Prior to the start of the new school year, I always like to reflect on my relationships with my parents from the previous years. What could I have done better? How can I improve? How can I deepen my relationships with both parents AND students? These aren’t always comfortable questions to ask myself because at …
Learn how to use these FREE Parent Communication Logs to document student behavior and academic progress in your classroom. Yay classroom management!
What Makes a Parent Love a Teacher ... and it's not what you might think! Read this terrific post by Jennifer Gonzalez to find out what really matters to parents. Be sure to download her free "deep data" chart for organizing your student data!
I-statements (I-messages): Examples and fun worksheets to help your family develop an assertive communication style and improve conflict resolution
Parent-child communication is a challenge. Do you also feel like your child does not listen? Then check out 6 parenting tips to communicate stress-free.
The ultimate list of classroom management strategies, organized into verbal and non-verbal strategies, parent communication tips,rewards and prizes, games, brain breaks, and visual strategies.
Parent-child communication is a challenge. Do you also feel like your child does not listen? Then check out 6 parenting tips to communicate stress-free.
These 5 simple tips make it easier for your to communicate with your autistic child. Optimizing your language makes it easier for your autistic child to ..
The New York Times bestselling coauthor of Sex at Dawn explores the ways in which “progress” has perverted the way we live—how we eat, learn, feel, mate, parent, communicate, work, and die—in this “engaging, extensively documented, well-organized, and thought-provoking” (Booklist) book. Most of us have instinctive evidence the world is ending—balmy December days, face-to-face conversation replaced with heads-to-screens zomboidism, a world at constant war, a political system in disarray. We hear some myths and lies so frequently that they feel like truths: Civilization is humankind’s greatest accomplishment. Progress is undeniable. Count your blessings. You’re lucky to be alive here and now. Well, maybe we are and maybe we aren’t. Civilized to Death counters the idea that progress is inherently good, arguing that the “progress” defining our age is analogous to an advancing disease. Prehistoric life, of course, was not without serious dangers and disadvantages. Many babies died in infancy. A broken bone, infected wound, snakebite, or difficult pregnancy could be life-threatening. But ultimately, Christopher Ryan questions, were these pre-civilized dangers more murderous than modern scourges, such as car accidents, cancers, cardiovascular disease, and a technologically prolonged dying process? Civilized to Death “will make you see our so-called progress in a whole new light” (Book Riot) and adds to the timely conversation that “the way we have been living is no longer sustainable, at least as long as we want to the earth to outlive us” (Psychology Today). Ryan makes the claim that we should start looking backwards to find our way into a better future. Product DetailsISBN-13: 9781451659115 Media Type: Paperback Publisher: Avid Reader Press / Simon & Schuster Publication Date: 08-11-2020 Pages: 304 Product Dimensions: 5.40(w) x 8.30(h) x 0.90(d)About the Author Christopher Ryan, PhD, and his work have been featured just about everywhere, including: MSNBC, Fox News, CNN, NPR, The New York Times, The Times of London, Playboy, The Washington Post, Time, Newsweek, The Atlantic, Outside, El Pais, La Vanguardia, Salon, Seed, and Big Think. A featured speaker from TED to The Festival of Dangerous Ideas at the Sydney Opera House to the Einstein Forum in Pottsdam, Germany, Ryan has consulted at various hospitals in Spain, provided expert testimony in a Canadian constitutional hearing, and appeared in well over a dozen documentary films. The author of Civilized to Death and the coauthor of the New York Times bestseller Sex at Dawn, Ryan puts out a weekly podcast, called Tangentially Speaking, featuring conversations with interesting people, ranging from famous comics to bank robbers to drug smugglers to porn stars to authors to plasma physicists.Table of Contents Table of Contents Introduction: Know Thy Specks 1 Part I Origin Stories 1 What We Talk About When We Talk About Prehistory 17 Of Capacities and Tendencies 20 A People's History of Prehistory 23 Noble Savages, Savage Noblemen, and Straw Cave Men 27 2 Civilization and Its Dissonance 35 The Empirical Strikes Back 35 Through an Unremembered Gate 39 "The Best People in the World" 53 The Art of Not Being Civilized 58 Malthusian Miscalculations and Hobbesian Horror Shows 65 The Functions of Fear 70 On Primitive Power 77 Part II Apocalypse Always (The NPP in the Present) 3 The Myth of the Savage Savage (Declaring War on Peace) 91 Primate Evidence 92 Anthropological and Archaeological Evidence 95 4 The Irrational Optimist 101 Mo Better Blues 103 On the Health of Nations 105 Food for Thought 110 Longevity Lies and the Price of Paradise 112 Part III Reflections in an Ancient Mirror (Being Human) 5 The Naturalistic Fallacy Fallacy 127 6 Born to Be Wild 131 7 Raising Hell 143 8 Turbulent Teens 149 9 Anxious Adults 161 Good Work, If You Can Get It 161 The Price of Money 168 How to Lose by Winning 172 Rich Asshole Syndrome (RAS) 176 Drunk on Dollars 184 Part IV A Prehistoric Path into the Future 10 All's Well That Ends Well 193 11 In the Absence of the Sacred 205 The Many Voices of God 210 Turn On, Tune In, Get Better 217 On Holy Ghosts 232 Past Progressive 236 Conclusion: A Necessary Utopia 241 The Upside of Armageddon 242 The End of All Our Exploring 246 Acknowledgments 253 Notes and Further Reading 255 Index 273 Show More
Advice from Real Teachers Series We've all been there, so if this happens to you, don't be caught off guard! Imagine that a parent of one of your students accosts you in your classroom or in the hallway after school and begins verbally attacking you ... and you are so stunned that you just stand
Questions for kids to connect on a deeper level. Here are 5 questions to help you bond emotionally and mentally with your kids.
