5 MORE THINGS EVERY TEACHER SHOULD DO EACH SUMMER

I previously posted my 5 Things Every Teacher Should Do Each Summer, which I still stand by and highly recommend you check out. But let's be honest: as teachers we put our whole heart and 99.7% of our energy into teaching during the school year so we have a lot to make up for come summer time. That's why I've got:

1. Read

Perhaps I'm a little biased as a Reading teacher, but I think everyone should have a stack of books ready to read when they have some free time. I get a little overzealous with this each year and take home way more than I could possibly read. This year I brought home:

The Secret Life of Bees
Fever 1793
Speak
Paper Towns
Okay for Now
Unwind
A Lesson Before Dying
Kiss Kill Vanish

I also brought home several academic books to skim over the summer, and Mechanically Inclined to read. And I have several academic articles and research reports to look at. And books on hold at the library. And then I bought a new book... So yeah, I went a bit crazy.

2. Improve Your Health

Have you run yourself ragged during the school year? (Who am I kidding? Of course you have!) Take some time this summer to rejuvenate and take care of yourself. My primary goals this summer are to get back to eating healthy meals, and to get on my treadmill! I started the Zombie 5k program forever ago but never finished. This summer I'm committed to completing the program.

Also go and pamper yourself a bit. Get a fresh haircut, a nice pedicure, or a relaxing massage. If you don't want to spend a lot, look for a beauty school or college nearby that offers discount services for letting students do the work. Students in those schools need a certain number of practice hours and they're always looking for new victims volunteers.

3. Purge

This can apply to your home or your classroom (if you're crazy like me and will going in during the summer). Chances are you've got stacks of old receipts to file, old gifts you never wanted, clothes that don't fit, outdated class posters from the 80s, and some expired cough drops sitting around. Time to get rid of the junk, and breathe in a sigh of relief when you see how much more open your space becomes. If you haven't already read it, check out The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. The author does get a little extreme and spiritual with her belongings, but it gave me the motivation to finally get rid of tons of clutter. Also, rolling your socks is the best thing ever.

4. Socialize

When's the last time you talked to your second cousin who has the same unique hobby as you? Was your nephew teething the last time you saw him and now he's applying for college? Now's the time to reach out. Sure, take a few weeks at the start of summer to hibernate and recharge, but then get out there. Look up some old friends, get together with family, go out with colleagues with a "no work talk" rule, or even just spend some quality time with members of your own household. Trust me, being aspie, this is hard for me, but I know there are benefits and it's worth the effort.

5. Make a List

Hmm, maybe this should have been the first thing on this list, but oh well. It's already typed and I'm too lazy to renumber everything now. Plus I want reading to be first because, you know - biased Reading teacher.

Anyway, one thing I find most years is that I let the summer get away from me. A week or two of just relaxing turns into a month and a half, followed by panic of "Where did the summer go?!" and "I didn't do anything!" So if you follow nothing else in this post, at least do this: Take a few minutes to sit down and put together a master list of what you want to do this summer. There should be fun and relaxing stuff, home projects or tasks you need to take on, and some work related stuff you never have time for during the school year.

To make this easier for you I've put together a printable summer planner which you can grab for free here:

Looking for ideas? Here's my list:

So, what are your plans for the summer?



Note: this post contains a few affiliate links for books, which means I receive small commission if you decide to purchase anything through Amazon using my links. I only recommend items I've purchased and used myself, so trust that everything I post is legit, and I haven't received anything free or been asked to post any of these items : )

SOME TIMES YOU JUST WANT TO PINCH THEIR CHEEKS

One thing I believe in very strongly, though I haven't taken the time to discuss it much here, is building a rapport with your students. My situation may be different because I work in special education (though not with students with profound impairments etc), but I've found that even at the high school level, students crave respect and affection.

Working in high school, many of our students act like our signs of affection and caring don't matter, but often the kids who shun it most, most desperately need it.

Case in point: We have a student who barely spoke to me in his first year with me. He explicitly said he doesn't trust people and doesn't need anybody "getting up in their feelings" over him. If I tried to give him a hug, he'd run from the room.

We've now had this student in my class for three years. He still acts like I annoy him, and that he doesn't want to be around, yet he finds his way to our room repeatedly throughout the day. Despite knowing that he seeks us out, he still acts very closed off.

But yesterday something interesting happened. I had to leave early for a doctor's appointment. When this student came by our room, the following exchange happened between him and my co-teacher Janice:



Student: Where's Ms M---?

