Clifton Eby addresses challenges in teaching advanced English grammar and punctuation. He begins with an editing exercise and goes on to cover:

• Teaching Strategies

• Key Grammar Rules

• Challenging Concepts

• Student Engagement

This lecture is part of a series titled ‘Wolves at the Door. The seminars vary from about 4 to 10 minutes each and address different problems that can plague our schools if we aren’t proactive.

• Disrespect

• Bullying

• Incompletion

• Mockery

• Tardiness

This lecture is part of a series titled ‘Wolves at the Door. The seminars vary from about 4 to 10 minutes each and address different problems that can plague our schools if we aren’t proactive.

• Disrespect

• Bullying

• Incompletion

• Mockery

• Tardiness

This lecture is part of a series titled ‘Wolves at the Door. The seminars vary from about 4 to 10 minutes each and address different problems that can plague our schools if we aren’t proactive.

• Disrespect

• Bullying

• Incompletion

• Mockery

• Tardiness

This lecture is part of a series titled ‘Wolves at the Door. The seminars vary from about 4 to 10 minutes each and address different problems that can plague our schools if we aren’t proactive.

• Disrespect

• Bullying

• Incompletion

• Mockery

• Tardiness

This lecture is part of a series titled ‘Wolves at the Door. The seminars vary from about 4 to 10 minutes each and address different problems that can plague our schools if we aren’t proactive.

• Disrespect

• Bullying

• Incompletion

• Mockery

• Tardiness

noone showed up yet, so please come

Just show up and we'll see if we can hire you.

Documents for School Boards

• “Boards, Principals, and Administrators: Who Does What?” by Jonas Sauder Who Does What? (thedockforlearning.org)
• “Board Job Descriptions” by Gerald Miller Board Job Descriptions (thedockforlearning.org)
• Sample Parent and Student Handbook SMS Handbook 2016–17 (thedockforlearning.org)
• Sample Faculty Handbook  Faculty Handbook (thedockforlearning.org)
• Classroom Observation Checklists by Jonas Sauder  Classroom Observation Checklists (thedockforlearning.org)

Talks for School Board Members

Policy Ideas

The exact policy needs can vary from school to school, but here are a list of areas for which policy guidance would be helpful in most schools.

1. Attendance regulation – sick days, doctor visits, vacation, etc; teachers and students
2. First grade entrance requirements
3. Pass/fail policy
4. Homework
5. Recording grades – daily? weight of quizzes and tests
6. Discipline procedures
7. Property damage
8. Teacher/student conduct ( maybe this is falls under guidelines, not policy )
9. Admission (non-member patrons )
10. Technology use for staff and students ( computers, video for instruction, etc. )
11. Graduation requirements
12. Child Safety policy

Recommended Books for School Boards

• Doing Good Better by Edgar Stoesz and Chester Raber
• Called to Serve by Max De Pree
• Best Practices for Effective Boards by Fairbanks, Gunter, and Couchenour

Gospel Haven Academy is a community school with 175 students in Millersburg, OH. Our mission statement is: Gospel Haven Academy empowers students to seek the Kingdom of God by educating through the lends of a Biblical worldview. We inspire students to discover the person of God, leading them to faith service, and community. Our vision is: Shaping Hearts, Engaging Minds, Impacting Generations. We are looking for a 3rd grade homeroom teacher. There will be approximately 20 students in 3rd grade for the 23/24 school year. Please contact Carla Kauffman at 440-477-5249 or misscjk@gmail.com if you have interest in this opportunity. Thank you!

Gospel Haven Academy is a community school with 175 students in Millersburg, OH. Our mission statement is: Gospel Haven Academy empowers students to seek the Kingdom of God by educating through the lends of a Biblical worldview. We inspire students to discover the person of God, leading them to faith service, and community. Our vision is: Shaping Hearts, Engaging Minds, Impacting Generations. We are looking for a 1st grade homeroom teacher. There will be approximately 20 students in 1st grade. A part time aide will be available to you. Please contact Carla Kauffman at 440-477-5249 or misscjk@gmail.com if you have interest in this opportunity. Thank you!

