One of the Greatest Things You Can Do for Your Students

What is one of the greatest things that you can do for your students?

It is simple....BE YOUR BEST SELF!

Has your classroom environment been chaotic over the years? Do you always get the students who are disrespectful to each other? Or....are you just the opposite, and you feel like you always get students who are very helpful to each other?

Whatever your classroom environment is like, there is one person who has a lot to do with what is occurring, and that person is YOU! Yes, I really said YOU and not their parents. :-)

Let me share a story.

A few years ago, I had a student who was really struggling. He tried to do the work, but he would get really frustrated because things were extremely difficult for him; he was very far behind. At times, other students would offer to assist him, but sometimes, he would get an attitude with them.  I knew it was because he was embarrassed that he was the only one in the room who almost always needed help with everything. As his teacher, I knew that I had to deal with him very gingerly, so that he would not shut down with me too, but I never shared this information with my students. One day during class, I was amazed at the compassion that was shown to him by the students in my class. On this particular day, he answered a question correctly. After this occurred, one of my students gave him a high five, and if I am remembering it correctly, others clapped for him also. For the record, this was not something that was done for everyone in my class who got an answer correct. However, it is like they sensed that he needed this more than anyone else, and they were right there to give him what he needed.

Over the years since that incident, I found myself always getting a bunch of compassionate students - students who were very caring, and that did things that simply amazed me. They would encourage students who needed it the most (without me telling them to do it). They would give away their food or pencils to those in need. I have even had students take their own money and pay for other students' field trips that could not afford it even though the recipients of their good deeds were not necessarily their best friends.

I was talking to someone about all of this, and telling her that I always seem to get students like that every year. I was sharing how amazed I am because they do these things without me telling them to do it. She said something that really stuck with me. She told me that my students did this stuff because of me. She said that they see those qualities in me, and that this is why they are doing the same things. When she told me that, I had to stop and reflect for a moment about my behavior in the classroom. I realized that she was right!

Before anyone thinks that I am trying to take credit for the great work done by many of the parents of my students, please know that I am not. I would be crazy to think that I am totally responsible for how my students behave. There is not a teacher anywhere who can say that. However, we must remember that the behavior that we display as their teachers either creates an atmosphere for students to continue to display the morals and values that they have been taught by their parents at home or it will deter those behaviors. Our behavior is even more influential to students who do not have positive examples to give them guidance. They are looking to us for that type of guidance.

Sometimes, we don't think about the positive things that we do because it is so much of who we are, and because we tend to focus on our negative qualities more. When we reflect on our behavior, we might be surprised at what we find.  I realized that I do display compassion in my classroom. I do not let my students disrespect each other (calling each other mean names, isolating each other, etc.). I am quick to address inappropriate behaviors, and tell them my expectations. They know that I love each of them, and I try to treat them all fairly. I try to celebrate all of my students' successes, but I do tend to MAGNIFY the successes of students who are not frequently successful.

So yes, YES, I realize that my students are mirroring my behaviors. While there is no perfect classroom environment, we must understand that we really are the examples that our students are following. We set the tone and the expectations for what our classroom environment will be like. If we don't like the behaviors that we see our students displaying, we must make sure that we are giving them our BEST SELF everyday also!

Is It Me or Is It My Student?

Are you the teacher who gets your roster before the school year starts and goes running down the hall like a track star trying to get the 411 about all of your new students by talking to their former teachers?

You go from classroom to classroom until you find the former teacher of every student. Those teachers go down your roster one by one telling you all of the students who are smart and awesome and those who will make your life miserable. Much of their talking is spent on the students who will make your life miserable, of course. (It's only the right thing to do. Isn't it?) They give you all of their behavior flaws and academic issues, and they don't forget to tell you about all of the drama they've experienced with their parents. Finally, in a calm voice, they tell you that they sympathize with you. ("Geeez!" you think.)

Maybe you're not the one who goes sprinting down the hall with a roster in your hand in search of your students' former teachers, but you.....YOU... are ACTUALLY the former teacher who goes hunting for your former students' new teachers. You go from classroom to classroom trying to find out who has those students that made your last school year so miserable, so that you can warn them of what to expect.