Janice: She had to leave for a doctor's appointment.

Student: Yo, wait. What kind of doctor's appointment? Do I need to be worried?

Janice: No, it was just a regular appointment.

Student: Oh, like a check up or something? Ok, good. because I'm gonna need her for the next twenty years.



So know that, even if it seems like you aren't getting through, and that the kids think you don't matter - you're wrong. It's working, they need it, and it's worth it.

ON BEHALF OF THE SLOW KIDS

Today my sister started teaching her students about Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. To introduce it, she had them write down what they felt was essential for life - what we cannot live without - on index cards.

The kids came up with the basics like food, water, oxygen, and shelter, as well as the luxuries you'd expect like internet, cell phone, Playstation, etc.

As she was writing all of their answers on the board, her student with autism and serious processing delays was still working on his card.

After what of course felt like an eternity, he handed his card in. Hearing his answers brought tears to my eyes.

There on his card was written: art, hope, help, and strength.

While everyone focused on our external needs, he zeroed in on what it means to be human and survive in this world.

Even writing about it now is getting me misty eyed. This is a student who is so in his own world that people assume he knows nothing and hears nothing. The kind of kid we teachers are often guilty of looking past, because it's easier than asking five times and waiting several minutes for a response. The very kind of kid we should be reaching out towards.

So I ask you, next time a student is too frustrating to deal with, too slow to respond, or seems to be in a other world, give them your time and patience. What you get back may surprise you.

DISORDERLY TEACHING CLASSOOM

Oh my gosh, it took me way longer than I planned to get this post up. I take a lot of pride in my classroom and have wanted a chance to show it off. : ) Apologies for the image heavy post, but how can you do a classroom tour without a ton of pictures?

First a brief bit of background: When designing our classroom, we had our students and our goals in mind. We knew many of our students would never pass the state exam, due to their various learning disorders and disabilities, so our goal was not to drill them repeatedly to force them to do well. Instead we felt the best thing we could do was teach our students to actually enjoy reading.

Many of them have been forced to read and dragged through literacy programs since elementary school. Now in high school they've spent years hating reading and many can't think of a single time they enjoyed reading something. They've just resigned themselves to being forced to do it (or fake it) for a few more years until they graduate, after which they plan to avoid reading as much as possible.

With that in mind, we designed Starbooks, a warm, inviting classroom where you'd actually want to cuddle up with a good book. Rather than a coffee café, it's a book café where students get free choice on what they want to read, and time to actually read for fun.

We do plenty of targeted instruction and work as well, but building a love of reading is at the heart of it.

Without further ado... Welcome to Starbooks.

Here's the front half of our classroom. We went for an eclectic collection of tables and chairs, all gathered from our district warehouse and transported by ourselves (and some very kind family members).

The colorful padded chairs had been run down, mildewy, grey things, but my co-teacher Janice reupholstered them, replacing the padding and matching the fabric to our room's color scheme.

 

You can see a full panorama of the classroom here to get a sense of the size and layout:

Our student resource center, including the Turn-It-In bins, writing utensils, and any other supplies the kids may need.

 


We went with the CAFE acronym, created by "the Sisters" in The CAFE Book: Engaging All Students in Daily Literary Assessment and Instruction. We hadn't even heard of CAFE before deciding on our café theme, so it's was a fun coincidence.

 


Our Lingo List (previously the word door neé word wall). The yellow labels are for our ELL student who recently moved here from Puerto Rico.

Across from our Lingo List, we have our Dead Word Graveyard. These words have been banned from answers to encourage our students to expand their vocabulary and not be lazy in their writing. 

This is our multipurpose area for mini conferences, and for students to sit outside of the group for a while if they need some space.

 Books! What good is a Reading classroom without books? Our goal this year was to have 2000 books in our class library. This is our series shelf, one of five bookshelves in the room.

 Comfy Reading corner. Students are ONLY allowed to sit here when reading their books.

This year we tried sorting our books on the shelves using photo boxes. It's great for separating by genre and they can be moved to different areas of the room easily.

Part of enjoying reading is sharing book recommendations with others. Students love recommending a book so they can be put in the display case. We put the book they recommend, and a framed photo of the student who made the recommendation. We threw in some party decorations and fairy lights to jazz it up.

 

Our current learning board. We usually have the anchor chart for our current topic, plus the matching required Marzano scale up.

