Parent teacher conferences gave me nightmares my first year of teaching. By my third year of teaching, parent teacher conferences were my FAVORITE night every single quarter. ...

Whenever I am brainstorming how to teach a particular grammar topic or set of vocabulary, my go-to speaking activity is an info-gap activity. It's easy to set up (once you get the hang of it) and I can target whatever grammar or vocab that lesson is focusing on. ...

This tip will be quicker than the title of this blog post. Are you ready? ...

The first year is the hardest. Seriously. If you're in your first year now, just know that IT GETS BETTER . And easier. ...

I used to have a recurring nightmare every single year that it was the first day of school and I had an entire class of kids in front of me and I had no lesson plans . No PowerPoint, no papers, no supplies whatsoever. Just me and a class of kids staring at me. I had to wing it and try not to give them the impression that I'm an unprepared buffoon. ...

There are probably a billion different ways to create long-range plans. I have found them to be indispensable when it comes to lesson planning. It takes some time to sit down and plan things out, but it's well worth it in the long run. Here's how I make mine. 👇 ...

If you have finished the curriculum and there are still a couple days of school left - congrats! You made it through everything! But now what? ...

Community building can be so hard because it takes time. It doesn't happen overnight, but you can build relationships with students slowly day-by-day with little (and very intentional) steps, while focusing on positive behavior management strategies for the classroom. And sticky notes can help you! ...

A classroom full of students with too much free time is the stuff nightmares are made of. If you're done with all the work you had planned for today and there's still more than 5 seconds until the bell rings, then you can whip up this game out of thin air and pretend it was your plan all along. ...

I don't like data. Do I look like a math teacher???!!! My first year of teaching my admin and mentor teacher tried to tell me I had to have an exit ticket every day and at the end of every period I had to examine the data to see how many kids got the lesson, how many were shaky, and how many were lost.  ...

If you've got 10 minutes left of class time and you need another activity to fill time until the bell rings - charades could be what you're looking for. It takes almost zero prep beforehand , so you can easily make it look like you had this plan ned the whole tim e, and definitely intended to end the lesson with charades. ...

If your students have ants in their pants and you want a review activity where they can get up, but have a purpose and reinforce Spanish - this is the Spanish review game for you! The best part is that this fun activity can be used with just about any grammar or vocabulary topic. 😜 So it's a low-prep, easy activity that you can use over and over again for each unit. Yaaaasssssss. ...

I inherited a class set of student white boards (about the size of a piece of paper) in my first teaching position and it was The 👏 Best 👏 Thing 👏 Ever 👏.  ...

Lesson planning can be a MONSTER. It's this continual chore and sometimes I have felt like I'm barely ahead. And that's stressful! ...

Have you ever looked at your calendar and realized - wholly crap the midterm is 3 weeks away and I still have 6 weeks worth of material to teach! I know I've been there. #firstyearteacherproblems #andsecondyeartoo I have some tips to help you out in this moment of crisis and to help you avoid it in the future!...

Every year I look forward to some lessons more than the others that I teach. But there's one in particular that I looooooove teaching. It's my FAVORITE day of the school year because I love teaching this lesson so much....

This is my last blog post about traveling abroad with students - what to expect once you get to your destination. This post is basically what I learned through experience, having taken teenagers abroad. Part 1: Why You Should Travel with Students Abroad Part 2:  How to Plan for Traveling with Students Abroad Part 3:  What to Plan Before Traveling with Students Abroad...

This is my third blog post about traveling abroad with students. The first two focused on why you should plan a student travel tour, and how to plan the trip. This blog post focuses on what to plan for before you get to the airport. Part 1: Why you should travel with students abroad   Part 2: How to plan for traveling with students abroad ...

This is Part 2 of my 4-part series on traveling abroad with students. Part 1  focuses on why you should travel with students abroad, and if you are reading this hopefully you are already sold on the idea.  ...

This is Part 1 of my 4-part series on traveling with students.  I took a tour with students to Italy (with 5 students) and to Spain with 11 students, 2 parents, and a teacher-friend. Both experiences were absolutely amazing and I want to encourage many more teachers to travel with students!  You don't have to be a foreign language teacher - one of the other teachers I traveled with in Italy was an art teacher.  Also, I don't even speak Italian, so you don't have to go to a country whose language you already speak....

'Twas the week before Winter Break, when all through the schools Every student was stirring, and breaking all the rules... That's how that poem goes, right?! ...