1. Learn one thing about each student

It always takes a while to commit student names to memory, especially if you are working with more than one class or in a school that sees a lot of transition or turn over from year to year. Knowing the names of your students is crucial to relationship building–that should go without saying. But beyond getting those names down, learning one thing about each student in your classroom establishes a familiarity that teachers can build on when they are delivering lessons or when they have to lean on their classroom management strengths. I mentioned in a previous blog the importance of knowing yourself in your role as a teacher; however, knowing your students carries seminal weight as you move through that October month.

2. Get to know the area 

Part of the reason why disproportionate opportunities still persist in many school boards––especially those boards with a prevalent inner city representation––is because educators parachute in, do their daily job of teaching curriculum, and parachute out, headed straight towards the highways and their homes, far far away from the location of where they actually teach. You don’t need to live in the area but you should make an attempt to get to know the area you teach in. In October, an idea could be for you to ask your students to teach you about the community. Sharing the space and creating a dynamic where expertise isn’t always seen as filtering from teacher to student in addition to demonstrating a level of interest in their backgrounds works twofold and goes a long way. Another idea for October is taking a walk–spend some time in the community. Gain an understanding of the socio-economic context your students come from. Go beyond the hearsay or what the census says. Get out there and explore. 

3. Build classroom community

Many educators struggle to establish relationships that prioritize high academic standards and strong classroom togetherness for a myriad of reasons, but a main one is because they stop explicitly building classroom community after that first day or first week. Of course, “the work” has to come at some point but that doesn’t have to come at the expense of eliminating time and space for relationships. You should strive to build a classroom community in October throughout the entire month. It will pay dividends later on in the school year.

4. Establish class structure

It’s important to keep in mind that every student learns and thrives differently so teachers should look to create a learning environment that caters to the needs of all. This is best done when there are elements of a clear class structure. That could be something as small as starting with the same type of activity at the same time of day or ending class with a similar routine each afternoon. Establishing a class structure in October gives students one less thing that they have to anticipate in their fast-moving, information-inundated lives.  

5. Ease Anxiety and Foster Belonging

The previous four ideas sort of construct this last one and that is to create a space that students feel welcomed. The beginning of the school year can be a tense time for a lot of students; there is the social aspect of figuring out how to fit in, the academic aspect of new material, and many many invisible aspects that relate to identity that every young person has to navigate. So be careful with the sarcasm to start the year and venture closer to the side of optimism and positivity when engaged in conversation and teaching. This should be an all year thing. But in October, it is vital to keep this idea in mind.  

These 5 ideas for October are aimed at helping teachers maintain an effective classroom and prolong the novelty experience that those first few weeks to the start of the school year provide. Many are eager to get into the swing of things and get straight to the books, but by utilizing these 5 ideas for October, it will make that academic part a lot less difficult. 

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1. Authentic

When I was in teacher’s college over a decade ago, the prevailing sentiment was to “park your politics and religion when you park your car.” Essentially, the messaging was that teachers should create a schism between their personal identity and their teacher identity. While there certainly are situations where a teacher feels compelled to omit private information, education is no longer that institution where the teacher stands at the front of the class, depositing information to rows and rows of students, and brings no authenticity into learning. And we’re better as a society for it. 

Being authentic as a person in your role as a teacher supports the implicit learning that weaves in and out of  the curriculum and works to create a culture of individual validation. Simply put, teachers who are authentically themselves while teaching foster students who feel like they belong, too. 

2. Reflective

If you stopped growing as a partner after your first relationship, how much improved can your next relationship possibly be? Even the relationships between high school sweethearts evolve. The same rule applies to effective teaching. The best teachers continuously try to grow and improve year after year, semester after semester, and sometimes lesson after lesson. Good teachers are reflective of their practice. They excavate their experiences in their classrooms and work to reform their approaches to teaching and learning. 

This quality is present in the best teachers. Reason being, reflective educators create learning environments that intrinsically feel safe. When the teacher is willing and open to learning, students are implicitly encouraged to do the same, through a classroom setting that feels and is more equitable.

