recently my Edutopia article " Highlighting 'Good' Mistakes in Student Work" was shared on Twitter. One comment suggested that a teacher should be careful about publicly sharing mistakes to avoid embarrassing students. Absolutely, a mistake-friendly classroom environment should be well established before publicly discussing errors. A student must feel psychologically safe before opening up to the vulnerability of sharing mistakes.

In a TED interview, Harvard University professor Amy Edmonson defined psychological safety as "a climate in which one feels one can be candid. It's a place where interpersonal risks feel doable, interpersonal risks like speaking up with questions and concerns and half-baked ideas and even mistakes."

How can a teacher establish such an environment where students feel free to be themselves?

2 Shifts to Foster Psychological Safety

1. Give trust to get trust. As a formative assessment, I wrote an exponent expression on the board and asked students to show me with their fingers either a 0, 1, or 2, with 0 meaning "I have never seen this in my life"; 1, "I have seen it, but I am unsure how to proceed"; and 2, "I know this so well I could practically teach it." After going through a few expressions that modeled various exponent rules, I had a good sense of which students needed extension and which needed foundational support.

In this particular lesson, I did not give a written pretest; instead, I trusted their self-assessment. If a student was dishonest or confused about their own assessment, the student and I would find that out very quickly as the group work was assigned. This is also a lesson in the students trusting themselves.

Trust can be given outside of academic contexts. If a student is having a rough day or another particular need, tell them privately that they can step out of class at their own discretion to visit the restroom or take a short walk. If a student's phone makes a noise in class and they promise that they truly intended to turn it off, trust them (this first time).

Extending trust does not mean letting students take advantage of the rules. Instead, it solidifies the respectful relationship between teacher and students. If a student's behavior is developing into a negative pattern (forgetting supplies, asking to be excused frequently, incomplete or low-quality work), talk with the student privately. Genuinely ask if there is an issue that you can help them with or if they need help from someone else, such as a parent, counselor, or administrator.

Let them know firmly what is expected of them in your class and that you are happy to help them get the assistance they need. In most cases, the student can correct their behavior on their own. They also know that you will escalate the issue if the behavior doesn't improve.

When I can give trust to students, they learn to trust my guidance. They trust that I will plan quality lessons for them each day, and I will try my best to help meet their learning needs. When my student and I fall short or make mistakes, there is a culture of trust that helps everyone move on and keep trying.

2. Be flexible within your routine. Students thrive in predictable environments because of a sense of stability. A predictable classroom environment doesn't have to mean rigid. Educators can provide a stable routine while also staying present and attentive to necessary adjustments.

Educator Jill Donovan reflects on what it means to "be present" in Independent School Magazine: "While teachers rarely underestimate the importance of predictable routines, I want to keep reminding myself and others that it really matters that we stay fully present with kids and each other."

Over the years, I have learned to lighten up when it comes to sticking rigidly to a curriculum or schedule. I am much better now at reading the vibe from my class.

In the beginning years, I would march right on with my lesson plans with little regard for student understanding or interest. Now, if a student happens to ask about a rich topic such as the Fibonacci sequence in class, then I just have to accept that my planned lesson is going out of the window that day (within reason). Whatever lesson gets delayed because we discussed a topic of interest can be made up another time. It's important to strike while the curiosity iron is hot.

Being flexible also means admitting when your plan is not working. Educator Anne Gillyard says that when a lesson is not clicking with the students, " sometimes you have to shrug and stop the lesson." Education consultant Batsheva Frankel reflects on a failed lesson on her podcast Overthrowing Education: "Once I stopped a lesson in the middle of it, and I said, 'This is really boring. Are you all as bored as I am? Let's figure out a better way to learn this.'" There is no doubt that Batsheva was promoting psychological safety in her class by being open to student feedback and admitting that the lesson was a flop.

The teacher has a huge impact on the culture of the classroom. What is the teacher's reaction to their own mistakes? Student mistakes? Is there a vibe of fun, lightheartedness, and acceptance?

Education consultant and author Steve Barkley writes in his blog, "When planning instruction to meet student learning outcomes, it's important to consider the learning environment that will engage your student." It is not easy when we are overworked, underappreciated, and often stressed to cultivate such an environment, but by making a few shifts, everyone will benefit from a culture where you can be yourself."

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When students feel safe being vulnerable with their classmates, it strengthens their relationships and improves learning outcomes.