Hopefully, you don't fall into either of these categories, but if you do, I have some advice for you.

So many of us feel that we need to find out about our new students before we actually meet them. Is this fair? No, it certainly isn't.

Getting negative input about our new students only contaminates our minds and makes us prepared for the worst. It doesn't give each student a fair chance.

When you get another teacher's report about a student and accept it, you are forgetting that there is one difference between their classroom and your classroom and that is YOU.  Over my few years of teaching, I have seen many students behave differently from classroom to classroom. WHY? There are probably a number of reasons why, but here are a few things that may be contributing factors:

• Does the student feel like his teacher genuinely cares about him and wants the best for him?
• Does the teacher display a positive attitude?
• Does the student feel like the teacher already has preconceived notions about him that are negative? 
• Do their personalities mesh well together (teacher/student)?
• Does the teacher treat the student differently (in a negative manner) than the other students in the class?
• Is the student weak in the subject area that the teacher teaches?

You must always ask yourself, "Is the problem the student, or is it really me?" If a student's behavior is consistently negative among all of their teachers, then chances are it is the student who needs to make some changes.  However, if a student's behavior is awful with you, but pleasant with the other teachers, you must admit that the problem may just be you (the teacher).

It is always best to give each student a new slate when they come into your room. Yes, you may have overheard bad things about some of your students without even trying to hear it, but you still must give them a fair chance. You might be surprised at how well they perform for you!

(If you are looking for another article that can help you to have a successful school year, check out the post, "You Will Get the Students Who Need You the Most".)

You Will Get the Students Who Need You the Most

At the end of every school year, there is always thoughts of excitement about summer vacation! What am I going to do? Where am I going to go? FINALLY, I am going to be able to sleep in and give my body some much needed rest.

Though summer vacation is something that monopolizes my mind, it is not the only thing on it.  I also begin to wonder about the next school year....more importantly, who is going to be in my class?

If you're like me, around late spring, you start seriously scoping out the rising fifth graders. You begin paying more attention to what you see and hear in the halls. How are the students behaving with their teachers? Are they respectful, eager to follow instructions, or worst, are they defiant? Do they have behavior problems that are so serious that they have to be escorted to the office by several staff members?  What will my class be like next year?

Does this sound familiar??

You may even create the PERFECT class roster in your head with a chunk of students from this class, a sprinkle from this class, a dab from this class, and a pinch from that class.
Wow! Wouldn't it be wonderful if teaching was that easy?

It's nice to daydream about the perfect roster, but both you and I know that the PERFECT roster does not exist!

This post isn't to remind you that none of us are in schools that let us pick our students, and that most of us will get the students that we probably would never have picked on our own. On the contrary, it is actually to encourage you in what I have come to find as a gem in my teaching career. It is something that can also impact your teaching career forever.

"What is it, you say???? Please tell me!!!! The gem is found in the statement below.

We ALWAYS get the students who need us the most.  

When you come to this realization, teaching becomes a lot easier. You don't walk around pouting and saying, "Why did I get that kid that everyone knows is a terror? Why didn't Mrs. such and such get him?" You understand that you are the one that will best meet the needs of that child (more than anyone else), which is actually an HONOR.

(Of course, you know I did not come to this realization on my own. :) God opened my understanding to this precious gem!)

Several years ago, I was complaining to God about a child who was placed in my class when He transferred to our school.  As I sat in church still upset about the situation, God told me something that I will never forget. He told me that He would never give me someone that I could not handle. You see, it wasn't the office staff or my principal who placed that child in my room, but it was divinely orchestrated by God.  I realized that I could handle this child and anything that he did in the coming days. It was a relief. That changed my perspective because it showed me that God was divinely giving me students who needed ME the most.

Perspective is everything! Yes, I do believe that a teacher can get a student who was meant for him to have, but it can turn out to be a miserable experience for both of them. Was it a mistake? No! I believe our attitude plays a huge part in our experiences for the positive and negative.

