Terry – one of our readers – recommended Take Five! for Language Arts: 180 Bell-Ringers That Build Critical-Thinking Skills. It is published by Maupin House. Each prompt is paired with Common Core Standards and includes teacher tips, cool web tools, and assessment rubrics.
For other teacher recommended books, click here.
Road to Teaching – Double-Check your Certification
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Road to Teaching offers helpful strategies on how to succeed at teaching to landing a teaching job. This bestseller has great customer reviews and is available from Amazon.com (save 22%) and other reputable retailers!
Road to Teaching- Ask (the Right Person) for Help on Your Resume
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Road to Teaching offers helpful strategies on how to succeed at teaching to landing a teaching job. This bestseller has great customer reviews and is available from Amazon.com (save 22%) and other reputable retailers!
Road to Teaching- Craft an Effective Teacher Resume
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Road to Teaching offers helpful strategies on how to succeed at teaching to landing a teaching job. This bestseller has great customer reviews and is available from Amazon.com (save 22%) and other reputable retailers!
It takes a long time to educate a community and it can’t be done by
spellbinders, moneybags, hypnotizers, magicians, or Aladdin’s lamp.
Character is what matters on a paper.
— Harry J. Grant
Well done—you have completed your student teaching training. As your student
days wind down you may have a few months of relative calm before the hiring
season begins (usually in June and going through August). During this period,
you can increase your chance of being hired by networking and diversifying your
skill sets.
Take Additional Coursework
Enrolling in additional courses will broaden your skills and knowledge. Consider
pursuing additional endorsements or certification in high-need areas such as
ELL (English Language Learners) or Special Education. Even if you do not earn
an endorsement or certification, there are numerous benefits to taking additional
courses. For one, you will know more about how to meet your students’ learning
needs. You will also have a strong foundation should you decide, in the future,
to pursue extra certification. Extra courses will also make you more appealing to
principals and hiring committees.
Substitute Teach or Coach
“No more coursework!” you may be thinking. This is completely understandable.
The good news is there are many other ways to expand your value as a job
candidate. Substitute teaching and coaching are excellent ways to strengthen
your teaching skills and get the proverbial “foot in the door.” While substitute
teaching and coaching, continue to expand your network. Keep records on
the teachers and schools you substituted for–organizational tools such as your
network spreadsheet will make this a breeze (see Strategy 15). Also, while
teaching or coaching, remember to try to become a familiar face in the school.
Volunteer
If you cannot find a substitute teaching or coaching position, then consider
becoming active in your local community. Teachers are known for their
commitment to their community. Many teachers and administrators volunteer
great amounts of their time for causes that are important to them. Find a cause
that you are passionate about, such as homelessness, hunger, the environment,
and local school improvement. Start by calling your local city government, or
visiting their website, to get a list of volunteer opportunities that might interest
you, such as the Boy/Girl Scouts, Rotary Clubs, Kiwanis, YMCA, Red Cross, and
United Way. You may find yourself rubbing shoulders with people in positions to
help you obtain that desired teacher job. In addition to helping the community,
you are building and using your skills, networking with others, and polishing your
resume to reflect your civic-minded activities.
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Road to Teaching offers helpful strategies on how to succeed at teaching to landing a teaching job. This bestseller has great customer reviews and is available from Amazon.com (save 22%) and other reputable retailers!
A few years ago I started this website – Road to Teaching. My aim was simple: create resources for beginning and job-seeking teachers. Never did I imagine how fast this site would grow. Below are a few highlights:
In short, thank you for visiting this website, liking it on Facebook, and, for some, buying my book – Road to Teaching: A Guide to Teacher Training, Student Teaching, and Finding a Job.
To celebrate these milestones, every week I’ll release a strategy to finding a job, starting this Monday. Each strategy is an exert from my book.
Have a great summer and happy job hunting!
-Eric
Great question and a pertinent issue to student teachers and classroom teachers, in general. Here’s my attempt to answering this question, but would love to hear from our global community additional suggestions/tips/advice.
I’ve seen many teachers struggle with classroom management, and I’ve mentored numerous teachers through it. The most important aspect about classroom management is to do what you are comfortable with. Trying to fit into someone else’s mode will lead to disaster. That’s not to say that you cannot learn and steal ideas from others; I encourage this. But, in the end, it’s mediated through your personal approach to classroom management. In short, let your classroom management reflect who you are. Second, develop authentic relationship with the students. Take some easy steps: send positive notes home, call home, or greet each student as they enter the classroom (shaking their hand and telling them how excited you are to see them). Caution – it should be authentic. Students will see through baloney or efforts that signal that you are trying to hard. Next, deliver high quality instruction and rigorous content. This may seem cliché, but in all my years of teaching and mentoring struggling teachers it works. Students gain respect for you as a teacher when they see/feel they are learning a great deal and are so busy with the learning they don’t act out (most of the time). Finally, be consistent in what you say and do. Students will note inconsistencies and exploit them. Be consistent.
This series is intended to give teachers new ways of improving their practice through practice-based feedback.
Rarely in the K-12 system is student feedback intentionally sought and reflected upon as a way to improve teacher practice. Yet, students know effective teaching when they see it. These underutilized, understudied student perceptions of teacher effectiveness may serve as a valuable resource to informing teacher pedagogy.
Here’s a snippet from a recent Gates study:
Student perceptions of a given teacher’s strengths and weaknesses are consistent across the different groups of students they teach. Moreover, students seem to know effective teaching when they experience it: student perceptions in one class are related to the achievement gains in other classes taught by the same teacher. Most important are students’ perception of a teacher’s ability to control a classroom and to challenge students with rigorous work.
Here are 4 easy ways to gather student feedback to inform teacher practice.
“You are fine. None of the students complain about you.”
This was my former principal’s evaluative feedback on my first year of teaching.
I thought “Seriously? I am a first year teacher and this is the best feedback you can give me. I know in some way I am screwing up these kids. How can I improve?”
The whole teacher feedback and evaluation system was screwy to me. I spent many years in business where feedback and professional development were the cornerstones to building a robust team of professionals. I was shocked (later turned to dismay) to see year after year the lack of regular and meaningful feedback to teachers on their practice, specifically feedback that targets the learning and teaching in the classroom.
The bottom-line is traditional professional development – the one-shot, drive-by workshops with no follow-up, and the absence of teacher feedback systems in our workplace is NOT going to change. It’s a pattern that hasn’t changed over decades, despite education research pointing out how ineffectual it is. As I write this, I can think of all the pointless training binders and materials lining my classroom’s bookshelves. Have I looked at these ever since the training or workshop? Negative, with the exception of a few – notably SIOP.
Let’s face it – the only chance for change in how we get effective professional development and feedback is going to come from us – teachers! In short, we are the CHANGE AGENTS.
Regular and meaningful feedback to educators on their teaching and student learning can be transformational. To put a spotlight on the POWER of TEACHER FEEDBACK, Road to Teaching is going to launch a series – Blow Up Your Practice with Teacher Feedback for December/January.
I want to hear from you. Email me directly at eric [at] road2teaching.com with how YOU seek and use feedback on your practice. I will then share these responses with our growing teacher community. All suggestions/strategies are welcome, but make sure your submission 1) connects to teacher feedback, and 2) is something other teachers can learn from and implement in their own practice. Lastly, please indicate how you want to be credited.
To kick this series off, the first 10 responses will be entered into a chance to win a copy of my book – Road to Teaching. I promise I’ll send a copy to the lucky winner!
Look forward to seeing all the different and unique ways teachers seek and use feedback to improve their practice,
Eric
