I’m done. I can’t do this anymore. After months of soul-searching and thinking about the future, I’ve decided that teaching simply isn’t the profession I’m meant to have. I’ve worked excessively hard over the past three years, and to be honest, I’m exhausted. This isn’t fun. It doesn’t make me happy. To get anywhere you…

When it rains, it pours. That has certainly been true here in the Bay Area for the past week. We’re experiencing that classic Bay Area winter- a few weeks of rain, followed by spring. Rainy day after rainy day is making everyone nuts. When kids get wet, the extra crazy comes out. I believe that…

I know much of my regularly-scheduled programming is much more meta-analysis than some other teacher blogs out there, which sort of helps me keep my life in perspective. I try to be a big-picture kind of person, particularly when reflecting on my practice. Otherwise, the day-to-day would totally wear me down. But, much of teaching…

Every teacher at my new school is required to do 40 home visits with our students. This means that I will visit half of my students. If I were super woman, I would do all 80 home visits, but, seriously, you have to draw the line somewhere. If I visited 80 homes, I would never…

Well, I completely fell off the blogosphere radar for the month, but, despite that casualty, I managed to survive the absolutely horrid month of October. Mostly only through sheer force of will on my part, and then only just barely. When I think about what happened to me during the past 31 days, my mind…

We’ve just finished week four of school, which is usually a signal that everybody is getting pretty sick and tired of each other. Sick is definitely a part of the daily vocabulary at school; several teachers have had to take multiple days off to recover from whatever child-induced illness they may have contracted, and the…

These days, whenever the phone rings past 8 p.m. I pretty much assume it’s one of my students or their parents. This is because a) they’re pretty much the only people who have my home phone number and b) who else would call me on a weeknight? If you’ve ever talked with young kids on…

Today, I was sitting with my last class of the day, trying to get them to talk to each other about their Goals. They are 7. It has been in the upper 80s in San Jose since school started last week. When those two things combine, the last class of the day tends to be…

We start with kids on Monday. My classroom is ready, relatively speaking. All the crucial things are up on the walls and I’ve got my plans and copies all set. It’s going to be an awesome first day. One thing that I have been aware of this week in making poster after poster is that…

Today was a 10-hour work day, and yet I am home feeling much more energized than I have felt during those 8-hour days we’ve had thus far. The reason for this is that today was my first official day in my new classroom with the opportunity to unpack the massive amount of stuff I brought…

Switching to my new school is like being a first year teacher all over again. We’ve only been in professional development for a week, and I’m already overwhelmed with all of the assessments to write, plans to make, and just plain thinking that I have to do to be ready for my students at the…

I start my training for my new charter school on Monday. We have an entire month before school starts to plan, build a staff culture, and get our classrooms ready. I could not be more excited. I’ve spent my summer reading books about teaching (including The Cornerstone for Teachers, The High Trust Classroom, and What…

How do you know if your child is being educated by an excellent teacher? A mediocre one? A poor one? According to a new study by The New Teacher Project, the only reliable way to tell is by word of mouth from other parents. But wait, you say. Teachers are evaluated by their administrators, right?…

Every summer (or, more accurately, each summer I’ve been associated with TFA) I find myself stepping back from the day-to-day grind of a classroom teacher and start thinking about the education problem on a much broader scale. I think about what it would take to finally close the achievement gap permanently. I think about the…

In an effort to Continuously Increase my Effectiveness, I have spent quite a bit of time this summer reading various books and articles about teaching. I recognize that I am by no means an expert teacher; part of the reason I wanted to move to a charter school was that I knew that they would…