There will always be challenges as teachers. We will never have the perfect class, but we should always make the best of every situation that we are given. I have found that some of my most difficult students are the ones that are the hardest for me to let go of at the end of the school year.

If we have this mindset, there does not have to be any fear in looking at our rosters at the beginning of the school year.

As I continue to grow as a teacher, I am beginning to see that I don't only get the students who need me the most, but also that I get students that I need the most. In some way, they help me to be a better teacher.....a better person.

Clip art licensed from the Clip Art Gallery on DiscoverySchool.com

Back to School....Already?

I am not trying to ruin anyone's summer, but YESSSS it's almost that time of the year again! If you're like me, you have less than two weeks left of summer vacation. Wow! Doesn't time fly! 

As much as I am loving my summer, I am actually excited about going back. (I say "actually" because I know that some of you aren't.) I had a pretty full summer and did a lot of catching up in some much needed areas like......sleep, sleep, and more sleep. No, I wasn't ONLY sleeping this summer. I did travel and do other things, but rest is definitely something that was a top priority for me.

The Back to School fever is in the air! Do you feel it?!

The stores are bringing out school supplies and email solicitations are pouring in from various places.  I am just loving it! 

With a new school year comes a lot of teacher benefits. "What benefits," you may be saying to yourself. 

It's a fresh new start. All/Most of your mess-ups from the previous year are gone and it is as if you have a brand new slate. Yep, it's wiped clean! You are able to approach the school year with fresh, new eyes.



It's always something to get excited about as a teacher!

I love getting my class roster to see who I will have in my class. Noooo, I don't want it, so that I can try to get certain students removed from my class. (Ha, ha!)  I know that no matter who I get, I always get the students that I need to have.  I have found that when I look at it from that perspective, the school year is much more enjoyable.

With the start of the school year being so close around the corner, I am starting to feel the pressure to make sure I have everything in order. I want this to be a successful school year! 

I am so excited about purchasing and using the interactive notebooks by Lovin Lit for reading and writing. I have used notebooks/journals in the past, but I think this will take my use of them to a whole new level!


I am super excited about this school year! I know that the best is yet to come!


One more thing....
Are you hunting for back to school items? I recently posted "Back to School Bundle of Goodies" on my TeacherspayTeachers store . It has some helpful activities that you can use the first week of school. Check it out!

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Back-to-School-Bundle-of-Goodies-1324442

I hope this post didn't rustle your feathers too much. You still have about two weeks left...enjoy the rest of your summer vacation!

Are You Passionate About What You Are Doing?

This morning, I woke up thinking about this. So many of us get stuck in occupations that we really don't enjoy, but we remain in them because they pays the bills. Is this really how life is supposed to be? Are we really living or are we just going with the flow?

When I reflect back over my life, more than a decade ago, I was in school pursuing a degree in psychology. During that time, I was on a quest to become a child psychologist. I knew that I loved children and I liked helping them. (I guess I figured child psychology would be a happy medium.) Even though my heart longed to teach, I did want to accept it.  I felt like teachers did not make enough money and I wanted a career doing what I liked, but I still wanted to make quite a bit of money at the same time. (You got to love how young, young minds think.)  I contemplated making teaching a secondary career, but I knew I would not consider it as my only career.


It's funny how we try to mask what we're really feeling and pretend that we are okay when we really aren't. I should have known that I was in pursuit of the wrong career because I would often volunteer to chaperone for trips at my sister's and nephew's school.  In retrospect, I see that it was because I loved being in the school environment.  I can think of times that the smell of the halls and/or classrooms made me just want to remain there. I had it really bad for teaching!!

When did I come to my senses? I was about to graduate from U.S.C. with a bachelor's degree in psychology when I awoke from my deep slumber. I marched up to the front of the massive room and went through the motions of the ceremony, but I later found out that I did not really graduate. I did not pass two courses in psychology. I would have to retake these courses before I could get my degree. It was then that I realized that I did not want to retake those courses because I really wanted to teach. I changed my major to English and my minor to elementary education.


