As summer vacation nears, principals begin scrambling to fill teaching positions. College graduates start sending out resumes and trying to interview for jobs. Working with final interns (last semester of the program), I have begun to explore how to help these aspiring teachers land a job, preferably at a school of choice. Part of this process (we also work on crafting a resume), involves successful interviewing. To gather information on the topic, I started asking principals to speak to my...

Flag Day is coming, a day to honor the flag of the United States.  Flag Day is June 14th.

Fun Flag Facts:

1. A vexillologist is someone who studies flags!
2. Most flags have the colors red and white.
3. Only Vatican City and the country of Switzerland have square flags.
4. Most world flags are rectangle in shape. The flag of the country of Nepal is the only one which is not rectangular or square in shape.
5. When Sir Edmond...

While I shared his tale during a few presentations, I never committed the story of “Joe” to writing. I feel his story can inspire and perhaps encourage adults (teachers, parents, coaches) to help young people reach their potential by setting up the proper conditions. Gifted students, for instance, often spend half the school day or more learning curriculum they already know―hardly the conditions for excellence to blossom. In Joe’s case, he knew the curriculum (as evidenced by...

I am a strong believer in having kids on task throughout the class session. Lessons rarely finished “early” and if they did, I always had something for the kids to do until the class ended. I usually didn’t give students “free time” to start homework or to read a book or magazine. That’s because that seemed to be a signal to have a chat fest. If I started the class by quickly checking homework or doing some clerical things, I had a bell ringer (is this term still used?) or activity for the...