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Families and Parents Reflection

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Engaging Lessons Reflection

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Classroom Environment Reflection

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1. Take Care of Yourself to Take Care of Your Students

As the airline safety videos say: Put on your own oxygen mask first.

To learn effectively, your students need a healthy you, said our experienced teachers. So get enough sleep, eat healthy food, and take steps to attend to your own well-being. In her first year of teaching, Jessica Sachs "was working 15-hour days and was completely stressed out. My husband finally said to me, 'The most important thing that you do at school is make decisions. If you are too tired to do that properly, it won't matter how well-prepared you were the night before.'" A few deep breaths can go a long way to helping you identify frustration before you act on it. Mindy Jones, a middle school teacher from Brownsville, Tennessee, notes that "a moment of patience in a moment of frustration saves you a hundred moments of regret."

Countless studies corroborate the idea that self-care reduces stress, which can deplete your energy and impair your judgment. While self-care is more of a habit or practice for your own well-being than an actual classroom management strategy, the benefits include improved executive function, greater empathy, and increased resilience-all qualities that will empower you to make better decisions when confronted with challenging classroom situations.

2. Focus on Building Relationships

This was the theme we heard the most: Building healthy student-teacher relationships is essential to a thriving classroom culture, and even sets the stage for academic success. The phrase "build relationships" occurred 27 times during the Facebook and Instagram discussions, and other variants of that wording appeared 78 times.

"Rapport is huge!" confirmed middle school teacher Kim Manzer, before adding that she always makes the time to talk to students as a whole class or one on one. Simple efforts like greeting kids outside the classroom before the start of the day pay outsized dividends. "They appreciate it so much when I just stop to listen and take interest." Teacher Amanda Tait from Prince George, British Columbia, adds a little spice to the ritual: "I always meet them at the door and we do a 'high-five, chicken-five,' touching elbows with a 'wing.'"

Yes! We high-five, chicken-five in agreement.

Many educators noted that a teacher's ability to balance warmth and strong boundaries is key to successful relationships-and classroom management. "Be consistent but flexible. Love them unconditionally, but hold them accountable. Give them voice but be the leader," said Rae Rudzinski.

3. Set Rules, Boundaries, and Expectations (and Do It Early)

Students don't thrive amid chaos. They need some basic structure-and consistency-to feel safe and to focus.

But maintaining a culture of mutual respect doesn't mean your goal is to "make pals," noted middle school reading coach Heather Henderson. "You can't be their friend. You can be kind, loving, and supportive, but you still have to be their teacher." Establish the code of conduct early in the year, and be sure that everyone-including the teacher-makes an effort to stay true to it. Predictability counts: "Follow through with rewards and consequences. If you say it, mean it. And if you mean it, say it. Be clear, be proactive, and be consistent," said Lori Sheffield.

There was broad consensus among educators that modeling appropriate classroom behavior sets the tone for children: "You make the weather," said Diana Fliginger from Minot, North Dakota. "Your attitude as the teacher really determines what the tone and environment of your classroom is like. If you want calm and productive, project that to your kids." Many others cautioned that while enforcing rules consistently is critical, it's important to pick your battles too-especially if those confrontations are going to be public: "Instead, say, 'You and I will talk about this later,'" advises Denise Tremblay Drapeau. "That way you can still address the issue while saving face. It completely changed the vibe in my classroom."

4. Take a Strength-Based Approach

In a long back-and-forth about classroom management practices, it might have been the most memorable quote: "Find ways to make your hardest kid your favorite kid," said Karen Yenofsky, turning a nearly perfect phrase and triggering an avalanche of teacher love. "When you connect with them... it makes everything smoother."

That's not easy, of course. A strength-based lens means never forgetting to look beneath the surface of behavior, even when it's inconvenient. "Find the root of the problem," urged teacher Judi Michalik of Bangor, Maine. "I have never met a student that doesn't want to be successful. If they are misbehaving it is kind of like when a baby cries; there is something wrong in their world. If they are misbehaving for attention then find out why they need the attention and how you can give them what they need."

And don't forget to continue to work to deepen the connection, being mindful of the context and using language thoughtfully. "Don't sound surprised when remarking on struggling students' successes," said Jenni Park, a teacher from Asheville, North Carolina. "Instead of saying, 'Wow! That was amazing,' it's better to say, 'I'm proud of you, but not surprised. I always knew you could do it.'"

Finally, cultural differences can also play an unconscious role in our expectations of whether a student will succeed, so it's important to reflect on any stereotypes that come up for you. "Don't look at a single one of your kids as if they are deficit and in need of 'guidance' to become better," says elementary educator Elijah Moore, drawing over 230 positive reactions. "Cultural difference does not equal cultural deficiency."

