Great Educational Resources

For English Language Arts (ELA), social studies, and even science teachers, primary source documents are a staple of classroom instruction. From historical speeches to song lyrics, primary sources have the ability to bring deeper meaning to a lesson. In addition, primary source documents often appear on high-stakes standardized tests, meaning that all students should know how to analyze them.

Finding and landing a teaching job can be a challenge depending on your area of expertise and where you want to teach. Finding a teaching job that you love can be even harder. However, if you are willing to broaden your search and target specific high-need subjects, you can be in the driver’s seat when it comes to your teaching career. American public schools are facing a teacher shortage crisis, particularly in subject areas like math, science, and special education. If you equip yourself with the skills and qualifications to fill these high-need positions, you can flip the script on the whole job-search process. Rather than competing against piles of qualified applicants, schools could very well be courting you.

Creating a new course isn’t easy, especially if the goal of said course is to raise students’ standardized test scores. Public high schools are often judged on their ACT/SAT scores, and even the smallest dip can lower a school’s credibility, or worse, funding. If you’re tasked (like I once was) with creating an ACT (or SAT) preparation course from scratch, it probably feels like the weight of the world is on your shoulders. But there is hope. Let’s get started.

Community support is a vital part of school and student success. Students, teachers, administrators, and business owners all win when community members bring their expertise, talents, and ideas into the schools. All too often, schools only approach local businesses to sponsor events or donate money and goods. This set-up limits the possibility of the relationship and makes it feel like a business transaction. But when the people at businesses work closely with the people in schools, the relationship turns into a partnership—each side getting something they didn’t have before.

Many teachers describe the profession as a calling. Some may have even felt the yearning to teach before they were in school themselves. Lining up their teddy bears to lead storytime or bossing their siblings around. You’ve probably heard people say that a career in teaching won’t make you rich but it turns out the naysayers only have half the story.

That's the pain in the neck of every teacher: Most students dislike writing assignments. More than that, they try to avoid such tasks by all manner of means. You assign essays to help students organize thoughts and develop critical thinking, but their skepticism and frustration make it harder to teach writing to them. Good news is, you can help students fall in love with writing. Consider the below tricks to motivate and encourage them to learn and improve writing skills.