We look forward to helping you in any way you need. Please contact us with any questions, ideas, concerns, recommendations, feedback, compliments, ANYTHING! We improve through working with great educators and administrators like yourself! We are here to serve YOU!
Hit Us Up!
Email: info@timetoteach.com
Phone: 1-800-438-1808
Fax: 1-800-801-1872
Address: 220 East Avenue, PO Box 14001 PMB 469, Ketchum, ID 83340
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
Tom Murray has been inspiring a lot of educators to think about what they can do on Day 1 of the school year so that kids come running back into school on Day 2. That’s a great message.
Can we please also remember that we want kids running back into school on Day 37 and Day 89 and Day 138? If we have a great first day with our students and then gradually (quickly?) revert back to fairly uninspiring learning experiences, what’s the point?
School culture, classroom learning climates, and student engagement are year-round issues. What could you do that makes kids come running back on Day 164? (instead of, ahem, counting down the days until the end)
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
Six realistic, low-stress steps you can take to improve your teaching in the hectic early years of your career.
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
If schools serve students and students are deeply embedded in the fabric of communities, how can we serve those students without knowing those communities?
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
Novelist Jacqueline Woodson is a slow reader. Taking her time lets her savor each word brings her closer to each story, and it lets her pay respect to her ancestors who weren't allowed to read.
(Image credit: Dian Lofton/TED)
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
Even if semantics are obscuring the truth a bit here, the reality is that we've got ourselves a model of education that by its very design encourages repeatable and similar performance.
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
No democracy can survive if its citizens do not believe that democracy is worth having. The long-term future of our system of government depends not only on restoring a supermajority of citizens who demand democracy but also on ensuring that that percentage exists across the generations.
Nor is it enough for people simply to believe democracy is essential if they don’t know how to build, operate, maintain, fix, and adapt democracies. This means we also need to build a supermajority of citizens who have confidence in their knowledge of how to use their voices, skills of democratic coordination, and shared political institutions. That’s what our children could learn through classes on U.S. government, civics, and the problems and promise of democracy.
Want to address information literacy concerns? Civics is a great place to start. Want to target student apathy toward the news and being informed? Action civics is an even better start.
We also have to live the democratic principles that we proclaim we’re trying to instill in our youth. Students almost never have authentic input into how ‘school’ operates for them. No wonder our students become cynical and apathetic. Why would they treat seriously our proclamations about the importance of democracy when schools rarely give them a meaningful say in anything?
My favorite U.S. Supreme Court quote of all time is from Justice Fortas:
That they are educating the young for citizenship is reason for scrupulous protection of Constitutional freedoms of the individual, if we are not to strangle the free mind at its source and teach youth to discount important principles of our government as mere platitudes… (Tinker v. Des Moines)
When it comes to modeling democratic principles in schools, we’ve got too many platitudes. How about some action (civics) instead?
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
F.A.I.L. = First Attempt In Learning
We see this saying in classrooms all over. And I’ve never liked it…
One reason is because we rarely seem to ask the important question of First Attempt In Learning What? First attempt in learning some rote memorization task? First attempt in learning something we put on a digital worksheet? First attempt in learning some procedure that we’ll likely never use again? [but, hey, at least it leads to the next procedure that we’ll also probably never use again!]
I understand why the allegedly-motivational saying is posted on teachers’ walls. It’s a cute way of saying to students, “Don’t give up. Keep trying and you’ll get there.” It fits in nicely with the growth mindsets that we’re trying to help students adopt. [side note: ever notice how educators are usually eager to preach about the value of growth mindsets for students but often struggle to live that value in their own work?] But maybe the reason our students are ‘failing’ is because they rightfully see that so much of the work that we ask them to do is pretty meaningless and so they simply try to opt out. It’s not that they’re struggling, it’s that they’re rational.