3. Transparent

Curiosity is a centerpiece to learning. And a primary foray into curiosity begins with the question, “Why?” So it shouldn’t take much deduction to understand that one sure-fire way of interrupting the flow of learning and stomping out curiosity comes from teacher uttered statements like, “because I said so” or, “that’s the way we’ve always done things” or, “because we just have to…that’s why.”

Revealing “the science” behind certain teaching methods, exposing the teacher truths that are behind particular activities, and revealing reasons behind some lessons and learning goals won’t put the precarious dynamics of teaching and learning, teacher and student in harm. In fact, transparent teachers more closely knit spaces where students are engaged and informed and take on an added sense of ownership and agency in their learning because they have been exposed to the why behind it. Breaking the fourth wall may ruin a stage performance, but in the best classrooms, it’s just another quality of a good teacher.

4. Adaptable 

In a sense, this quality serves somewhat as an umbrella for the previous three qualities of a good teacher. In order to be adaptable as a teacher you need to be authentic with your students, reflective of situations that arise, and transparent when you change things. On a base level, being adaptive means being flexible. The best teachers have this quality because they understand that learning is cogenerative and not static. Being adaptive actively resists the depository model of teaching. It acknowledges that students are way more than just empty vessels, sitting passively, waiting to be told how to think.

Good teachers are not easily persuaded but they are responsive to the needs of their students. This includes a willingness to compromise. The quality of adaptability caters to a student-centered approach that emphasizes excellence over authority. It curates an accommodating learning environment, which benefits all students. And by being adaptable along with the three previous traits, qualities teachers maintain “authority” without the “because I said so” declarations.     

5. Organized

Okay, I included one surface quality in this list. But all good teachers are organized in the broadest sense of the word. They know what they’re doing, they understand where they’re going, they have a plan, and they came prepared. It is very difficult, venturing on impossible, to be a good teacher without owning the quality of being organized. 

Now listen, there is a continuum to the quality of being organized. Similar to how we fail to see the organization in, let’s say, a group of elementary boys who are able to head out at morning recess, quickly divide themselves into two fair teams, play a game with rules everyone abides by, make nets, decide on boundaries, keep score and do so until recess is finished. Only to pick their game right back up where it left off at the next recess. That’s organization! Now this type of organization speaks to nothing about the state of these elementary boys’ desks. Like I said, organization is demonstrated on a continuum. And the best teachers have this quality in some form or aspect.

Because good teachers prioritize holistic well being for students first and foremost, they naturally tend to be authentic in the way they show up to do their job, reflective in their practice, transparent in their approach to teaching, adaptable to their school environment, and organized in some manner. Good teachers have a host of other qualities, both surface level and from a philosophical standpoint. But these five, I find, are the most common qualities amongst those folks who do that job of teaching really really well. And that’s because these five qualities mainly foster student validation and belonging.  

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When I first started teaching a little over a decade ago most students could read the cursive I wrote on the chalkboard. From my recollection, a solid bunch would still turn in work written that way. We didn’t explicitly teach it, but it was kind of one of those common communicative skills we still shared as a culture. We also still shared Facebook and both adults and middle school aged children would spend time crafting their profile, including their interests, hobbies, upload photos that shared parts of their personality, and type out quasi thought-out status updates when the mood was right. But social media was still so young. And by virtue of how education works, it was too taboo to use as an entry point to engage. 

We missed a little something there since a platform like Facebook and an institution like public education seemed to go hand in hand. I mean, it was originally created to establish a social network for university students. (To this day, my Facebook is still attached to my college email address. How? I don’t know). Operating that social media application––regardless of age––required some basic understanding of literacy. Damn, I sound old and salty already.

Other prominent social media sprung in the following years, none more significant than Twitter. I do not recollect a parallel between Twitter and the gradual waning of scholastic caliber within the school system. Maybe that’s because––like everything else that’s happened social media wise––me plus almost every other educator I knew were slow to platforms and only learned of them after we noticed the sphere of influence they had on kids. Facebook and Twitter were synonymous with the pattern of the “things” that altered public education: somewhat on the peripheral but not so overpowering an impact that the “thing” affected projects, tests and 40 minute lesson plans. Holy shit I’m aging by the word.