Maranatha Christian School is a well-established 50 year old school in the farm lands of central Pennsylvania. The 145-student school has well-developed routines and procedures in place with a decent budget for curricula and materials. We have both an elementary principal and an administrator for added teacher support. If you are looking for a place to grow in your teaching career, this is the place for you. Contact our administrator at the email listed.

Being organized is often an indicator of a student’s success in school, and it certainly does help a student function better.  When everything is in its right place, all assignments written down, and student activities directed in an organized way (especially in the younger grades), students are much better organized and function better as they progress through school. Students also experience less stress when everything is arranged and done in an orderly fashion.  Following are a few main aspects of student organization, along with suggestions on how to encourage your students to achieve them.

• Keep desks and/or lockers organized. I had a kindergartener come to school for the first time today. After welcoming him at the front door, I showed him where to put his lunch and where to hang his coat. I then walked him to his desk and helped him organize it: large items on the left, smaller items on the right. After using his colored pencils, I helped him make sure that the colored pencils went in the correct zipper pouch while the regular pencils and erasers were on the other side. If a student is taught to be organized from the start, it will often stay with him. Good habits have been established from the beginning, and the expectation of orderliness is set.

If students have not been taught to do this or for some reason do not organize their spaces, teachers can do much to instill the concept in them. Teach them how to do it, talk about it often, model how to do it, encourage it, then expect it. Give them time to do it quickly and quietly. I have often done a slow countdown (10, 9, 8, 7, . . . . ) expressly for the purpose of cleaning and organizing desks and picking up trash on the floor once the desks are organized. (I give students one “free” trip to the trash can.) Also having unannounced desk or locker checks fairly often does wonders to encourage this. Leave a small reward on the desks of the students who had a clean and organized desk, or let them go to recess first while the other students stay and organize theirs.

• Assign a “desk buddy.” Ask an older student to spend a few minutes each day with a younger student, helping him organize his desk. The accountability and assistance will often help a disorganized student to become more organized.
• Provide younger students with a student notebook organizer; expect older ones to have their own. When giving an assignment and due date, tell younger students and encourage older students to write down the due dates on their calendars. I often have a corner of the whiteboard reserved also for this purpose.
• Give accountability. Especially with large assignments, hold students accountable. It will help them develop good habits and make it almost impossible for them to procrastinate. With junior high students, I require students to turn in every step of their research papers, and I let them see me recording the grades. They stay much more organized, are much less fearful and stressed about it, and get higher grades every time this is required of them.
• Hold an end-of-day meeting. Spend one or two minutes asking students what they could do to be better prepared for the next day. Do they need to take a book home to study for a test? Is anything due the next day? Should they work on one step of an upcoming project tonight? Encourage them to check their calendar/organizers and to put a book in their backpacks if they need to. This practice should progress from being teacher-led to student-led, and finally to just a verbal reminder and time provided by the teacher to do it, depending on the students’ ages and abilities.

Most students are not naturally organized, and many have not been taught how to be organized. With gentle encouragement and the teaching of a few simple skills, students can learn to be organized themselves.

This scene is familiar in the lower elementary classroom: students gather around their teacher or the librarian on a carpet, looking at the pictures, and listening to the story. Or maybe they are sitting at their desks after lunch, relaxed and listening to the teacher reading a book before starting the afternoon lessons. But for most older elementary students, and especially middle school and high school students, read-alouds have been replaced with reading assignments for the students to complete on their own, all too often focused on standardized testing objectives.

Why Read Aloud To Older Students?

1. A major reason for read-alouds is to demonstrate to students of any age a love for good literature. Reading interesting stories can help reluctant readers to fall in love with reading, instead of just seeing it as a boring assignment.
2. Reading aloud allows the teacher to expose children to different books and genres, including the classics, that the students might not pick up on their own. Some of the teacher’s favorite books might have sections that are inappropriate for students of a certain age, so the teacher can modify language, skip small parts in the story, or summarize certain sections when reading aloud.
3. Reading aloud helps the students connect with their teacher, by seeing his or her commitment to reading. The reader and listener form an attachment, enhanced when the teacher stops reading to discuss certain points. This can bring strong life lessons to the students listening and allow them to form perspectives on issues the book characters are experiencing that the students have not gone through personally.
4. Read-alouds help students to learn about other cultures and life experiences, to feel empathy and compassion for others, and to teach the students how to act in certain circumstances.
5. In a practical sense, reading aloud allows the teacher to model reading strategies, such as reading with emotion and figuring out the meanings of unfamiliar words from the context. Listeners also increase their vocabulary, writing skills, language skills, and imagination. English language learners can also pick up vocabulary and grammar patterns from listening to stories being read.
6. By older grades, most students do not have many recesses or breaks built into the school day. A read-aloud time gives a chance for students to relax.
7. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, research shows that students who are read to are more likely to keep reading on their own.

