Last time, I shared a long and impossible list of things that teachers like us feel expected to do. Many of you wrote and shared your additions to the list (e.g., club sponsorships, lunch duty), making it even more accurate, and even longer, and even more oppressive. Suffice it to say, the default conditions of […]
teacher LTF
The Pressure
Teaching can pretty quickly turn you into a basket case. Consider a list of responsibilities — of things that we “have to do” — that our colleague Lynsay Fabio, a secondary English teacher, came up with recently. (Note: A potential side effect of reading this list is shortness of breath.) Read the class novel myself, […]
The Time Warp Scenario: How to Get Unstuck On Big Projects
Whether you’re planning a unit or prepping to lead PD or preparing for a job interview or writing a book proposal or drafting a speech, if you’re like me, you’ll inevitably run into moments where you get stuck. What I’m talking about are those times when the internal dialogue is like this: “AHHHH! I’M GOING […]
You Actually Can, and Should, Shut if Off
Busyness serves as a kind of existential reassurance, a hedge against emptiness; obviously your life cannot possibly be silly or trivial or meaningless if you are so busy, completely booked, in demand every hour of the day. — Tim Kreider for The New York Times “You know, teaching is one of those jobs that you just […]
How (and Why) to Ask Administrators for PD Funding
Every year, the US spends billions of dollars on teacher professional development. That’s a lot of money. If you stacked up $100 bills one on top of the other, a billion-dollar stack would be taller than the Burj Khalifa — the world’s tallest building. Unfortunately, much of this money is wasted. As Dan Weisberg of […]