Sunday, October 8, 2017

The Hardest Time of the School Year

I always felt like October was the hardest part of the school year. The honeymoon period at the beginning of the school year always seemed to peter out around this time, as students would begin to push boundaries like never before.

If your school is on a six week grading period like the ones in my region, the first report cards are just being sent out, and how your kids react to them affects their behavior. If they passed without much effort and are content with it, they might slack off and goof around because things seem too easy. If they failed and have a history of struggling in school, they might already view your class as a lost cause and try to give up.

For students and teachers, this is often the middle of the longest uninterrupted period in your school calendar, with no holidays or special events to break things up until Thanksgiving.

If you're already seeing the signs (or already struggling), I'm with you. I've been there. My short book Teaching is Not a Four Letter Word: How to Stop Worrying and Love the Job was written for just this time of year.

It's a simple, straightforward collection of the best advice I could give to new and struggling teachers, and I believe you'll find help to get you through October and beyond.

It's available as a paperback, PDF or eBook from Lulu or as a Prime-eligible paperback or Kindle version on Amazon.


Thursday, April 27, 2017

How To Save Shared Google Docs for Editing

It's very humbling to know that even though it's been three years since I shared something new on this blog that many, many educators are still discovering and rediscovering these resources.

I get daily reminders of this in my inbox, in the form of requests for access to various Google Docs I have shared. I respond to each request, but sometimes the requests come from servers that don't allow incoming messages (some school districts still do this), and I also just wanted to post a reminder to save you the trouble of waiting.



When you click "Share" on a Google Doc, you're asking for permission to edit the original document, not for your own copy to edit.

Instead of clicking "Share", you can save or download a copy to edit as you like by going to File > Save a copy or File > Download as. The former saves a copy to your Google Docs, the latter lets you choose the format you like to save it on your hard drive.

Again, thank you to the many educators who continue to find useful things among these many years of ideas and resources. I'm glad to be able to contribute something to this noble profession despite no longer being in the classroom.

Best of luck with the rest of your school year!