How Do I Read Aloud To Older Students?

1. One important factor in reading aloud to older students is to choose a book that they will like. The book should be on or slightly above their grade level and reading ability. It needs to be about a topic in which they are interested. Two helpful sources in finding books to share are the books Honey for a Child’s Heart by Gladys Hunt and Best Books for Kindergarten through High School from BJU Press.
2. The teacher must read dynamically. Nothing bores a listener—child or adult—more than a monotone. The teacher should always read ahead to know what is coming and to prepare how to read each section.
3. Rather than pushing rapidly through the book, the reader can stop periodically and discuss both content and writing style. This teaches the listener to engage with the story and also gives opportunity to point out literary and writing terms.
4. “And after that, Mrs. Ludmiller tripped, falling into the – .” Falling into the what? A good read-aloud pauses each time at a cliffhanger, leaving the listeners wondering what will happen next and keeping them engaged with the text.
5. It works for a good book to stand on its own as a read-aloud. But occasionally, the teacher may want to add extra activities or rewards to accompany the book, such as book clubs, projects, puppet shows, or foods that fit with what is being read.

If done with appropriate methodology, reading aloud can be just as profitable for older students as younger.

Resource

Our school operates under The Vine, a local BMA church. Next year there will be about 10 students in these three grades. We are seeking an assertive-natured teacher who is passionate about helping students to perform at their ability, and who loves to teach.

Over the years, teachers have become very creative with helping students get through the winter slump–those months between Christmas and Easter when the only hint of vacation or respite is a huge blizzard or ice storm that leaves the roads treacherous.

At the Mennonite school where I taught, each teacher planned February Fun days for their own classroom. Within that month, we had five days that the teachers collaborated on and designed for the entire school. In our local Mennonite high schools, there are “Spirit Days” These were five days usually in February and March. In the local public school where I taught, the entire school district participated in “Spirit Week.” Whether you are planning for the individual classroom, an entire school, for a week, or for a month, I am here today to give you an assortment of ideas to make a dull winter a bit more enjoyable.

Themed Days for the Classroom

I sent home a calendar with each child with the plan of what we were doing each day. This was the accompanying explanation of the upcoming days. I attempted to have a balance between days that I was doing the extra work for theme days and days the parents needed to do extra work. Beware that while parents enjoy seeing the enthusiasm of their child, it can get to be overwhelming for the parent if they need to send something along or dress their child in an unusual way multiple times a week.

Themed Days for the Entire School

These are days designed to encourage whole-school collaboration and involvement. A healthy school culture can be taken for granted or difficult to cultivate. It’s one of those intangible things that have a huge influence on your school. Many teachers and administrators and school boards grapple with how to grow a good school culture. Themed days will not be an instant fix, but maybe they can come one step closer to a the school spirit that you would like to build.

We are nearing the end of February. Use these ideas to prepare February Fun with your school. And if February isn’t a good time, no worries. The ideas can all be redefined as “March Madness.” Or, feel free to print these ideas and file them away to revisit when planning Winter Fun next year!

We are currently looking for an individual to help teach at our local church school.  We are a small school consisting of around 12 students from grades 1-8.  We usually split the group into two groups and have one teacher facilitate the lower grades and one teacher the upper grades.  We are currently looking for someone interested in teaching the lower grades.  We use the Abeka video curriculum for our students.  The teachers set up daily schedules and make sure students are doing their daily work.  They also help with extra curricular activities.   We are looking for someone who is willing to invest their time into the lives of young individuals and help them grow.  We are a small Mennonite community and enjoy a close knit community.  We would love to share more information with you.  We do provide a salary for our teachers and housing for those that need.  Feel free to contact me for more information.  Thanks for your consideration.

Dervin Seibel

864-624-3390

1st and 2nd grade teacher needed for 23/24 school year.