Yes, I wasted a lot of money, but I still feel like my psychology classes helped me to be a better teacher.
It's funny because once I changed my major, I was more successful in my classes and I was more excited about my learning. After graduating with a bachelor's degree, I later went to get an M.A.T. in elementary education. I maintained a 4.0 G.P.A throughout the duration of my master's program. It was hard work, but I found it to be more enjoyable. Could it be that I was more passionate about what I was doing? What is being passionate anyway? According to dictionary.com, passionate is being ruled by intense emotion or strong feeling. I firmly believe that this is what everyone should have in their career. This is what I had and still have for teaching!

You can go through life simply living (surviving) or you can go through life flourishing because you are doing what you were meant to do - what you truly LOVE!

Are you satisfied with just surviving…..(see above)

I don't teach because I get paid summers off or because I don't work on the weekends. Yes, these are perks that I enjoy about my job. However, I teach because I actually enjoy what I do. I LOVE IT! I am PASSIONATE about it! If you are teaching only for the perks, then you really don't need to be teaching.


It doesn't matter if you are in the teaching profession or if you are pursuing something else. You must be passionate about what you are doing!! Otherwise, you will never be really satisfied and you will find yourself unhappy. Ultimately, it is your decision.  You can remain in an occupation that you don't like or step into your zone of passion. The choice is really yours!

…..or would you like to flourish? (see above)

Helpful Ideas for Hall Displays

If you are anything like me, you DREAD doing hall displays! I don't know why I dislike them so much. Maybe it's because I feel like they have to be almost PERFECT since they are displayed for other eyes to see. It can be soooooo frustrating when you are about to put up a display and you realize that the work is not up to par. You know that parents love to slow down to read what their child has done…..so does the principal and many others. You feel like your display can be critiqued by anyone - expert or not .  Even though the majority of the time you are displaying kid's work, you can still feel like you (the teacher) are on the chopping board. If things are misspelled or sloppy, it is the teacher that will mostly likely get blamed.

Our art teacher does an amazing job with hall displays!

Are hall displays really that bad? No, not really. Hall displays don't have to be as hard as we make them out to be. Almost every time I get one done, I realize that it really wasn't as bad as I made it out to be. I guess it is just the BATTLE of getting started. 

There are several ways to make a hall display or should I say, several ways to take up that enormous space that is on the other side of your door. If you are like me, time is of the essence! If you don't like to take down the paper, a creative way to keep your displays fresh is to put up clothes pins with the names of each of your students.  You can periodically switch out your students' work, which is less time consuming. 

See how simple and easy it can be! Kindergarten teachers are so creative!

You can also step outside of the traditional rectangular cork board. Sometimes, putting work out in a random fashion can be so UNIQUE and ATTRACTIVE.

My colleague, Kelly did an exceptional job displaying what the students learned about cause and effect using sentence strips and artwork. 

You can even display something that can last the entire year. I AM NOT KIDDING!! Can you believe that??!!! If you have a gifted art teacher like we do, a simple phrase on a bulletin board can be encouraging to both staff and students. At the beginning of this school year, my friend Tonya had an idea for each fourth grade teacher to take pictures of all of their students, so that we could display them as a border on a bulletin board. Yes, the kids' pictures were the border! She asked our art teacher to paint the words, "Where there is unity, there is victory" in the center of the pictures.  Additionally, I added pictures of the fourth grade teachers. We have had this display up since the beginning of the year and we plan to keep it up until the end. (I did not post a picture of this display because of the students' pictures on it.) Below is an example of another bulletin board that our art teacher designed.

It seems so simple, but it makes such a grand statement!

You can also solicit the support of your students to create posters that can be displayed in the halls year round. Bullying is such a major issue in all schools. It is great to let students create anti-bullying posters to display around the school.  Additionally, students can remind other students not to do drugs. Here are a few examples…

There are so many ways that we can tackle hall displays. We really don't have any excuses! I still can't say that I love doing them, but at least I can know that I have several options. If you have any great ideas for hall displays, please feel free to share them.

I love the peace symbol! It is so crafty!! Also, notice the clothes pin idea. I don't think she put the students' names on hers.

This is another angle of the same display. Unfortunately, I could not get the peace symbol in this one.

