I had a rough day.

It wasn't the worst day. It was just a tiring day. Students were tired.

I have a computer set up next to my desk. It's not connected to the internet. Often, when students are waiting in line, they can write little notes to me on the computer. They write sweet, crazy, and random things.

One student, who is a great student with a tough attitude, was typing on the computer while waiting for me.

I looked over later on, and it simply said, "Thank you."

That definitely got me through the day.

My lesson today is simple and maybe even redundant:

We might make more of an impact than we even realize. The little things count, too.

Goodnight.

Some mistakes I made...

I made a lot of mistakes when I first started teaching. Here is some fundamental advice:

• You do NOT have to grade everything. Throw things out if you have to.
• Sometimes your lesson plans don't work out. It's ok. It happens.
• You can't do everything. Choose some areas to focus on for growth, but there will never be perfection with teaching.
• Be yourself - perhaps that sounds corny, but students sincerely appreciate you as you are. They also like honesty. "I messed up" is something they don't hear often from teachers.
• Choose one day of the week where you don't work! I do not do teaching stuff on Saturdays. I just don't.
• Ask others for help. You'd be surprised - students, teachers, parents, well most of them are great at helping out!
• Don't freak out if students don't get it right away. Don't. Learning is a process - it might take my any lessons to teach one concept.
• Avoid gossiping. Be professional at work.
• Sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy to reach the kids. That's ok.
• Let your personality shine. What makes you as a teacher? My students know I'm obsessed with cleanliness and organization, and they even tease me about it. That's fine! Don't take yourself so seriously.
• You are not their friend (most of the time, anyway). You are their teacher. Have fun, but have discipline and systems in place.

Again, my first year of teaching was the worst and I made a lot of mistakes. I am thankful for those mistakes ultimately. I know they were needed. I'm still making them, I'm sure, but I never want to go back to making mistakes with the

My Top 10 Tips for Teachers

I made a lot of mistakes when I first started teaching. Here is some fundamental advice:

• You do NOT have to grade everything. Throw things out if you have to.
• Sometimes your lesson plans don't work out. It's ok. It happens.
• You can't do everything. Choose some areas to focus on for growth, but there will never be perfection with teaching.
• Be yourself - perhaps that sounds corny, but students sincerely appreciate you as you are. They also like honesty. "I messed up" is something they don't hear often from teachers.
• Choose one day of the week where you don't work! I do not do teaching stuff on Saturdays. I just don't.
• Ask others for help. You'd be surprised - students, teachers, parents, well most of them are great at helping out!
• Don't freak out if students don't get it right away. Don't. Learning is a process - it might take my any lessons to teach one concept.
• Avoid gossiping. Be professional at work.
• Sometimes you have to do things you don't enjoy to reach the kids. That's ok.
• Let your personality shine. What makes you as a teacher? My students know I'm obsessed with cleanliness and organization, and they even tease me about it. That's fine! Don't take yourself so seriously.
• You are not their friend (most of the time, anyway). You are their teacher. Have fun, but have discipline and systems in place.

Again, my first year of teaching was the worst and I made a lot of mistakes. I am thankful for those mistakes ultimately. I know they were needed. I'm still making them, I'm sure, but I never want to go back to making mistakes with the foundations of teaching.

Help! I've lost control of my classroom!

Find the ring leaders.

There are always 2-3 students who are leading the group. Who are they?

I don't care what age they are - call home.

See what happens the next day. Do they still act up? If not, great! Did anybody else start acting up - well, they are the new ring leaders. Call home.

While not every parent will be available, most will.  Parents in general do not want to hear that their students are acting up. Here are there you get a parent who will fight with you. Here and there you get a parent who isn't responsive, but the good news is MOST do not want their kids to misbehave.

So, call home. Now! Do it! Which kids are controlling your classroom? Don't let them.

Goodnight. I'm super tired tonight, but this saved my life my first year.

Ok, the number one secret to teaching...

In my last post (if anybody read it), I talked about the number one secret to teaching, and well, here it is:

Classroom Management:

Hear me out. I know you have heard about classroom management. However, have you had actual classes in just classroom management? If you have, have you actually experienced classroom management (before student teaching)? Even in student teaching, though, you still have your mentor teacher backing you up a lot.

