Summer means leaving a school for greener pastures for many educators, but how is one to know if the new school is going to be better? Here’s a brief checklist I’ve used during interviews in years past to figure out whether a school is a possible home or a major flop: 1. Outlook and attitude […]

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The end of the school year is usually a time of concluding lessons, wrapping up projects, packing up classrooms, and looking forward to a bit of recovery time (however brief it might be).  Most of all, it brings a huge sigh of relief – the school year has been conquered!  But for many teachers this […]

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Normally March 2nd would pass without notice but this year I am embracing the 109th birthday celebration of Dr. Seuss in my high school classroom. Seuss is ageless and timeless. Many elementary school teachers and children’s librarians have embraced Read Across America’s promotion of “grab your hat and read with the cat”  but high schools […]

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I spent most of the first year after my layoff just wanting to go back.  Back to the job I had so passionately loved.  Back to the routine that was so familiar.  Back to the students with whom I felt so at home with.  Back to the career that had been moving along at a […]

The post New Directions: An Unemployed Teacher Looks at the Future and Creates a New Personal Brand appeared first on The Educators Room.

  To buy Cari’s book that details her sudden unemployment, “How to Finish the Test When Your Pencil Breaks” please click here.  As a teacher who has been out of work for almost two years now, I find the holidays bring an interesting sense of out-of-sync timing.  I can clearly remember the visceral relief at the […]

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The post The School Zone: Keeping In Touch With Teaching appeared first on The Educators Room.

One of the new adventures I’ve embarked upon since my layoff in 2011 is substitute teaching.  Many unemployed teachers I’ve spoken to have been substituting for a very long time, sometimes half a decade or more, waiting to get back into a permanent position.  Substituting can be one of the worst – or best – situations in which an […]

The post Substituting – The Not-Quite-Teaching of Teaching appeared first on The Educators Room.

As teachers, we instinctively look for those teachable moments in the classroom.  You know them – those moments when suddenly space and time open up to reveal an opportunity to take what is at hand and turn it into a way to delve more deeply into whatever subject we are teaching.  Exercising this habit outside […]

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