Category Archives: Classroom Leadership

My quick list of how I keep my calm in loud learning situations. Continue reading →

But I’m coming to see that words mixed with snarkiness and sarcasm are another cloak of bullying. Continue reading →

If I peeked into your classroom, what would I see? Continue reading →

Good classroom management hangs on the teacher’s ability to build a good relationship with their students as individuals. Continue reading →

I don’t respond to a student “acting-up” (or cutting-up as they call it in TN) with a Vulcan death grip. Continue reading →

I maintain that 95% of what happens in a class is dependent on the teacher’s action and/or inaction. Continue reading →

I have spent too many years caught in the paradigm that I am in control of the classroom. I want to break free from that. Continue reading →

It was a literal blizzard outside. I couldn’t believe that they were still having school. I always got subbing jobs when the weather was the worst. So, while some teacher was snug under her comforter, I walked into her Kindergarten classroom.

It looked normal enough. I walked over and searched for lesson plans. Where were they? Sometimes elementary school teachers are so organized that they are disorganized. Everything was color coded, except that doesn’t make much difference when you don’t know what the code is. I frantically went to the other Kindergarten teacher. She was out too. So were the first grade teachers. Was there a conference? No. They were all sick. God, I was thinking, maybe I should be wearing a surgical mask.

The first bell rang and a herd of the sweetest little things waddled into the room with all their winter gear on. Now, I don’t know if you know the difference between happy surprise and shocked surprise, but let me tell you, these kids were not happily surprised to see me. Thankfully by the time the second bell rang, the classroom teacher called. She apologized for not leaving the lesson plans on her desk. They were actually in the microwave in the teacher’s lounge. Seriously? Did this epidemic also cause irrational behavior?

The first activity of the day was Art. The project sounded like fun…make rainbows to complement a story about rainbows that we would read during story time. My happiness over the rainbow project quickly devolved after I read that it involved tissue paper rainbows with glue and glitter. Seriously, who was this teacher? Who makes a sub do this alone with thirty five year-olds? Was she paid by my brother as an 8 year old to torture me? I don’t even need to go into a description of how disastrous this was. At the end of the lesson, there was glue everywhere and glitter ground into the carpet.

Playtime was no better. It really wasn’t that the kids were poorly behaved. In fact, they were angelic. It just seemed that the day was cursed. During playtime, I was victim to a fly away micro-machine car and ended up with my elbow gushing blood.

Things finally started to settle down at story time. The rainbow book was actually pretty great. It was gentle and encouraging in a very Levar Burton kind of way. About halfway through the story, though, my leg started to feel warm and wet. I thought maybe I was imagining it and just kept reading. But after two more pages of reading it didn’t go away.

I looked down and there was a little girl chewing on my pants! I didn’t know what to say, she looked up at me with her slobbery face and said, “I was hungry!” I was being eaten alive.
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What would school become if teachers stopped forcing students to learn by requiring attendance? Continue reading →

TweetFor this blog entry, I am excited to interview Dr. Alene Harris, Professor Education at Vanderbilt’s Peabody School for Education.  Dr. Harris has dedicated her career to developing and researching best practices for teachers in the first three days of … Continue reading →