Happy Friday! So, I’ve been thinking a lot about processes this week. There’s something about the start of a new year that inevitably forces me to reevaluate my workflow and processes to determine what’s working for me and what’s not. As educators, I know you juggle thousands of to-do items every week and I’d like to know how you do it. What systems and processes have you developed that help you keep all those balls in the air while remaining focused on your students?
Here is this week’s edition of Ed Links, a collection of our favorite education-related articles from around the web. Happy reading!
This week on te@chthought, Terry Heick wrote: Are Schools Prepared for Great Teachers? “The most important gift a teacher has is the ability to see children for who they are, who they can be, and the relationship between the two.” This is an absolute must-read for any teacher ready to move beyond greatness in order to be exceptional.
Check out this fun list of classroom strategies on Edutopia by Dr. Lori DeSautels: Energy and Calm: Brain Breaks and Focused-Attention Practices. Rock-paper-scissors-math, anyone?
From Discover Magazine: Do Screens Make Us Stupider? Time for a Rethink of Reading. Amazing insights here about how subtle external cues influence how deeply we process the text we’re reading. “…the packaging of text contains rich implicit instructions for what we do with it.”
“Collaboration… Who Doesn’t Have Time?” from Learn, Love, Lead. I loved this: “Sharing doesn’t require a tremendous amount of effort, you just have to do it!”
On the Education Week Teacher blog, Paul Barnwell hits the nail on the head in: Stop Sending Emails, and Other Tips for Building Positive Relationships in Schools.
And, as you head into the weekend, here are 24 Teacher Thank You Notes That Make It All Worthwhile. Because you don’t hear “Thank you” nearly as often as you deserve.
Thank you for everything you do for your students. Every day.
Have a wonderful weekend and we’ll see you again next week.
