FBCS, Sept. 2019 Motivation My sixth-grade teacher pulled me into the hall for a conversation. “I know you can do better than this. These pages are sloppy and this is not your best work,” she said. The workbook pages she was referring to...

Photo by Ryan Fields on Unsplash In my last blog post I talked about the art of noticing your students. This goes two ways: sometimes we notice commendable things, and sometimes we notice annoying things. We know that we are supposed to...

Photo by Kuanish Reymbaev on Unsplash “I can’t wait for the first day of school,” commented my ready-for-second-grade niece one day at the end of June. There are others anticipating the first day too. Some of you are looking forward to...

For a number of years, I used the Character Sketch books as a basis for our devotional time at school. Each month, we focused on a specific character quality. Throughout the month, we learned interesting facts about animals that display...

“Don’t forget to pray for Monster!” This request was called out just as I was preparing to pray at the end of the school day. I had to think quickly—“Who is Monster?” Then I remembered: Monster is a cow that has a hurt leg. So we prayed...

Ever hear a student complain that they’ll never use the algebra they’re struggling through? Or that diagrams in language arts have nothing to do with real life? The next time you hear statements like those, tell your students to be like a...

Book Review: Total Participation Techniques: Making Every Student an Active Learner b y Persida Himmele & William Himmele One of my goals this year was to involve my students in my lessons and learning as much as I possibly could. This...

“How was your second day of school?” I asked a new teacher. “Not so good,” she replied. “I’m finding more things I need to learn and figure out.” She wondered how my day was. I noted that it was going well, but I was very tired. She agreed...

Photo by Katherine Volkovski on Unsplash Albert Einstein said, “Education is what remains after one has forgotten what one has learned in school.” Clearly, Einstein had a good education; he was considered to be the most influential...

I am a writer. I have been a teacher. And as a teacher—writer or not—I found writing one of the most difficult skills I ever tried to teach. Looking back, I think I focused too much on writing as an assignment—a thing that had to be...

“It seems like no one cares about me! No one wants to play with me.” This was the perception Brenda shared. I assured her that we do care about her, and tried to gently help her to see that if she is being mean to other children they are...

I grew up believing that fairy tales were nonsensical time wasters. For decades, I never questioned that belief. Then, in a literature class, the teacher offered a new perspective. Startled, I tucked the thought away, where like a seed, it...

Image by Eric Michelat from Pixabay We know that our spiritual heritage and teachings and life come first. (Seek ye first…) My purpose in writing is not to address our spiritual/church/congregational walk directly—I leave that to our...

“I told my class if they weren’t quiet at lunchtime, there would be consequences. Now I can’t think of a suitable consequence!” the new teacher told her mentor. Then the two teachers discussed consequences and management of the classroom....

In my experience, each group of history students has at least one Mr. Why-Didn’t-They-Just question. “Why didn’t they just agree to quit fighting?” “Why didn’t they just invent flamethrowers?” “Why didn’t they just change their religion?”...

Teaching is a stressful job. Teachers must prepare classes, grade student work, plan special activities, and deal with relationship issues. You have so much to do and so much to remember that you inevitably forget something. Forgetting...

Because I love books, I have a special fund designated for books to expand the library at school as well as my personal library. But not just any book--not all books are of the same quality. Because there are far too many good books easily...

Mrs. Luella Bates Washington Jones is the unforgettable character from Langston Hughes’s short story “Thank You, Ma’am .” She is unforgettable to the fourteen-year-old boy who tries to steal her purse and unforgettable to your students...

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Shouts of hilarity rang across the back yard of my cousins’ farm in Indiana. We were playing hide and seek on a Saturday afternoon. Uncle Tim, who was younger than the oldest four cousins, had once again...

Not a Good Day “The directions say I am supposed to find fourteen adverbs in this story,” she said. “I only found three of them, two not’s and one very .” I was tired of this day and of this conversation, and inwardly I rolled my eyes. Of...