We also keep up with announcements and events on our board since our kids sometimes get tripped up by the rotating schedule, and may miss announcements. You can see how long ago I actually took these pictures!

It's all about Reading!

This is our Computer On Wheels, aka the COW. I don't know why we're the only teachers in the school to think to put actual cows on our COW, but it makes it easy to find whenever we need to get it back from IT.

Ah, non-negotiables. In addition to class rules, we have specific items that are absolutely not negotiable in any way, shape, or form. We teach our kids to advocate for themselves and speak up if they think something is illogical or unfair, but they know these are off limits.

We also use this to teach the words/parts non-, negotiate, and -able.

One of my favorite quotes. I made this poster years ago when my classroom theme was The Magic of Reading.

I somehow managed to not get a good picture of my desk, but this is the shelf behind it. We try to change it each season. This was for the start of the read to represent me.

My small group area. When we got a budget to redo this classroom in exchange for giving up our previous classrooms and team teaching, we were both super excited to be able to get these tables for small group work. They seem pretty common in elementary, but not in high school.

It's Skippyjon Jones! This is Janice's favorite book series, and she reads to our students every year. You may not expect high school students (some with criminal records) to enjoy a picture book, but they will gather 'round, sit on the floor, and get into it.

More yellow labels for our ELL student. Love him!

And finally, what you don't see when bloggers post pictures of their classrooms - all the mess they had to hide. I told you we have around 2,000 books, and we did NOT have them all sorted by the start of the year. We ended up shoving them in one of the kitchens (our room was previously a culinary room) and worked on sorting them from there: p

I hope you enjoyed a look at our classroom. I wish I could give a better sense of the room but I did my best! If you can think of anything else you'd like to see, or have any questions, PLEASE comment below!!!

Thanks for sticking through this whole post! : )

I'M GETTING DIAGNOSED

A super brief post (without even a title image!), to say that I finally got around to making an appointment with a psychologist to pursue a diagnosis of Asperger's and Attention Deficit Disorder.

I've been planning to call for a while now but kept putting it off until after the holidays. Today I had no excuse, and after leaving my cell phone out in the backyard yesterday and spending nearly half an hour trying to find it, I knew it was time.

 

The call went perfectly fine, but I had such horrible phone anxiety about it before hand that I was flexing and twitching my hands and arms (stimming?) and really had to psych myself up for it. Then the woman had to call me back, which gave me even more anxiety!

It was dreadful. But I survived and hopefully will end up the better for it.

USING COLORING FOR STUDENTS WITH ADHD

Just a brief post today to tell you guys about the wonders of coloring, even in the high school classroom.

There's been tons of research done about the benefits of coloring (see links at the bottom of this post), but I'm writing from personal experience as a teacher.

One of the best discoveries we made in the last few years in our classroom was the power of coloring to settle students with ADHD. One of our students is a delight. He loves to learn, is first to class every day with a smile on his face, and encourages others. But some days his ADHD is so bad that he cannot function in class. I'm talking about a high school student climbing into boxes and meowing, jumping around the room, and generally creating havoc. He doesn't mean to be disruptive, but he literally cannot control his energy and impulses.

On those days, we pull out coloring books and small point markers. He will literally bound up, grab the supplies and hunker down in a corner. He can go for two hours (we're on block schedule), just sitting quietly, when moments before he was bouncing off the walls. It really brings out the magic of Magic Markers : p

We like the Creative Haven Coloring Books, because they have clean lines and good small details (from our experience, regular coloring pages with large shapes don't work). They're also cheap enough on Amazon to pick up several (see referral links below).

Some students like more whimsical designs, but my first choice would be anything with symmetry or tessellations. Trying to match their colors to the symmetry or design helps give their mind something to focus on.

                             

I also recommend giving them markers. The bright, clear colors are more visually pleasing and satisfying than the uneven color of crayons or colored pencils. It also lets them focus on the color pattern, rather than getting frustrated with trying to get solid color fills. Make sure they have plenty of colors to choose from. We just give them a full marker bin so they have free choice.

So, next time one of your students is driving you, the class, and themselves crazy, hand them something to color, then let me know how it worked!