5. Involve Parents and Guardians

"Never forget that every student is someone's child," writes Molly Francis, echoing many teachers in our thread. "Parents/guardians/caregivers want to hear that you see the good in their child. A positive connection with home can often help in the classroom."

The popular apps Remind and ClassDojo were frequently praised, and appear to be well on the way to replacing phone calls-both from teachers to guardians, and in the other direction, too. "Let's be honest," wrote middle school teacher Kristin Ward. "If some parents had my personal cell number they would be calling all the time!"

The majority of teachers send home reports of both positive and negative behaviors-it's critical to do the former, too-and also use email and text services to communicate about upcoming events, due dates, and student progress. "Catch them doing good and call their parents to let them know you noticed," suggests Barbara Rawson. And Kim Manzer (she's so nice we quoted her twice) reminds fellow teachers that the benefits of parental communication find their way back to the classroom: "It's important that parents are involved and know what's going on so they can support and reinforce at home."

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5 Principles of Outstanding Classroom Management

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When we asked our community for their best classroom management practices, over 700 ideas rolled in.

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The very first year I taught middle school science, I found myself teaching more reading lessons than I had ever expected-and that didn't change when I switched to a middle school math classroom two years later. Add in the fact that I had several English language learners in my class, and my lessons on mitochondria and tetrahedrons largely started with basic vocabulary and sentence flow instruction.

But looking back, I shouldn't have been surprised. It's not just the Language Arts or Reading teacher's sole responsibility to teach literacy. In fact, teaching literacy is connected to any and every subject-and it's only getting more necessary as the online and offline worlds become more intertwined.

"But I wasn't trained to teach literacy," you say-and I'm right there with you. In fact, to this day, I'm not entirely sure that my ways of teaching literacy were standard or acceptable practices. But after talking to a number of different educators and reading their various accounts, what I can tell you is that your peers have discovered creative, technology-supported ways to approach teaching reading, writing and vocabulary in their multi-subject classrooms-and they were willing to share it to help you out.

Science

Dora Kastel may not be a traditional classroom teacher, but she and the team at the American Museum of Natural History have founded a number of professional learning programs and tools related to the Next Generation Science Standards. Among them-a cheatsheet for science teachers looking to integrate literacy strategies into their curriculum and instruction.

One of the strategies listed in the cheatsheet (discussed in the video above) encourages teachers to help students make sense of natural phenomena by asking those students to develop explanations with the writing scaffold " Explanation Tool" ( downloadable here). Essentially, the tool functions as a guide to the scientific method, but with a small dose of mind mapping inspiration. For further support, AMNH also provides a rubric that science teachers can use to evaluate the proficiency of a student's written explanation.

Art / Music

In 2014, California teacher Ricardo Elizalde took to the EdSurge website to share how he's blended teaching literacy to English Language Learners with projects involving animated shorts and tools like iMovie. While not specifically an art teacher, Elizalde's tactics could be adopted by teachers in both ELL and art instructional courses.

In his class, one of Elizalde's best students, Lourdes Lopez, was surprised when her mother, "said that she thought that now, after six years in the United States, Lourdes' English should be better." He continues, "The comment surprised and insulted the rambunctious but thoughtful teen. She was a good student but lacked the confidence to speak her mind outside of the EL classroom."

And so, Elizalde put a plan together. He asked his students to do reflections of themselves as language learners, and then interview someone who knew them well. After that, they created a video using iMovie in which they simply read their results aloud.

"This was," Elizalde explains, "the initial assessment for a framework called the Learning Record... One key component to the Learning Record is to measure how you develop along the Dimensions of Learning: confidence and independence, skills and strategies, knowledge and understanding, prior and emerging experience, reflection and creativity, imagination and originality." And in Elizalde's classroom, one way he accomplished this was through these movie-making projects.

"It is important that we don't take for granted the language used to talk about and describe math problems and situations."

Math

A few years ago, former math teacher Bethany Lake (known online as "Math Geek Mama") left her classroom to become a homeschool teacher to four students of her own. Figuring out how to teach literacy across all subject areas was essentially a non-negotiable-especially when it came to math.

"Math is a foreign language," Lake writes, "and it is important that we don't take for granted the language used to talk about and describe math problems and situations."

In one of her posts, Lake offers her recommendations for how to use literacy strategies to teach math, and one of her biggest points relates to using "word sorts," where students actually write out the physical words to describe what an equation implies. (Here's an example: Underneath "3 x 5 = 15," a student writes "three times five equals fifteen.")

