Cool Cat Teacher Blog is at coolcatteacher.com

My youngest has moved up into sixth grade. My how time flies. When I talked with him on Thursday about his week his first response was: "I'm so happy. I think all my teachers seem to like me ok." Do students think you "like" them? This seems odd but students really want to know if you like them. Are you going to be fair ? Are you going to give them a chance? They love you if you express an interest in something they love Then, he said: "I already have one teacher who loves me! I know it because she let me talk about Minecraft." This teacher had the kids do their coat of arms and on the coat of arms, they put things they enjoyed and liked. (I do Dave Burgess ' Play dough activity from Teach Like a Pirate which does something similar.) Under the pirate bandanas were small jars of play dough. I do an activity from Dave Burgess' book "Teach Like a Pirate" to get to know the students on the first day But when we say ...

My air conditioner has been broken all this week. They have ordered a part but we’re not sure if it is going to be here before school starts. If it is not, I’ll teach class on the stage rather than risk the computers expiring in the heat and have kids sweat because of the heat. Sometimes things stink as we prepare for school. This is less than ideal. OK. I’ll admit it - IT STINKS. Honestly, I stink too. But stinky stuff happens. It just does. I’m in gnat central here and it is 90 something outside and I’m opening my door to my room to cool it off. I’m wearing workout clothes that shed heat so I can sweat with as little soak as possible. And then IT happened… My laptop died today - perhaps heat induced. Not sure. I connected the hard drive - threw everything in Dropbox and am letting it sync. Dropbox has saved me again. When everyone has done all they can, you can still choose what you can Yet. My students will be here Thursd...

I'm drafting this on Monday night after our first day of preplanning at school. Today at lunch, our PTO had the nicest "teacher appreciation" luncheon. It was so nice. I snapped quite a few photos and thought I'd share with you what they did and what I liked about it. Motivational Quotes We all need to be reminded. The PTO had large watering cans with zinnias and flowers from the yards of the PTO members. Orange and white are our school colors so the green was accented with white and orange. It was gorgeous. Their quote was perfect: "A teacher's like a gardener and this is so you'll know we surely do appreciate how you help the children grow. Thanks for all you do." That was on a wooden stick inside the watering can with the flowers. Teacher Wish Lists and Likes Underneath our boxed lunches we had a piece of paper for our wish lists and likes. This list is one that PTO puts in a binder in the office. Things like "what is you...

Of all of the jobs I’ve had in my life, teaching takes the most energy and patience and is by far the hardest of what I’ve done. When I was a businesswoman When I was a businesswoman - I could fire employees who didn’t do their job – now, I have to work to motivate and teach every student even those who don’t want to be there. When I was a businesswoman - I could even fire customers if they caused a constant drain upon resources with complaining or wasted tasks; – as a teacher I work with all who come. When I was a businesswoman - I had great autonomy - the buck stopped with me in terms of customer satisfaction - as a teacher there are so many things in the life of a child at my school from the lunchroom to the playground to the team and other teachers - all of these combine to make their experience - I only have control over my own classroom. When I was a businesswoman the world was a more forgiving place when I messed up. I could mak...

The Paperless Classroom with Google Docs - Google Drive A lovely overview by North Canton City Schools about how to go paperless with Google Docs. If you're working towards being as paperless as possible, this is a nice document to get you started. (For some of you out there who don't know this - Google renamed everything "Google Drive" to respond to Dropbox's domination of cloud storage but many of us still call the word processor "Docs".) tags: education news google drive bestpractices edu_trends 40 Ways to Use Google Apps in the Classroom - Google Drive A slick presentation about Google apps for education. Becky Evans created and shared this and says you can use it as a presentation to introduce current features to teachers at yo...

There is a part near the end of the book  Teach Like a PIRATE  by Dave Burgess where he questions why we’re using the term rigor. (Read also Shawn White's " Let's change R to V: Vigor, not Rigor ") Since rigor means: rig·or /ˈrigər/ Noun The quality of being extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate. Severity or strictness: “the full rigor of the law”. Synonyms rigour - severity - austerity - stringency - strictness Being thorough or accurate… that is great. Being severe or strict… I just don’t have to be in my classroom. What I want in my classroom I want my classroom to thoroughly cover my subject. I want every child to learn and be engaged. I want to be engaging, fun, and a force in my classroom that coaches everyone towards excellence. I want to help students learn habits and ways to think about life that will serve them well for the rest of their lives. I want students to be unafraid of technology and just know it cold - particularly how to learn a...

Pinterest Bookmarklet for iPad — iOS Bookmarklets Another goodie. For those of you using the iPad who love pinterest, you'll want to install this add in to the safari web browser so you can pin from your ipad. tags: news ipad ipadonly pinterest education productivity Evernote Bookmarklet for iPad — iOS Bookmarklets If you use Evernote and you want to put the Send to evernote bookmarklet on your Safari web browser, herea re the instructions for how to do that. This website also has many iOS bookmarklets that do things - a great plus for the productivity nuts among us (like me.) tags: productivity ios education ipad ipadonly news ...