There are eleven things that children really want from their parents - they are the keys to raising healthy, happy and resilient children
About two years ago, I created some resources to send home with parents on how to help their children succeed in school. You can find the
When you consistently enforce classroom management plan for every time a student breaks a rule, your bound to get an occasional complaint from a parent who just doesn't like the idea of their child being held accountable. Here's how to handle it.
Regardless of whether you’ve just finished your first quarter parent conferences or they are coming up soon, keeping families informed about how their children are doing is of paramount importance to students’ success in school. I’ve written before about why I so enjoyed working with the parents of my English Language Learners and while communicating with non-native English-speaking parents of ELLs can be a challenge, it is also very rewarding. There are also many more tools available now than when I was in the classroom for keeping ELLs families apprised of how their kids are doing in school. Many of these tech tools have built-in translation capabilities, so there’s really no longer any excuse for not maintaining frequent contact with ELL families. Today I’d like to offer several ways you can keep ELL parents and guardians up-to-date about your classroom activities and their children’s progress in school. Of course, you can also use all these tools with native English speakers, too! Most of these ideas were mentioned in our recent #ELLEdTech Twitter chat about tech tools for communicating with parents. For the websites/apps in the list below, I added explanations from the sites themselves (hence the quotation marks) as well as my own comments. Please note that I have not used any of these apps myself to communicate with parents, other than Google Translate and my own resource mentioned at the end, but I have heard positive things about Remind, Google Voice, and Twitter from other teachers who’ve used them for this purpose. Source: The ESL Nexus Websites, Apps & Resources for Staying In Touch * Bloomz "is a new, free tool designed to help teachers, parents, and PTA members share information and photos through real-time communication and coordination. Built primarily for the K-8 environment…" You can send class updates, share photos and videos, manage events, create student portfolios, and track behavior. * brightwheel (sic) is "Designed specifically to meet the needs of early education – brightwheel was built to be your all-in-one solution." It's a program that offers ways to track enrollment, payments, food consumption, and activities as well as other things that are helpful in daycare settings. It can also send messages, reports, and photos about children's activities. * FreshGrade "is an online portfolio where teachers, students and parents all interact to capture and comment on the student's school work. The program also allows teachers to create and grade custom assignments, which are then tracked in the tool." You can create digital portfolios which can then be shared with families. A free e-book and training are also available. * Google Voice and Google Translate: My #ELLEdTech co-host, Laurah, wrote a blog post on how to use these two programs to communicate with the families of ELLs. There is also a very helpful infographic in her post that outlines the steps to follow. * Parent Hub is a way to "Engage parents with updates about the amazing things happening in your classroom." You create "channels" that group people, such as a class or an after-school club, into communities and then you send messages and attachments to them. Recipients can respond to you, too. It’s based in the European Union so privacy laws are different from those in the U.S. * Remind "is a communication tool that helps teachers connect instantly with students and parents. Send quick, simple messages to any device." You can send a text and have it translated into 70 other languages; you can also schedule when you want a text to be sent. * TalkingPoints is a “multilingual texting platform easily connects teachers and families through text messages." You send a text in English, it's translated into the family's language, they text back in their language, and that gets translated into English. * Twitter: Thanks to S@FloradTeach for recommending Twitter to send messages and photos. Tweets can be sent in real time or scheduled in advance. According to Twitter, tweets can also be translated using Bing’s translation program but they may not be 100% accurate so the original tweet is also included. I’d be curious to know if anyone has used this Twitter function; please leave a comment below if you have and let us know how well it worked. * Weekly Progress Update Forms: A TpT resource with one-page forms in English and Spanish that comes in print and Google Drive versions. Teachers fill out the forms on a weekly basis and send them home. Academic progress, homework completion, attitude, participation and behavior are noted and there is space for comments. Signed forms can be saved in folders to show progress during the course of the school year. How do you stay in touch with your ELL families and keep them up-to-date on how their children are doing in school? Please share the resources you use in the link party below! An InLinkz Link-up
One of the most frustrating things about raising a young child is having a 2 or 3-year-old not listening to anything you say. When my son was a toddler, I found it so hard to
For the most part, it’s a misnomer. 99.9% of parents love their children. They may have a misguided way of showing it. They may not sign one bit of correspondence from the school. They may be uninvolved, negligent, or worse. They may be preoccupied ... Read more
Discover 6 proven strategies to curb whining. Learn engaging, funny parenting tips to create a harmonious home. Click for peace!