Which leads me to another reason: a F.A.I.L. poster on our walls doesn’t absolve our responsibility to do better by our kids. We can’t keep pretending that such a sign means anything when we regularly undercut it with uninspiring work. So what if we give students multiple opportunities for do-overs or retakes? So what if we preach about ‘resilience’ and ‘grit?’ Is allowing / requiring / forcing a student to be ‘successful’ on work that had little value in the first place the opposite of ‘failing?’
No amount of platitudes will ever make up for the hard work we need to do to transform students’ learning experiences. You know what motivates students? It’s not the cutesy laminated F.A.I.L. poster. It’s the regular opportunity to do meaningful and interesting work. The next time we walk into a classroom with one of these signs, let’s add the W and start having a different conversation…
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
Across the country, hallways and classrooms are full of activity as students return for the 2019–20 school year. Each year, the National Center for Education Statistics (NCES) compiles back-to-school facts and figures that give a snapshot of our schools and colleges for the coming year. You can see the full report on the NCES website, but here
Continue Reading
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
A few quick thoughts…
Most people realize that mobile phones are actually mobile computers. But many schools that claim to be doing everything they can to get technology into the hands of schoolchildren then ban their students from using the computers that they bring in their pockets every day. The issue apparently is not technology, it’s control. We need to call this for what it is.
Students know that mobile phones are powerful learning devices. They know that when we ban them, we are sending them messages that we don’t get it. Or that we’re not really about learning.
We have to stop the ‘holier than thou’ pronouncements about today’s kids. We haven’t seen significant evolutionary changes in children in just a few decades. Our students (or their brains) are not substantially different, they just have different opportunities. Nostalgia aside, we adults were often bored out of our minds in school too. If we had Facebook, texting, Snapchat, and other avenues to alleviate our boredom, we would have turned to them as well. Let’s quit the arrogant attitudes of moral superiority.
Banning and blocking does absolutely nothing to teach students about inappropriate or untimely mobile phone usage because it removes the decision-making locus from students to educators. Students don’t ever get a chance to own their mobile phone behavior when they are just passive – and usually resentful or bewildered – recipients of our fiats.
Many schools say that they’re trying to foster more student agency. That should mean more than fairly-constrained choices related to content. Student choice in environmental contexts and instructional tools (ahem, learning technologies) matters too.
No one – I repeat, no one – can concentrate without any distractions whatsoever for 45-50 minutes straight. Nor can they then repeat that 6 to 8 times a day. Is our goal with these ‘digital distraction’ bans to have students’ 100% attention at all times or else? If so, are we just punishing students for how our human brains work?
Maybe it’s not the phone that’s leading to students’ distraction. Distraction can result from hunger, fatigue, illness, anxiety, boredom, an overstimulating classroom environment, the desire to engage in additional research, or a whole host of other factors (e.g., frequency of daydreaming is highest during undemanding, easy tasks). Let’s avoid simplistic solutions to complex contexts.
If we involved students in the creation of school mobile phone policies – with authentic input and decision-making, including about ‘consequences’ – instead of fighting with them, we probably would be pleasantly surprised at the outcomes.
When students use mobile phones despite our bans, maybe they’re not defiant. Maybe they’re rational given the context in which they’re embedded. Did I mention that classroom management stems from good instruction?
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
The following is a new blog post related to education and teaching and relevant to our website visitors. The blog post is not based on the opinions or values of our company but is related to education and teaching, so we wanted to share it with YOU! If you ever have any questions please let us know. Now… on to the post!
Only 11 of Florida's 67 county school districts have given classroom teachers the option of carrying guns on campus this school year, according to the latest data collected by the Florida Department of Education.
Time To Teach reviews each blog post by our contributors but if you feel this is a blog post better suited for another page please let us know.
Teachers and Educators are our heroes. We want to thank you for the work you do!
Yours In Education!
Time To Teach
Tom Murray has been inspiring a lot of educators to think about what they can do on Day 1 of the school year so that kids come running back into school on Day 2. That’s a great message.
Danielle Allen said
F.A.I.L. = First Attempt In Learning