Who Knew the Library Could Be So Much Fun!!!!

FORGET about the old days when the library was mostly for perusing through the card catalog to find the call number of your favorite book, so that you could check it out. FAST FORWARD to the future and you will find that the library is an ADVENTUROUS place conducive for EXCELLENT teaching and learning!

Aye Aye,  Captain!!

It all began when my friend and colleague, Tonya asked me if we could pair our students together for independent reading once or more a week.  After a little bit of talking, independent reading soon blossomed into us wanting to teach an ELA block together once a week.  There was a problem. We did not have enough space in our rooms to tackle this challenge. YES, our kids got along well, but we still knew we could not be teaching at the same time in one room without becoming a distraction to each other. Where would we teach? What space would be big enough? We contemplated the cafeteria, but it was way too cold and uninviting. With the hard tables and chairs and not a soft pillow or a fluffy carpet in sight, it was not an ideal environment at all!! It did not take us long to figure out that there was one place in the building that was PERFECT….it had everything we were looking for….not to mention it wasn't bad on the eyes either. You guessed it! It was our library!

As students walk to their tables, it is like they are entering a jungle.

When we decided that we wanted to start teaching in the library for our ELA block, we really did not know what type of reaction we would get. We did not know if the librarian would give us an outright, "No". WHY would she want us in their disturbing her normal routine?  Even with our doubts and concerns, we took a chance and decided to ask her anyway. Contrary to our fears, she was extremely POSITIVE about it!!!!! She was glad that someone finally wanted to utilize the resources that encompassed the library. It was all set! We would combine our classes twice a week (yes, I said twice a week…it did not take us long to realize that we needed another day) to teach ELA.

A fabulous mural of a lion in the jungle is on the wall.

When you have a librarian like ours, the library becomes an EDUCATION WONDERLAND! With the painted walls, tall trees (not real trees, of course), pirate station, and camping tent, students can't help but feel right at home and ready for learning. Hey, I can't help but feel right at home and ready for teaching! Have you ever had that feeling? You know the feeling... like you wish you were a kid again, so that you could have a classroom like this or it could have been anything that you were wishing you could see through kid's eyes. Well, this library gives you that feeling!

Are we camping out?

There are so many places to go…so many places to be. Even though there are two classes sharing the space (actually, there are three because the librarian also has a class on one side of the library), it is still so much space for students to stretch out. Students are able to engage in independent reading, pair-share reading, listening to books on tape, writing and reading activities on the computer, free writes in their journals, standardized test practice sheets, context clues activities, and discussion groups. These are primarily the activities that students are able to do independent of Tonya and I. (We still have to provide guidance, at times.) We also work with small groups where students are grouped based on their reading levels from the Next Steps system. This is a fabulous teaching resource that helps you to determine the reading levels of all of your students. They also provide a variety of fiction and non-fiction books at each level. The students read books on their level as a group and participate in a variety of activities centered around their books. We are especially loving the non-fiction books!

A nice little reading nook!

Students listen to stories on tape in this area of the library. I also add a comfy big pillow to this area.

 Students seem to be very engaged in a lot of their reading activities. I have also seen very intense researching done on the computers. Overall, the students seem to be excited about being in the library. Every time I ask for their thoughts about being in the library - to give me a thumbs up or down - it is always a unanimous thumbs up! There's only one student who will occasionally give me a thumbs down and it is because he thinks it's funny to be the only one giving a thumbs down. He'll usually change it to a thumbs up once he's made his point! :)

That's not a real person or a lion! :) However, this spot is a good space for me to work with my small groups.

As teachers, sometimes, we have to step outside of "our box" and try something different. What may seem like a crazy idea might prove to be a blessing to both you and your students.

When it's not being utilized by the librarian, Tonya uses this area to work with her small groups.
They usually stretch out on the floor and work on posters and a variety of other activities.

Students are able to do free writes as they sit with the pirate.

Of course, we know that our own classrooms are great environments for teaching!  It's just fun to do something different like taking them outside or to another room every once in a while. 

Have you ever taught your class in a nontraditional setting? How was it?

The entrance to the computer lab in the library.