If you follow us on Twitter (if not, get on that), we frequently share some great resources for teachers. We also share some entertaining ones for when you’ve had enough with learning and just want something to laugh at. This week, we’re taking the Eduporium Weekly in a slightly different direction and highlighting some of the best teacher blog posts that we’ve seen in the last year or two. We’re lucky to have (kind of) become a part of a fantastic online teacher community, especially on Twitter and Instagram, and love all of the content from resources like We Are Teachers, Edutopia, Teachers Pay Teachers, Target Teachers, and more. So, without any more ado, here are some of the best blog posts in recent memory and where you can find them.
The Most Outrageous Parent Requests
If you’ve been in the classroom for long enough or coached youth sports or just been around parents in general, chances are you’ve come across some...interesting ones. You know the ones we’re talking about. Maybe they think their child is the greatest thing since sliced bread. Or, maybe they want their kid in the spotlight more. Maybe they even want you to spend a whole bunch of time on their child for whatever reason. Unfortunately, it’s easier than ever for parents to get in contact with their kids’ teachers. Just kidding, this is obviously a good thing, but, in some cases, maybe teachers wish they weren’t receiving 12 emails a day from chatty Kathy’s chattier mother. As long as they don’t start making ridiculous requests, however, it can’t be that bad, right? Well, we really enjoyed this post on We Are Teachers recently and here’s a taste of some of the most head-scratching requests teachers have heard from parents.
Okay, let’s get started. This first teacher said they received a request from a mother to basically drop what they were doing on a Friday night and come fix her child’s computer. Apparently after hours IT provider is now part of the jobs teachers do. One parent also apparently refused to sign the rules agreement of her son’s teacher because it stated that students should always be attentive and awake and she believed that, if her son felt he needed to nap, then he should be able to nap. That’s nothing compared to the answer key parent, though. Apparently someone’s parent wanted copies of all the answer keys to tests and quizzes to make sure their child’s teacher was grading everything correctly. That’s a pretty bold move and this parent may well have had a bit too much time on their hands. Apparently this one did not, however, because there was once a time when a parent complained to a teacher for not teaching her child how to get dressed. These are pretty good, no? Well, we’re not done yet!
Cheating should be allowed now apparently, at least according to the parent who believes students should be able to use smartphones on tests since adults just Google questions they don’t have answers for. There was also the parent who insisted her son not receive any praise from his teacher because this would lead to setting up impossible demands for him to continue his success. One other parent wanted daily text messages from her son’s teacher since he tended to forget his assignments. This is the same parent who requested no group work for her kid because she believed he was going on to college and wasn’t so sure about his classmates. Finally, one mother said that math should not happen every day because it made her son too sad. Yes, this mother thought it would be wise to rewrite education and had a pretty interesting angle for making her point.
Things People Should Tell Teachers Before they Sign Up
It takes a special kind of person to want to dedicate their lives to bettering the futures of countless children. We all know that teachers, principals, librarians, and everyone else who makes up the members of a school have undying dedication to their students and to their craft. No matter how much dedication and passion they have—even the amount of education they undertake themselves—nothing can prepare them for everything, however. Teachers are always seeing something new—whether it’s in the classroom, from their district leaders, or, as we mentioned above, from parents. There are probably so many things teachers have experienced that we would never even think could possibly happen. In this post from We Are Teachers, we learned more about some of the most useful advice for educators starting with the fact that it’s okay to make mistakes—that’s how you learn!
I’ve never been to a teacher’s college or sat in on a class for education majors, but these seem like some pretty helpful hints (and some that veteran teachers are likely already aware of). First off, teachers will never get everything on their to-do list done. It’s important to accept that and tackle the most important things first. Next, they’ll learn very quickly that fashionable shoes are not always best. After standing all day for a couple weeks (maybe less), it will be pretty easy to determine that comfort is much more important. Spending all that time with students will inevitably lead to some sad feelings when they are no longer yours, too. You’ll wish there was a course to prepare you for how to not miss them. And, here’s one of the most important pieces of advice: Teachers care way too much, but, unfortunately, they cannot accomplish everything. It’s important to recognize what can be done and focus on that—as much as you’d like to accomplish it all.
People have probably told you that teaching will get tough, but maybe not how to push through it. One thing you can do is write down why you teach and always look at it in moments of doubt. Another thing is to come to terms that it will take a lot of your own money to teach kids as well as you want to. Whether it’s supplies or something else, teachers are notorious for sacrificing their own time and money for the sake of their students. More importantly, before they start, teachers should know that no two days will ever be the same. Do with that information what you will, but we think that’s pretty exciting. Finally, new teachers need to know that it’s okay to ask for help. While it would be great to be able to do everything, there’s nothing wrong with teaming up with co-workers and friends who are there to offer a little extra support and guidance to make teaching even better.
Teacher Hacks for This Year Courtesy of Instagram
When it comes to teacher social media, most probably tend to think of Twitter first. There’s nothing wrong with that as Twitter has obviously blossomed into a fantastic resource and community for educators, but so has its more picture-focused rival. Instagram has become a very important medium for teachers to both share their own progress and learn plenty of things from other educators. Plenty of them have even built up massive amounts of followers just by simply engaging with the community and spicing up their posts with interesting graphics and helpful designs. The useful tricks teachers can find on Instagram—not to mention the strong sense of community—can help them in a variety of ways, including saving time and money and inspiring new levels of creativity throughout the year. In this post from BuzzFeed, they highlighted some of the most useful teaching hacks educators can and should be using in the classroom.