Looking back, there were good times when those two conglomerates dominated the network sharing sphere. Then some genius decides to strip the profile and its contents, take away the 140 character limit completely, and create an app for photo sharing. Just photos. Instagram was born and teaching, learning too, began to fracture further. I told myself that this app would be a small blip on the youth cultural movement, promised to never by one of those stupid sticks that mounted onto a phone, and vowed never to ever take a picture reflected off of a bathroom mirror. The app didn’t go away. Then Oxford Dictionary, thee Oxford Dictionary, named selfie the word of the year in 2013. I told myself that our times were in trouble. All the teachers in the staffroom, playing their Sudoku and circling their crosswords, agreed. I think I plucked my first grey hair out of my beard that year. 

By the time I had succumbed to taking that first selfie in my car, probably waiting at a red light going south on god forsaken Markham Road at 8am, most of my students couldn’t tell me what nine multiplied by eight was without grabbing a calculator. By that time, the school boards had told us that they didn’t need to memorize times tables anymore. So I didn’t feel that bad about it. They also said we should forget about spelling tests, most forms of rote learning, and exhaustive homework. To essentially get with the times. But also they told us to lock away their phones, don’t enter discussions about social media unless you were talking about predators who would manipulate and assault kids, and figure out rich tasks where the means were way more important than the ends. Give me a second, I need to double check my birth certificate. 

Tik-Tok (is it one word, or two?) came and shook shit up, for real. Forget about a curated profile, some carefully articulated statement, even a photo that went through a dozen filters before it was posted. Make a video, 15 seconds tops, post it, see if it goes viral, delete it if it doesn’t, or keep it–who cares, repeat. Eat the hottest pepper just to see if you can, dance with your arms only, go slap a stranger and run away. Shoot, pour gasoline fluid on your stomach and light a match. It’s called the fire challenge. Get some water ready, you bought to go viral. Damn, I think I need a cane. 

And now we’re here. When I print out a story for my class I sometimes feel like I’m pulling teeth just to get all of them to follow all of it as we read. But I’m not a dentist. Nor a doctor. Unfortunately, this cavity we’re facing has been left untreated. And it’s not caused by pausing to social distance. Our issue with the current challenge arose because we left something untreated for too long. Perhaps because we didn’t know how to grow with it, or allow it to grow inside our walls. Either way, we have a lot of restoration that needs to occur. And as educators, we have to fight off the urge to turn into into geriatrics overnight. 

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I don’t feel that way now. I’m getting used to this again. Despite the residue of winter finally thawing off, it doesn’t feel like the days are melting away. School is beginning to feel like it did before all of this. I’m no longer caught up in all of the little, tiny, bitsy things that made teaching during Covid something other than teaching. That made school something different than school. It feels like those bigger things I did throughout this year were necessary; without them I would have been all practice and protocols. I realize now that what I was doing in between those big bits wasn’t really teaching. But merely surviving. I was never ever used to doing just that. 

We’ve established expectations this year just like how we established expectations in past years. We stand up for the national anthem, ask for permission before leaving the classroom, stay quiet while taking tests. I’m used to that. Again. And that’s where I think my problem truly is.

Inside me something sits awry with being used to this again. So soon. Like nothing really changed. As if the pandemic pressed pause on school then changed a few protocols but did very little to shake the policy. Nothing to shake the practice of teaching and learning. It’s a strange feeling to be so quickly used to the old, comfortable routines of something that you previously questioned and reflected upon and tried to rattle. I thought that after things went back to normal that they would never ever really go back to normal. But they have. And that’s scary. Sad too. How quick we became comfortable. How nonchalantly we all got used to this again.   

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I know why, too. I need tangible proof attached to my exercising to feel better about myself. A sweaty t-shirt and a minute marker don’t do much for me. I need to win or lose basketball games, lift a certain amount of weight for a certain amount of sets for a certain amount of reps, or move across sidewalks and through paths to be able to buy into the idea that working out is working for me. For me, the treadmill is just too much moving without ever getting anywhere. I can’t motivate myself to get on one.

