How to communicate with a group home
Regardless of where you teach, or how affluent the area, you are very likely to encounter students who live in group homes. Students end up in group homes for various reasons. The most common...
WannabeTeacher Blog
EduMagic: a guide for pre-service teachers
The back cover of EduMagic suggests that it “challenges the thought that ‘teaching’ beings only after graduation.” Author, Professor Sam Fecich believes that pre-service teachers have “value to offer their future colleagues” and I...
Keeping track of parent contact
Keeping track of parent contact is incredibly important, especially for a new teacher. Some schools will even ask for parent contact lists at the end of the school year. Granted, most administrators won’t even...
Handling absentee parents
In many ways, an under involved or absentee parent is more difficult to handle than a helicopter or snowplow parent. These are the parents who don’t come to open house, they don’t have a...
A script for how to call a parent
I still dread calling parents after 14 years of teaching. The struggle is that usually, when you are calling a parent, you are the bearer of bad news (and that sucks!). Teachers, especially new...
Handling “helicopter” and “snowplow” parents
If you’re teaching in an affluent community, and especially if you’re teaching honors level students, you are bound to encounter helicopter parents. If you’re unfamiliar with the term helicopter parent, it means that the...
What teachers want for an end of year gift
With tools like Venmo and Apple Pay it’s easier than ever for room-mom’s/dad’s to have each parent chip in for one “class present” for the teacher at the end of the year. Even in...
To do list for the summer before your first year teaching
It is your last summer before you enter the classroom full time. What should you do with it? Below you’ll find six things you must put on your to do list for the summer...
6 actionable steps to improve the teaching profession
I went to Twitter, and through the @TeachBetterTeam and #Masterychat, I was able to ask hundreds of educators: what we can do to recruit and retain more quality teachers (other than raising teacher salaries, which is...
5 Things to improve the teaching profession right now
We all complain about the state of education and the lack of new teacher candidates, but what can we do to change the conversation about education in our country (other than raising teacher salaries,...