But wait-are you finding that students struggle doing word sorts when they don't even grasp the basic vocabulary? Time for a word wall. And for those interested in more than just putting up something physical on the classroom wall, Padlet can provide the "virtual" word wall you're looking for.

Coding / Computer Science

If you want to teach the importance of punctuation, look no farther than computer science instruction; put one "<" out of place, and an entire program might not run. But for Dr. Susan Klimczak, L2T Director of Special Programs at South End Technology Center in Boston, computer science offers so much more than teaching about exclamation points and periods. Rather, coding instruction should be about teaching how to write a story.

In her July 2016 account, former librarian Mary Moen witnessed a computer science training for school librarians where Klimczak encouraged teachers to think about how the five-stage story structure is right there in computer science instruction. "When you code, you set the scene, build tension, create climax, include falling action, and come to a resolution-think Minecraft game design," Moen writes. "The possibilities for librarians to collaborate with English and reading teachers using code are wide open and exciting."

"When you code, you set the scene, build tension, create climax, include falling action, and come to a resolution."

Fast-forward to the following school year, and Moen describes how a fellow school librarian, Jennifer Robinson, created a collaborative English language arts and coding project for a fifth grade class. The initiative? Students created a computer program using free online coding platform Scratch to show their progress on a particular Common Core narrative writing standard. "First, students read a biography and then created a narrative script highlighting important parts in this person's life. After a brief tutorial on Scratch, students attempted to master the broadcast and receive commands to code a dialogue sequence from their script," Moen explains.

Social Studies / Current Events

Social studies is no stranger to the literacy discussion, given how often students find themselves reading primary sources from the 1800s or writing accounts of what happened during the suffrage movement. But talk to Christine Sciascia, an 8th grade social studies teacher at Mark Twain Intermediate School in Brooklyn, and she's got some favorite edtech products that have effectively switched her role "from lecturer to facilitator."

"Their learning has become more self-directed; these new digital tools and materials are allowing my students to engage with primary sources, current events, and historical subject matter in deeply meaningful ways," she wrote on EdSurge last year.

For the best repositories of content, Sciascia recommends the Library of Congress and the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History, which she writes, "have a wealth of digital resources that illuminate American history at my students' fingertips." Following that up, TIME Edge also falls into Sciascia's "favorites" category, both because of its specificity for middle schoolers and because of its paired content "from 90 years of primary sources from TIME Magazine through the TIME Vault."

The fun doesn't necessarily stop here, though. What literacy strategies do you incorporate into your classroom or school? Tell us in the comments section below.

Mary Jo Madda-@MJMadda-is the former Director of Audience Development and Senior Editor at EdSurge. She recently joined the Code Next team at Google, and is a former STEM middle school teacher and administrator. In 2016, Mary Jo was named to the Forbes "30 Under 30" list in education.

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Not Just for Reading Class Anymore: 5 Tips for Teaching Literacy Across Multiple Subjects - EdSurge News

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The very first year I taught middle school science, I found myself teaching more reading lessons than I had ever expected-and that didn't change when I switched to a middle school math classroom two years later.

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Your school just invested in a new set of Chromebooks or iPads. Now what?

In a study of 140,000 classrooms in K-12 schools across 39 states, more than half showed no evidence of students using technology to gather, evaluate, or use information for learning. And in nearly two-thirds of the classrooms, students didn't appear to use technology to solve problems or work collaboratively.

The problem is that many schools haven't figured out how to leverage technology to accelerate and enrich learning.

For many schools, this isn't for lack of technology. Most classrooms have access to at least one computer or mobile device, and 77% of school districts have high speed broadband. The problem is that many schools haven't figured out how to leverage technology to accelerate and enrich learning.

In my work as an education researcher and product manager, I've observed dozens of schools and interviewed hundreds of teachers. And I've noticed that technology usage usually fits into one of two categories: independent practice or procedural support-such as writing an essay in Google Docs.

One area in which I almost never see technology used effectively is during core instructional time. When it's time to engage deeply with a text and learn new concepts and skills - the teacher-led learning time - the devices tend to go away.

There's an incredible opportunity here, and by and large, we're missing it. When our students start their careers, technology won't be relegated to the margins of their work; it will be front and center, every day. We have the opportunity to show them today how technology can become a truly meaningful part of their learning journey. In doing so, we can teach our students essential lessons about inquiry and agency-skills that will propel them throughout their careers.

It takes a leap of faith for teachers to incorporate technology into their core instructional time. The challenge of bringing technology into teacher-led lessons is real, but each year, more districts commit to meaningfully incorporating devices and digital content into their core curriculum. Tackling these challenges pays off.