Do you ever wish you could simply close the complaint department at your school? To never again have a parent complain about you to administration?
Ever wonder how to get kids to listen without yelling? I know, it’s frustrating! But this simple strategy really helps...
A child bolts away from its parent in a crowded place - what would YOU do?? What this mom wants you to know about autism and wandering.
These social skills activities for kids with autism offer a fun way to teach social emotional skills and self-regulation to kids with ASD!
Here are 20 expert tips for getting your kids' attention when they just aren't listening.
About Sincerely, Your Autistic Child A diverse collection of autistic voices that highlights how parents can avoid common mistakes and misconceptions, and make their child feel truly accepted, valued, and celebrated for who they are. Most resources available for parents come from psychologists, educators, and doctors, offering parents a narrow and technical approach to autism. Sincerely, Your Autistic Child represents an authentic resource for parents written by autistic people themselves. From childhood and education to culture, gender identity, and sexuality, this anthology tackles the everyday joys and challenges of growing up while honestly addressing the emotional needs, sensitivity, and vibrancy of autistic kids, youth, and young adults. Contributors reflect on what they have learned while growing up on the autism spectrum and how parents can avoid common mistakes and overcome challenges while raising their child. Part memoir, part guide, and part love letter, Sincerely, Your Autistic Child is an indispensable collection that invites parents and allies into the unique and often unheard experiences of autistic children and teens.
If you’re a teacher about to make a difficult phone call to a parent, there are several things you can do to make sure all goes smoothly. These are suggestions I myself have used as a middle school teacher to contact parents about topics like a student's behavior.
As pet parents, we're responsible for knowing our cats' needs and wants, so we have to be able to know what they're saying. Tail twitching and chin rubbing are two ways cats communicate with body language. Here's what they might mean.
Compassionate Communication is also known as Nonviolent Communication (NVC) “I use the term Nonviolent Communication™ as Gandhi used it – to refer to our natural state of compassion when violence …
Praising kids can be harmful to their self-esteem and self-confidence. Research indicates that when kids are lavished with praise it leads them to develop a fixed mindset.
I love this chart showing alternatives to asking "How are you?", created by Kat Velos, and brought to my attention by fellow yoga teacher Gina Caputo. "How are you?" is an important start to human connection,
Always put it in writing.
SmileyCoach Lisa Parkes talks about what is at the core of every child: their need for love and approval.
It's the tiny moments of everyday ritual that ultimately make the difference to the connection we have with our kids.
In many schools across North America, special education teachers get the short end of the stick when it comes to support for their classrooms. With typically low student to teacher...
Preparing for another year of reading level assessments? Do you always conference with parents about their child’s progress? Then this post is for you! The reading level letters cover all DRA Levels 1-70 along with covering Letter Levels A-Z. To be honest, if a parent does not have an education background or is not using […]
"It tells me that the parents don't care."
Do you remember the days of having to squeeze characters into one message just so you didn’t have to pay for another text? Move over, Jenny. Not only has texting changed a lot over the years, but it’s also become a normal way for many of us to communicate. Whether it’s meeting new friends, trying to get out of a meeting with your boss, or checking in with your family, there are all kinds of ways people now have the opportunity to hilariously mess up.
Although many of us think that each family is a different world and each one has different ways of communicating, it is inevitable to compare our parents with those of our friends. And when we do, we realize that we are not so different, especially moms, who seem to have the same habits with their children. As we grow up, we realize that those details that bothered us when we were little are actually priceless.
Use the 5 Simple Tips for Taming Tantrums to deescalate meltdowns and preserve your sanity.