Maybe if I had my own, in the basement of my pop’s house or tucked away in the den at my condo, maybe I wouldn’t feel how I feel about treadmills. But I’ve only ever met rows of them in gyms. I’ve only ever seen folks run on them faster than I could now run on football fields or jog on them longer than I jog through blocks and parks that I look at those things and am repelled at by their sight. I see folks walking on them and wonder why anyone within the vicinity of my age would do that. They make me feel uncomfortable.

All of them.

The people who are better than me, the ones I can’t seem to figure out, and the rows of those damn machines. They all make me feel uncomfortable. I guess if I had my own and could use it without tangible interruptions then maybe I wouldn’t hate the thing. But I have tried before — many times. I tried to use the treadmill as a way to force my mind to see how running in one spot, time and time again, could change my body, and therefore change my mind about my body and about that damn treadmill. But it never worked out. I could never make it a habit like so many other people could.

This fall, I thought I’d try to use the one at my school. It was in a defunct shop classroom surrounded by a dusty table saw, some disconfigured drill presses, and a few discarded portable ACs. When September rolled around, I planned on getting to school an hour and a half before school started, jogging on the treadmill, showering in the phys.ed bathroom and getting ready to teach my students. I thought it would be a fresh way to start the new school year. 

On the first day of school, I hit snooze three times and didn’t make it in until my usual time. I came home exhausted from a first day of school that was eerie and quiet and strange. That first week, I was out of breath walking up the stairs to the second floor. I knew that wearing the mask was contributing to being out of breath but I thought about that treadmill. The next Monday, I hit snooze two times and decided that I’d use the treadmill when I got back into the routine of waking up, travelling to work and the exhaustion of teaching middle school students in a pandemic. When I got used to my routine, I told myself that I would use it once I finished grading english assignments and math quizzes. Then the meetings and preparations for teaching the same things I’ve taught year after year and parent-teacher interviews got in the way. I wasn’t out of breath walking up to the second floor by late October so I told myself that the treadmill could wait, because getting used to wearing the mask in the building all day was clearly the only thing between me and sufficient lungs. Plus I had found a new show on Netflix that was decent. I’ve managed to exercise the same ways I always have – some weights here and there, a few jogs every now and then, some sports when enough of my boys could be available at the same time. But I still haven’t gotten on that treadmill yet. Because I still haven’t been able to get off of it.

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1. 3 Ways to a More Equitable Classroom
2. Creating a Classroom
3. Being a Young Black Male Teacher
4. Your Young Students Aren’t Babies
5. #TeacherBae and Professionalism
6. I Hate My Students
7. Getting Rid of My Teacher’s Desk
8. Alton Sterling and Facts
9. On Complexion and Kendrick Lamar – Part II
10. Why My First Year of Teaching Was My Favorite

Like I’ve said before, teachers are gifted the luxury of having two “New Years”. One is at the start of the school year and the other is our traditional calendar year. So, I hope you take this opportunity to re-visit some of your goals from the beginning of the school year and perhaps make a few new ones on December 31^st.

Good luck and let us all finish the second half of this school year strong!

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As a young teacher, there is nothing that you want to leave up to chance when it comes to your private information. This is brutally more pressing for male teachers. In my previous post, I detailed how my cell phone number almost went out to the entire class just because I chose to call a girl’s mother in order to wrap up a parent-teacher interview. Honestly speaking, if one of the boys from our basketball team somehow got my phone number, I would not feel as anxious as I did with a 12-year-old girl having it. Either way, that was a mistake that will never happen again and a mistake that, if you are reading this, should never happen to you. Because ultimately, teacher privacy should be guarded at all turns.

The Beast that is Social Media

The line between personal and professional is very thin and shifts from person to person. You want to be personal to reach out to and relate to students and have your students relate to you. You also need to maintain a strong sense of professionalism and a healthy dose of ambiguity about yourself simply for classroom management and authoritative purposes.

• No book is better than Facebook!

