Trends of the Week @ NTA

Hi to all,

It is hard to believe we are already at the end of Cycle 2! Here are some trends and some of my other thoughts about the week:

Giving Directions to Students

With your use of BMC and What to Do, most of you know how to give clear, verbal directions to students. Although narration gives us additional opportunities to reiterate our directions, many of our students need to see the directions as well. For academic tasks please make sure you are also giving students directions visually. Whether these are on a chart paper, the white board, the ipad, overhead transparency, etc. this will support those students who need to refer to the directions after they have heard them. You also can quickly point to the written directions for a student who needs a reminder as to what to do.

Time Management

This week, I received an email from a resident from last year’s class. He shared with me how challenging it is to manage his time efficiently given the amount of meetings he needs to attend. Within a two-week period he identified 15 meetings he went to. As your teaching load increases, your workload will increase, and your time will become even more precious. Here are some time management tips that have helped me:

• · Schedule everything! I use my Google calendar and also use the Tasks option. This even applies to the weekends.

• · Pick days to come early and stay late. Keeping balance in your life is the way to avoid burning out and feeling overwhelmed. Instead of arriving each day at 7:00 am, choose certain days that you will. Instead of staying each day until 6:00, choose the days you will stay until 6:00. Thursdays were always my late days. I did all my planning for the next week on Thursdays and made all my copies and prepped my materials on Fridays. That left my weekends for assessing student work and other professional work (National Boards, doctoral coursework, etc.).

• · Buddy up! This was not something I have really needed, but I know many people are motivated by meeting a friend at a coffee shop and working together.

• · Take advantage of when NTA is open on Saturdays. It is a quiet place to work and you will have needed materials nearby.

What We (Teachers) Can Learn from Jay-Z

One of my favorite education bloggers, Jose Vilson, has a must-read piece at Education Week-Teacher. In a well-written and thought-provoking piece, he discusses what teachers, at all stages of their career, can learn from the career of Jay-Z. Here is a quick excerpt:

All teachers make mistakes. At the end of the day, we have regrets. We didn't listen to a student when we should have. We didn't take advantage of a professional development opportunity. We could have better planned a lesson. None of these mistakes will break us—unless we fail to learn from them and they become patterns in our careers.

His words remind me that mistakes and missteps are part of our work. It is what we learn from these mistakes and what we do with this learning that will either strengthen our practice or cause us to burnout.

Please read more at: http://www.edweek.org/tm/articles/2011/09/27/tln_vilson.html?tkn=ZVPFGUVICPlLwYOIpDvdDdd9zvNflIj5svTb&cmp=ENL-TU-NEWS1

**Full disclosure: I am a co-author of the book Teaching 2030 that Jose references at the end.

Enjoy Fall Intercession! I’m looking forward to seeing everyone well-rested and ready to go on 10/17!

Best,

Carrie