Teach This! Teaching with lesson plans and ideas that rock 01/12/2013

Cool Cat Teacher Blog where remarkable teachers learning about teaching
  • Stacey Bataan’s portaportal

    a Portal build for an elementary school with links that they’ll be using on each module in class. This is a nice, concise way to share links with parents for the year.

    tags: elementary teaching portaportal

  • 10 Ways for Living Large in Lunch Duty Land

    As I look back on the best of last year and am looking month by month, this blog post about Living large in lunch duty land got quite a bit of response. Each time you are around children you have time to make a difference in the life of a child. I have lunch duty next week and instead of being crabby about it, I’m going to challenge myself to live large, interact with students and make a difference. Take a reminder about lunch duty or any duty when you interact with students. 

    tags: teaching excellence administration connection

  • Timesaving Trick: Making Time for Weekly Lesson Planning | The Art of Ed

    I totally agree with Jessica – designate ONE period a week just for lesson planning. Nice post and right on.

    tags: teaching lesson plans

  • Becoming A Better School Leader Using ‘The Pronoun Test’ – Edudemic

    Nice post about the words we use.. I’m reading a book my friend Angela Maiers recommended about “Why” and this post relating to Dan Pink’s book, Drive, relates to it as well. A nice post from Bill Powers over on Edudemic “Another point Mr. Pink made in regards to the WORDS we use is that many times organizations and people focus to much on How something will be completed when we should be focusing more on the WHY we are doing what we do. I can’t think of a better way to explain our purpose and drive as educators. WE should focus on WHY are WE doing this. WHY are WE teaching this concept? WHY is this an important topic to teach OUR students? WHY do WE allow OUR students choice in producing and creating to show learning? WHY did a particular student act out? WHY do we include character education in what WE do? WHY – I could go on and on.”

    tags: news teaching education leadership

  • Rae Pica: A Dress Code for Teachers? Or Anything Goes?

    Dress codes are touchy. My school is pretty simple – jeans only on Fridays. Men should have shorter hair. Women should be modest and not show cleavage or wear clothes too tight. I think it is vital to remember, particularly if working with adolescents that being immodest introduces an element into the classroom of sexuality that can be a distraction. While a teacher can’t help if he/ she is attractive, he/she can help whether he shows too much skin. This is a hot button, but I do agree with Rae that as teachers, if we want to be treated as professionals, that we should dress as a professional. We each have to define what that means for us, but certainly, if you’re dressing like you would for a date or to “look hot” I would question your motives. I had a great conversation with a male friend who is a teacher about this topic and he told me, on the request of anonymity, that he wished I would mention this from time to time. He says that he has felt very uncomfortable when staff members or teachers have nipples hanging out of their shirts or such short skirts that they are flashing and that it isn’t professional but also a distraction. While he’s happily married, I totally agree with him. If we want to focus on our work, let’s be professionals. Be beautiful but be covered. Some may think this crude, but I’ve heard it before the B3 should never be free: Breasts, Belly and Bottom — keep them COVERED. ;-) Meanwhile, read this great article on Huffington from my new friend Rae Pica.

    tags: news education teaching

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

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Vicki Davis

Vicki Davis has been an educator and IT director in Georgia since 2002. Today, she also works as an instructional technology coach, staying side-by-side with active teachers and students so her work stays grounded in real classrooms.

She's a mom of three, wife of one, and loves talking about the wise, transformational use of technology for teaching and doing good in the world.

She has blogged at the Cool Cat Teacher Blog since 2005 and hosts the 10 Minute Teacher Podcast and Cool Cat Teacher Talk (radio, public access TV, YouTube, and all major podcast platforms), interviewing remarkable educators around the world. Vicki focuses on what unites us — a quest for truly remarkable, life-changing teaching and learning. The goal of her work is to provide actionable, encouraging, relevant ideas for teachers, grounded in truth and shared with love.

If you talk to Vicki for long, she'll encourage you to "Relate to Educate," to "innovate like a turtle," or to be "a remarkable teacher." She loves homemade sourdough bread and cinnamon rolls and runs half marathons with her sisters. You can usually find her laughing with her students or digging into a book.

Thank you for reading, sharing, and telling your friends about the work we do here! - Vicki

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Classroom teacher Vicki Davis writes The Cool Cat Teacher Blog for remarkable educators everywhere