Social networking is an ever-evolving platform of communication. Thus, novel measures of privacy and guidelines concerning social media amongst teachers and students are still being outlined throughout school boards. The general consensus is that teachers should not communicate with students over social networking cites, whether that is by Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. The school phone and email are still the two objective and traditional ways of contact. These days however, it is inevitable that almost everyone over the age of twelve has some form of social media. And it almost seems that the younger the generation, the more media-literate the group. My naivety towards this fact is what led me into my third mistake regarding my privacy. Somehow one of students found my Facebook profile, even though I thought my privacy settings were as secure as Fort Knox.

My privacy settings were so high that I could barely access my own account! I made it almost impossible for anyone to search for me. Whenever the question of Facebook came up, my answer to students was a simple and unequivocal, “No, I do not have Facebook”. Even if you were to somehow miraculously know a friend of mine and then somehow, through that friend, be able to find me, there would be no way that you could look through my profile and pictures, unless you were a direct “friend” of mine. I thought case closed, sealed deal. That was until one day when two students approached me saying that not only did I have Facebook but they also found me and looked through all of my pictures! I asked them to prove it. One of them logged in and, after about five to ten minutes of following the crumbs of some corkscrew path of friends, there I was! They clicked through picture after picture that detailed my private life.

Social media is a small opening that can offer a large gaze into your life (depending on how you use it). Your social media network is something that you want to leave parked in your car in the morning and not an aspect of your life that you want to bring into the classroom with you. There really is no upside to having a bunch of students follow you on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter. You wouldn’t want your students around you on a Friday night when you are out with your friends, would you? But if you are too loose with your social media, it will allow them to be there. So keep those tentacles a far reach away from the students and parents of your school. Because you never know how the person on the other end is “reading” a comment or a picture you have chosen to post.

As you navigate through those months, you will find your blend of things that work for you. When it comes to interacting with others, everyone has their own comfort zone. These comfort zones also shift depending on whether it is a personal, familial, friendship, or age-based relationship. All teachers will navigate their space based on their own personality and ideals. You will figure out your comfort zone on your own and make your own “line” regarding the professional versus the private. Right now, your zone and where you draw the line might be uncertain, but one thing is for sure. You will establish these boundaries through some of the experiences and mistakes that you make as a young and new teacher. And that’s okay. But it is better to be more guarded than less.

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After celebrities, the “young new teacher” may be the second highest occupation for eliciting an unquenchable desire to uncover a backstory and details about a person’s private life. In my first year as a teacher, students (and parents) wanted to know everything about me. From my first name to where I lived to what I did before I started teaching, down to my marital status, and everything other tidbit of personal information in between. I quickly realized that teacher privacy is something that should be guarded more than those valuable “teacher binders” we all start to build. I indeed made some “rookie mistakes” over the course of that year. So, if you are a new teacher, read the following with a notepad in hand. Here are two “teacher privacy” rules that any new teacher should adhere to. These were two of the biggest rookie mistakes you can make, and both were made by me!

• 1) Teacher Privacy Rule #1: Never call a parent on your personal cell phone:

Rookie mistake number one happened to me despite my good intentions. A parent and myself had scheduled a phone interview due to her inability to be present at a parent-teacher interview. This parent and I started playing phone-tag over the course of a few days. It stretched to about two weeks. One day, after receiving yet another one of her messages, I simply decided to get this interview over and done with. I called the mother from my cell phone during lunch as I stepped out to grab a bite. I made the call as I drove to get some fast food. By the time I was back at school I had my lunch and got an interview, that was hanging over my head for way too long, wrapped up. Killed two birds with one stone I thought. Well, I thought wrong!

Never divulge personal information like cell phone numbers and home addresses. This leaves you in a vulnerable position of always being available. In this day and age, teachers are expected to be more available but a blog site and an email address is as far as it should go. My mistake led to the student getting my number off of her mother’s phone. A few weeks later I got a text about homework from this student. For a while I would get phantom calls where I would answer and no one would talk. A month later I got a “Merry Christmas” text.

I had repeatedly told the student to delete my number and whether she did or not, the one-way communication via text message finally ceased. It is scary to think about the potentially disastrous outcomes that could stem from that one phone call made to a parent just to save some time. One phone call in haste could have led to every student in my class having my cell phone number!