So, I know you know that classroom management is important, but I'm going to say something different. Classroom management is everything.

Everything in the classroom requires good classroom management. That's it.

Now, here's the thing. I admit that certain people may have certain powers. Some of us are just naturally more intimidating and classroom management comes easily. There are always going to be those teachers that just have it in them. I was not one of them.

Admittedly, I'm 5'2", young, and well, I just don't got that scary teacher look. You earn that look most of the time.

Second, I severely underestimated what it took to a manage a classroom. That's why the next few million posts (not really) will probably focus on classroom management.

So, here's my first tip for your first day. By the way, if you're reading this in the middle of the year, just bear with me - there are some things you can still do, but I'll have to talk about them in another post.

For the first day, you need to have every single little procedure planned. I do NOT care what grade level you are (K-12) or maybe even college...I've taught some college courses by the way.

Think of everything. EVERYTHING. You need a rule for everything, and again, I don't care if you teach older grades! Teachers assume that once students get older, they just get it, but that's not really it. Students get that some teachers have rules and some don't. Be the teacher that has rules for your sanity. Students will always test you. Even the 'good' ones.

Having rules does not mean you are not fun. It does not mean that you're boring. It means you want organization and some controlled chaos, which I'll talk about later. Ask yourself:

• What is my policy for restrooms?
• Sharpening pencils?
• How do I call on students?
• What if students do not have paper, pencils, or other supplies?
• How do students enter my classroom?
• What do students do once they enter my classroom?
• Are students allowed out of their seats? When?
• Are they allowed to bring food or drinks?
• How should they act in the hallway if they are going somewhere else?

Stop here. This is just the beginning. Now what about:

• Expectations for classroom discussions?
• Signals for students to calm down or be quiet?
• Group/partner work expectations?
• How do my students answer a question? Complete Sentences? Sentence Stems?
• What are my discipline procedures? (This is a big one and a whole other post...)
• How do my students address me?
• How do my students leave the classroom? At the bell?

Ok, I'm not even done. The point is there is some much to take into account before you start the year that it is extremely difficult to fix later on. This is why the first day/week is so important. Now, in my next few posts, I'll focus on some of these items. Also, I'll write about some things for the teachers who did not do so well establishing procedures their first weeks.

There is so much, but really, procedures, procedures, procedures will save your life. I'm sure there have been studies, but here's the point - they work. They just need to be establish early on. When I walked in on my first day of independent teaching, the biggest mistake I had was giving my students control by not having procedures in place. As a teacher, you want to be in control, not necessarily a dictator, of course. Still, you are the leader of the class.

Now, I want to end this post with another 'mini-lesson'...yay!

Controlled Chaos:

One misconception I had about teaching was control itself. For one, I wanted students to like me, but I also thought that students had to be quiet, or at least very quiet, at all times. This created a terrible situation. Not only did I have terrible classroom management because I did not know how to be consistent and stern, but I also freaked out when things were a little chaotic, even when students were learning.

First of all, have a signal for students to get quiet from day one. Again, I don't care what grade level you are teaching. Have students practice this  until they get. I use "give me five" and "rain" for my 6th graders.

1. Give me Five: You say  "Give me Five" and students put all 5 fingers out on one or both hands. This means they have to be still/quiet when it comes to all five senses. Do not continue lesson until all students are giving five.
2. Rain: This might work better with younger students, but I say rain, and they all go "shhhhh". This is supposed to sound like rain. This is a quick reminder

There are many more of these, but do something that works for you, your students, and your grade level. Obviously, different signals will be appropriate for different grade levels. For older grades, I'd recommend a short phrase that brings all your students together and doesn't 'embarrass' students. For younger grades, I'd recommend something fun and easy to remember.

Finally, have your students practice! One thing you'll notice is that sometimes students get lazy during the middle or end of the year with these types of signals. Don't let them. You can always do tiny lessons reminding students about the importance of such signals.