For more information, check out these websites:

Coloring Isn't Just For Kids. It Can Actually Help Adults Combat Stress - Huffington Post

Why Adults Are Buying Coloring Books (for Themselves) - The New Yorker

Why Adults Are Going Back to Colouring Books - Psychologics

8 AWESOME GIFTS FOR NEW TEACHERS

Today at work we threw a surprise party for my sister Momo for both her 30th birthday and to congratulate her for getting her first teaching job. Unfortunately I have no pictures because I was too bust setting up and then trying to keep everyone quiet, lest we lose the surprise aspect of the party. lol

Naturally, I wanted to give my sister a gift that was both useful and meaningful so I put together a gift basket (or rather several gift bags) of items that I find essential as a teacher. I've decided to share that list with you, both for people looking for good gifts for teachers, and for teachers themselves on the look out for some tools to add to their arsenal.

Note: this post contains affiliate links, which means I receive small commission if you decide to purchase anything through Amazon using my links. I only recommend items I've purchased and used myself, so trust that everything I post is legit, and I haven't received anything free or been asked to post any of these items : )

So without further ado:

Paper Mate Flair Pens

 

An absolute must for any teacher! Perfect for color coding, annotating, or just grading with something other than red! I use these babies EVERY day in my classroom and I love, love, love them. They write beautifully, the colors are vibrant, they don't bleed through, and they seem to last a long time. I’ve had mine for a couple of years and haven’t had to replace them yet.




Seville Mesh Desk Organizer

I love this organizer so much I bought a second one for my co-teacher so she could revel in its magic (and so our desks could match). I actually got mine at Costco but it seems they no longer carry it so Amazon to the rescue! I really like that it has both horizontal pull out drawers which are great for loose papers, and vertical dividers for file folders and notebooks.



Officemate Deluxe Rotary Organizer

Is there a single teacher who doesn’t have one of these spinny dervish organizer things on their desk? They’re super useful and this one I found is even better than my own. In fact it was the highlight of the party and everyone was asking where they could get one. It's no surprise. I mean it’s got a built in tape dispenser and Post-it compartment. How cool is that?



What Teachers Make:
In Praise of the Greatest Job in the World

I picked this one up on a whim since I love Taylor Mali’s poem What Teachers Make. If you haven't seen the video, check it out here:

I think every teacher needs a little motivation, especially when you're first starting out. Mali understands what really matters as a teacher and always gets me pumped.




Lined Easel Pads

These are great for making anchor charts, and the fact that they’re lined makes my OCD heart happy. No crooked anchor charts!



Sharpie Flip Chart Markers

Because you need good markers to make good charts : )



PaperPro One Finger Stapler

I LOVE this stapler... and apparently so do other people since it's always going missing from my desk. It's super easy to use, which is great for those times when the copier decides it doesn't want to staple your 100 packets and you have to do it by hand.


Adorable Sticky Notes

Because OMG how cute!

Bees Page Tabs

Chick Page Tabs

Animal Sticky Notes



Honorable Mentions

These items I didn’t buy because we’d already picked them up during summer sales, or she has easy access to them from supplies at work. I’m posting them anyway, in case you found this post while looking for teacher gift ideas and need a bit more. Any teacher would be happy to receive these.


Pencils: Teachers can never, ever, EVER have enough pencils.

Dry Erase Markers: Go for a variety of colors instead of the boring old black, red, blue and green. I like choosing two main colors each month to punch up our daily agenda.

Dry Erase Board Cleaner: Please, don't use anything else to clean a white board. You eventually ruin the finish and the board is never the same.

Sharpies: A mix of round and fine tip is best, to provide versatility, as well as multiple colors.

Highlighters: The old standard yellow can be great, but multi-colored highlighters are amazing for annotating text and coding evidence. I bought 20 5-packs of highlights this summer!

Post-Its: Another supply teachers use and need ALL THE TIME.

Tool Kit: You'd be surprised how often this comes in handy. Make sure whatever you get has a hammer, needle nose pliers, measuring tape, and a ratcheting screwdriver with multiple bit types and sizes. A level is a great one too, especially if the teacher is your life is a bit OCD.

Sewing Kit: If you're anything like me, then chances are kids come running to you when they have wardrobe issues. Not only can you fix it for them with basic sewing supplies, but it gives you an opportunity to teach them a valuable life skill.

Paper Trimmer: I HIGHLY recommend getting a sliding blade trimmer versus a guillotine style. I have yet to meet a guillotine cutter that's aligned at a correct 90 degree angle.

Microwave: This can literally change a teacher's life. It opens up a new world of options for lunch and snacks, plus it can save that cup of coffee you forgot about an hour earlier.