“Mrs. Birt, I have a question!” Nelson called out. Nelson has many questions . When is God’s birthday? What does God look like? What is your name? (It is not Mrs. Birt!) I appreciate when children ask questions as they are...

“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....

Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash Bop! “I need an attitude adjustment,” Loren announced, as he hit himself on the head to give the adjustment. “I smell your attitude, and it’s stinky!” Rachel informed her older sister. Today I...

Photo by Aaron Burden on Unsplash One of my first-grade art projects involved sprinkling dry tempera paint on wet paper. The children enjoyed the project, but the result was a horrible mess, a frustrated teacher, and likely an...

Photo by Gautam Arora on Unsplash “Effective instruction practices are an integral part of effective behavior management practices” (Sprick, 2006). Effective instruction influences student behavior and will prevent much...

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...

This file contains information, lesson plans, assignments, and activities for an Intro to Teaching/Student Teaching/Teacher Apprentice class. There are lesson planning forms, student lessons, and notes from Arlene's instruction....

Photo by Ikhsan Sugiarto on Unsplash Sympathy Ice A sobbing child shows the teacher a bump on his arm. Another little person extends her hand, “See this cut here? It hurts.” Marie complains, “When I go like this, it hurts!” as...

Image by Dylan Gillis on Unsplash In this post, Arlene responds to a question from a reader: "I am curious if you all or anyone in the Dock for Learning Community has ideas on how to do good character evaluation on report...

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Image by Goumbik from Pixabay Find the treasures in each day! I thought of this from a book I read to my class—the boy was disappointed when it was rainy and he couldn’t fly his new kite, and then when the weather cleared, he was...

I loved hearing one of the first-graders asking, “Can I say the verses by myself? I know them.” This child proceeded to say the verses as we were waiting in the bus line at dismissal time. And she knew them better than the...

“Forty-one students? How do you expect me to teach 41?” complained the first-grade teacher in her students’ hearing. How did this make them feel? Some children felt unwanted, and many years later related this story, remembering...

“Teachers have a big impact and people remember their teachers years later. I had lots of great teachers and they impacted and shaped who I am today. Whenever I think of my favorite teacher, I think of Miss B because she really...

“How do you wash these crayons?” asked a student. I was puzzled—why does she want to wash her crayons? Kayla showed me the box of crayons. It said “Washable Crayons.” I explained that you don’t wash the crayons, rather the crayon...