Well, it's time for me to get going, but my next post will be about Positive Behavior Reinforcement (PBS), which has been a godsend. I hope you tune in, subscribe, and leave comments as this blog grows.

Thanks for reading.

A sweet story before I share my number 1 secret (seriously, tune into the next post):

Somebody proved me wrong.

The Introduction

Every good teacher has a formal introduction on day one, right? Right? Can you answer this question? Come on, good teachers know the answer -

Stop here.

This is why I'm starting this blog. I'm still an amateur, a very skilled amateur anyway, but I feel like I'm not scared to learn anymore. Let me explain.

My first year of teaching, something you may hear a lot about depending on my mood, actually closed my eyes in a lot of ways. When I came home, I did everything in my power to avoid my job. It was that bad.

Now I'm in a different state. I'm going to stop here and I really want you to take in this next statement:

Teaching is NOT the way you think it is, and it is never the way it is shown.

Generally, teachers do not show the true side of teaching. Now, unfortunately, this blog may not be as interesting as reality TV, but then again, reality TV isn't reality anyway.

Teaching is real, and most of us, when we start, are humbled pretty quickly. Everything we ever thought about teaching was probably proven wrong within the first month of REAL teaching.

So, if you are one of those new teachers, or hey, maybe not so new, coming out of your hiding place, I'm here for you.

I understand you. No, I really do.

I know there are teachers who have great experiences early on, but in reality (there's that word again), most of do not. This blog is for everybody and anybody, but it is especially for the teachers out there who dreaded work this morning. It's for the teachers who almost cried during their prep hour, when they finally had a chance to breathe. It's for the teachers who always wanted to be teachers, until they became teachers.

I always wanted to be a teacher. I also always wanted to be a writer, and well, they say, write what you know.

One thing I know for sure, is mostly everything I was told about teaching was wrong - not because it was a lie or an untruth, but because teaching means different things to every person.

So, as the Common Core, standardized tests, observations, lesson plans, grading, and everything else weigh down on you, remember that your intuition still exists.

At the end of each blog, I want to tie in with a mini-lesson (ugh). So, here is mini-lesson number 1 for all of my lovely teachers out there:

1) Listen to your intuition, but I'm not saying this in any sort of corny way, but it probably is actually really corny.

I'm too sensitive to be a teacher, most of the time, but let me get back to the point.

When I first started teaching, my mentor teacher was considered a 'master' teacher, and well she was and is a wonderful teacher, but this isn't about her - we teachers (yes, that is correct subject pronoun...agreement) love talking about ourselves, don't we?

Well, I listened to all of her advice, and I did everything she told me to do - often times going against my intuition. Big mistake, kind of. I don't think mistake is allowed to be used in education. Let's call this a learning opportunity.

So, here I was, my second year of teaching, following the advice I received from her, every square inch of it. I was doing okay, but it just wasn't me.

One day she told me, "I knew you were ready to thrive when you told me that you were going to go with your intuition from this point on."

I absolutely did, and it is the best decision I ever made. In fact, I have yet to regret a time I went with my intuition. Don't worry, I'm sure it will happen, and then I'll have a future blog post discounting this one, and well, isn't that what is education is like? Oh, yes, I'll have a blog post about the ever-changing education, too. Actually, no, now that I think about it, I have regretted going with my intuition at times, but I've also regretted trying to be a teacher I'm not. There's a balance, which is something I'll focus on throughout this blog.

As I wrap up, I really am excited about this. I want to hear from teachers around the world. I want to hear all of your perspectives. And, hey, if I can help one, even one teacher, I will be happy. Just writing this blog is helping me and just knowing that somebody could possibly read this makes my inner dreamer (the one who wants to be a writer) sigh peacefully. At the end of the day, isn't that how we mostly feel about our students? Or is it that, too, some corny misinformation?

If you enjoyed this, I'd love you to subscribe and look at my next post entitled:

The Number One Secret to Teaching THEY Don't Want You to Know.

Yes, I capitalized almost every single word, and yes I was trying to be funny,  but I'm sure it wasn't.

Well, hang in there my dear teachers, and I look forward to the next post. I'm not grading those papers tonight though.

(PS:  You don't have to grade everything.)