1-833-933-4TFD Blog
Providing Meaningful Professional Development
Listen If we’re being honest, most of us have been subjected to hours of professional development that either didn’t apply to us, didn’t interest us, or were not the best use of our time. If we’re being honest, few among us have neglected to grade papers we’ve smuggled into a...
How Do I Deal with Conflict at School?
Listen Conflict at the workplace is stressful in any traditional business, but teaching is such a personal career, and having a team that cannot coalesce can be exhausting and demoralizing. Team planning meetings, lunchtime, PLC’s, and hallway bantering may be too much to handle when palpable tension is present. While...
Using Curriculum in the Elementary Classroom
Listen A curriculum is what you make of it. Unfortunately, no one really tells teachers in most districts what to make of curriculum. Few schools tell you how much or how often to use it, and even fewer tell you exactly how. When you adopt a new curriculum, there is...
Important Daily Math Routines for Pre-K Through 2nd Grade
Listen Just as literacy requires daily interaction with a variety of specified information and practice utilizing that information, so does math. With one or two short, intentional math interactions each day, you can help your students build vital math skills that last a lifetime. Remember, studies show that all children...
Pro Tips for Integrating Social Studies into Other Subjects
Listen Social Studies is one of the most misunderstood and underappreciated subjects for many teachers, which is unfortunate because social studies is a goldmine for ELAR, LOTE, math, science, and fine arts integration. There are so many things that can be taught and expanded upon with information in social studies. ...
Combatting Personal Bias in the Classroom
Listen Humans have a natural tendency to want to group themselves with other people who are similar. It’s likely an instinct that at one point helped us survive and keep our families intact. Now, however, the instinct can be less helpful. There are many ways we separate ourselves including race,...
Dysgraphia and Writing Disorders: Beginning with Dyslexia
Listen The first cases of dyslexia were written about in the 1880s, around the time both Samuel Orton and Anna Gillingham were both born. In the 1920s, the two had started working toward what is now known as the Orton-Gillingham approach, which laid the foundation for educating students with dyslexia...
Dealing with Difficult Parents of Middle and High School Students
Listen It has often been said that teaching would be easy if it was just dealing with students; it’s the adults who make it so difficult. Parents can be a teacher’s greatest ally, but it just takes one or two difficult parents to make it feel like they are all...
Dealing with Difficult Parents -In the Elementary Setting
Listen The relationships we build with families through the school are unique and sometimes filled with complications. We tend to feel very strongly about our students, and we wouldn’t be in the education profession if we didn’t want the best for each one of them. Yet, we often forget that...
Important Daily Language Routines for Pre-K
Listen Why? You may already have many routines established in your early childhood classroom, but do you know why you’re doing each thing? It’s an important question to ask yourself (and possibly the teachers around you). Some of the traditions and routines we’ve used for years just aren’t developmentally appropriate...
Building Executive Functioning Skills
Listen This is kind of a book review and summary for one of our favorite resources - the Smart but Scattered family of books. We’ve mentioned the original before briefly in other articles but wanted to expand upon some of the ideas promoted by the books and coursework the authors...
New Elementary Substitute Survival Guide
Listen Substitutes are incredibly vital members of the school district community. A good substitute is a teacher’s absolute best friend. While many teachers will leave work for the students to do and lessons for you to teach while they are gone, for the first few times you sub, they may...