The opportunity

In the digital age, students must learn how to apply what they learn to build something new. Our nation's employers report that creativity and critical thinking are the most valuable skills an employee can have. These skills can't be taught using traditional methods of instruction.

When our students start their careers, technology won't be relegated to the margins of their work; it will be front and center, every day.

Thankfully, increasingly accessible technology is allowing teachers to look beyond textbooks, worksheets, and five paragraph essays. By curating online resources and experiences for students, school districts can build digital curriculums that allow for inquiry-based exploration, higher order thinking, differentiated instruction, and sharing student work with authentic audiences.

The problem

For the schools fortunate enough to offer devices in the classroom, three key challenges keep technology out of most teacher-led lessons:

We need to better leverage technology to help transform learning and prepare students for success outside the classroom. To do so, we need to introduce students to environments that are authentically related to what they will experience later in life. We can do that by thinking strategically about these challenges.

It's no longer enough to spend core instructional time teaching from the textbook.

Some solutions

The good news is that it is very straightforward to weave useful technology into core curriculum in meaningful ways:

Additional Resources from eSpark

Tour Frontier's inquiry-based solution

Preview Frontier's ELA lessons

Download the eBook, Higher Order Thinking: The Secret to District Success

Explore a demo of Frontier

I know from experience that implementing these shifts isn't easy. I developed Frontier 's inquiry-based lessons precisely because I've seen technology relegated to independent practice time and testing. If it's to be used effectively, educational technology needs structure and scaffolding for students and teachers alike. Frontier gives teachers the lesson framework and curated online content they need to unlock opportunities for inquiry and agency during the most important parts of the school day.

Dr. Michael Nager, Superintendent of Long Island's visionary Mineola Union Free School District says it best: "In a digital world, if we're teaching facts, we have a problem." It's no longer enough to spend core instructional time teaching from the textbook.

When we fail to make technology a meaningful component of our curriculum, technology becomes a filler around the edges of the real learning. Instead, let's take full advantage of today's digital world as we empower students to solve the complexities of tomorrow.

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To Prepare Kids for Their Futures, Incorporate Technology Into Core Curriculum - EdSurge News

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Your school just invested in a new set of Chromebooks or iPads. Now what? In a study of 140,000 classrooms in K-12 schools across 39 states, more than half showed no evidence of students using technology to gather, evaluate, or use information for learning.

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It's hard to remember sometimes, but you're not the only adult in a child's academic life.

Whether it's because of a behavioral issue or academic challenge, looking to parents for partnership and council is crucial in solving problems in your classroom. Sometimes the parent will agree with your plan of action, sometimes they won't, but being proactive will increase the chance of working together to find a solution.

Make your student's parent your partner with the following tips:
Call Before You Need To
Call parents at the beginning of the school year and give a good first introduction. I try to call all of my students' parents within the first month of school to introduce myself and tell them about myself.

Some parents may be confused by an introductory call. Explain that you want to be their partner throughout the school year in order to provide the best experience for their child and establish open lines of communication moving forward.
Share Good News
The first time you contact a parent shouldn't be to tell them their child did something wrong. When you contact the parents at the beginning of the year, tell them something their child is doing right. It can be something as simple as their child's enthusiasm to learn, or that they draw really well orconsistently the first student to take out their notebook and pencil.
Show You Care
The fact that you're contacting them is a good start, but reinforce the fact that you care about their child's success by telling them about the classroom environment you're trying to build for your students. Do you stress creativity in your classroom? Inclusivity? Transparency? This is the perfect time to tell them. It will show just how much thought and intention you put behind your classroom.

Also encourage them to contact you with any questions or concerns. This goes back to the partnership you want to build-the communication should be a two-way street.
Ask Questions
During this initial conversation, prompt the parent to share things about their child. The parent will learn very early on that you care about their child, and want what's best for them.

Prepare a short list of questions for each parent to run through. Some example questions can include:

What kind of learner is your child? Visual, auditory, reading/writing, or kinesthetic?

What do you think are your child's greatest strengths and weaknesses in the classroom?

What do you hope your child will achieve by the end of the year?

Do you have any concerns about your child in school?

If you're able to build a rapport with the parent, it will be much easier to have conversations when something goes wrong, and you'll have a partner in making your students' experience the best it can be

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How to Be Proactive With Parents - NEA Today

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Whether it's because of a behavioral issue or academic challenge, looking to parents for partnership and council is crucial in solving problems in your classroom. Sometimes the parent will agree with your plan of action, sometimes they won't, but being proactive will increase the chance of working together to find a solution.