Whether you’re a little more crafty than most or, you know, not so much, teachers are pretty much guaranteed to find some useful ideas for making their classrooms nicer looking, more efficient, or more student-friendly. Teaching is all about being resourceful and this idea for maximizing resources is a real good one. Those paint swatches you can grab from Home Depot can double as phonics cards. Early grades teachers can use the three different shades to spell out 3-letter words and use the shades to correspond with the sounds letters make. The best part is they can be reused every year! Another nice hack—if you have access to some tools—is to take those camouflage looking cosmopolitan notebooks and cut them in half with a saw. How many times have kids filled these notebooks up during a school year? Not very many times. Reduce the use of paper in the classroom and, more importantly, the waste of paper with this pretty genius idea.
Here’s a hack that I wish somebody discovered while I was in elementary school. Rather than buying a bunch of whiteboard erasers (or constantly looking for the one a student has lost), buy a few small pompoms, cut them up, and glue them to the caps of whiteboard markers. They can now be easily used as individual erasers that are much less likely to get lost. Here’s one for art teachers or maybe early grade teachers in general. Saving the caps of glue sticks after they run out can be very helpful. Why? Well, because one of the next glue sticks to be used is probably going to be missing a cap very shortly. Also, apparently if you place the tops to glue bottles (not sticks) in a bottle of vegetable oil, it will unclog any blockages—just saying! If these sound like some pretty good ideas, be sure to check out the rest of the post and follow the teachers who were featured. We promise you there are more good ones we couldn’t fit in here!
Why Teachers Love to Laminate
Thankfully, lamination machines in schools never seem to be broken as much as the copy machine and that’s good because teachers sure get a lot of use out of them. As was discussed in a recent post from We Are Teachers, educators definitely do love to laminate but the reasons why might surprise you. It’s not only to increase organization and preserve delicate pieces of paper for as long as possible. No, for some teachers, it offers a sense of satisfaction only comparable to summer vacation. Unless you’ve ever been a laminating teacher, chances are you will not be able to fully understand this love. I can say for sure that I do not fully understand it, so don’t worry. Anyway, in the post, there are a few reasons presented as to why laminating brings so much joy and peace of mind to teachers, so let’s look at some of them.
First, laminating allows classroom materials to stand up to students day after day. If there’s one thing we can guarantee about small children, it’s that they’re not always gentle. Even in high school, students are often rough on supplies, so rather than wasting printed materials, teachers tend to prefer the benefits of lamination. Laminating papers also helps control the spread of germs. Students touch tons of things in the classroom and not all of those students are always 100 percent healthy all the time. With stuff that’s laminated, teachers can wipe it off using some wipes or antibacterial spray, making laminated materials as safe as they are durable. Plus, if you’ve ever used a laminator, you know that the finished product comes out feeling nice and warm. This offers educators a minute of feeling warm and fuzzy themselves, which is nice, especially during the cold winter months.
If you think these reasons for loving laminating are spot on, wait until you hear the rest—like the fact that the protective seal prevents students from drawing on or marking up their handouts. That’s always nice. Or the fact that laminating itself is something that’s so soothing. Since teachers do not have a lot of moments to themselves during the day, the few minutes that the machine is cranking out laminations offers them a break from the nonstop responsibilities of teaching. Laminating, you may have noticed, also produces a somewhat soothing smell. As said in the original post, the smell of warm plastic beats the smell of sweaty children any day! And, finally, teachers love laminating because there are so many ways that it is useful. Besides protecting papers, laminating also allows teachers to protect classroom objects, like bathroom passes, rubrics, and other things that are used year after year.
Memes that are Pretty Much Guaranteed to Make Teachers Laugh
There are some ways of getting to a teacher’s heart nowadays that work better than others. One way is to empathize with them and show them you understand that sometimes being a teacher is incredibly difficult while also feeling like you’re somewhat futile. Another way is to show them memes. Sure, this is partially because some of the subject matter in memes relates to the stresses of being a teacher, but some of them are actually funny and can help them focus on the good parts of teaching. All you have to do to find some good teaching memes is open up a social media website, like Twitter or Instagram, for example, and, chances are, you’ll find something inspiring. Or, you can just keep reading this section and we’ll describe some of our favorite ones for you.
If you’re familiar with memes, the general premise is that there is a picture with text on the top and the bottom of that picture that describes what somebody who is looking at it may be feeling or thinking. Our final favorite teacher blog is another from We Are Teachers in which they shared a few top teacher-related memes. There’s the one that starts out the post with a sarcastic spin on laminating, implying (sarcastically) that it’s merely okay when you really know (from the previous section of this post) that laminating is the greatest thing ever for teachers. Then there’s the one that brings up the fact that teachers spend their own money to make their classrooms great. Whether you agree with this or not, we all know it’s true and all wish there was another way for educators to make their rooms look as nice as they do without having to empty their own pockets.
Since teachers never work on the weekends, there’s a nice homage to that and then there’s the one that shares teacher enthusiasm for staff meetings and their high levels of productivity without wasting anybody’s time. They’re not all negative, though, as one of them pays tribute to the wonderful world of useful objects and supplies teachers can find at the Dollar Store. Finally, teachers love repeating themselves (as we all do), especially when students are not listening. So, there’s a nice tribute to that feeling. If these sound like some of the things you encounter daily as a teacher, we hope you’re okay with that. And, if you need something that’s really hilarious to actually make you laugh, maybe look for something else.
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