• 2) Teacher Privacy Rule #2: Never divulge your home address

A phone number is part of the personal vault of private information that should be locked away and never divulged to students or parents under any circumstances. Another part of that treasury is your home address. This seems blatantly obvious. Of course you would never share the location of your home with students. But all information has the potential to leak. Hence “rookie mistake” number two.

I brought in some magazines for a media literacy activity. About five minutes into our activity I heard a group of students giggling. I walked over to “address” the situation and after my initial questioning these students divulged that they knew where I live and pointed to the bottom right hand corner of the magazine they are looking at!

I didn’t even notice that my address was on the magazine when I was packing them in my bag the night before. It was something that I took for granted, subconsciously assuming that students wouldn’t care about a little detail on the bottom cover. Once the students showed me, I took the magazine and ripped off the address section. I had a sinking feeling that the damage was already done. And it was. The group of students had already saved my address into their phones! The next few days they would come to school and tell me that they did a google maps search to see exactly where I lived. Luckily for me, I had recently moved. So the place they were looking at was no longer my home.

Rookie mistakes are inevitable and some will be more foreign to you than others. Mistakes that open access to your personal life should be handled with precaution. Students want to know all about their young new teachers. Take the attempted invasion into your private life as a compliment but use it as a way of engaging your students academically. Draw that line and do not let them get too close for comfort.

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We have cruised through March and now we can finally see the finish line. Although there is much left to do with my students, we have gained a small sense of closure through finally placing winter firmly in the rear-view mirror. And this weeklong break could not have come at a better time. Regardless of whether you are going on a vacation or having a “stay cation,” getting away from school allows for the opportunity to decompress and gives teachers the time to refocus for the final leg. That is why teachers need spring break too.

Breaks are something that all teachers need. At the beginning of this week, I felt as though it would be wasted – the days were flying by and I felt as though I was not really enjoying my time off. For one, I wasn’t sitting on a beach enjoying the hot sun of some tropical island. I was subconsciously trying to enjoy my time off. I felt that I was not “enjoying” my break because it seemed as though every second I spent thinking about coming back to work. As I look back now, at wick’s end of my break, I realize that it was well needed and well spent time off. Even time spent doing nothing is valuable time and recovery.

In my early twenties, training for football was one of the most physically demanding periods of my life. My trainer put me through an intense three-month program that I would not have completed if I had a full time job or if I was not able to see a physical therapist on a weekly basis! It was two workouts a day for six days a week, intense stretching every evening before bed, and abdominal exercises as soon as I woke up every morning. Those three months taught me many crucial things about preparation, perseverance, and consistency. But perhaps the most relevant experience I learned from this time was knowing when to “switch off.” As we would finish a workout, my trainer would always say, “Done. Now it’s time to switch off!” Meaning, the workout was over and it was time to think about other things, time to shift your focus.

This idea of “switching off” is so crucial in teaching as well. When a school day is over with, it is important that you switch your “inner teacher” off. Faculties of education will teach you to “park your bias in the car with you before you enter the school”. Well, a teacher should also leave their day at work with them and practice “switching off” as they leave the building, or at least as a process throughout the ride home from work.

For self-care, it is important that we unplug from the daily stresses of our job. Teaching is mentally exhausting. The ability to be self-reflexive as an education is of upmost importance. Postulating about teaching, whether it’s on the job you did delivering a lesson or that conversation you had with a student, these are all things that are unavoidable to growing teachers. But they are all things that should only be practiced to a limit. “Always being on” and thinking about the job will leave you exponentially more tired and mentally bleary than if you simply “switched off” after leaving the school. As new teachers, we are always thinking and looking for ways to get better. But if you never “mentally” leave the classroom, there will be little to no route to your emotional improvement as a teacher. As circular as that seems, it is true. A constant inability to separate from the job is detrimental to one’s psychological and emotional improvement. “Unplugging” or switching off will keep you mentally healthy and leave you with the ability to enter the school each day fresh and ready to take on another set of challenges.

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