Teachers


Why Teach Soft Skills?

  • September 12, 2016

According to Burning Glass Technologies, one in every three skills listed in job ads is a baseline skill. Baseline skills are transferable to any job; in other words the soft skills. In a Career Builder survey 77% of employers surveyed said they were seeking candidates with soft skills.

Navigating Your Way Through Career Crossroads

It can happen all of a sudden or over a long period of time. You wake up and stare at your alarm, 6AM, wondering if this really is the right career for you. Reaching a career crossroad is a difficult time in your professional life. Self-doubt, anxiety and the sensation of being ‘stuck’ are all common experiences.

“Thank Teachers For….” (The Rest of This Sentence is Up to You!)

Teaching is one of those rare occupations in which simply "doing your job" can make a lifelong impression on someone. Covering the course material and helping students pass standardized tests is in the job description, but what about those hundred other little acts of kindness, patience, preparation, creativity, attention, and care that go into the work of education?

For example, I know a kindergarten teacher who recently used her Dunkin Donuts straw to convince an inconsolable 5 year old that his broken water bottle had been fixed. All in a day's work, right?

 

Students learn to graph equations and diagram sentences from teachers, but they also learn lifelong lessons about how to treat others, handle conflict, solve problems, and feel about themselves--based on the exa…

Letter from the Editor: Are You Teaching Students to Use Their “Tools”?

Mom and my sister--both teachers--find it funny that I ended up working for a website called Teach.com. “You just couldn’t escape,” my mom likes to laugh. A love of sharing information is in our blood. But I try to do more listening than talking around my mom. When she talks, I always learn something.

While waiting for the fireworks to start on Independence Day this year, my mom and I were discussing, of all things, word problems. My mom complained that her students hated them, which never made much sense to her.

“Saying that you like fractions or that you like algebra, but you don’t like word problems... that's basically saying you like having a box full of tools, but you don't like fixing anything with them.”

My mom re…

Using Crowdfunding To Motivate Students

The following is a guest post from Teach100 blogger Carissa Peck

When I read about motivating students, a lot of it comes down to things that I as the teacher am supposed to do, including:

  • Reinforcing positive behavior
  • Providing options for student assignments
  • Planning lessons around student interests
  • Providing students with positive reinforcement (i.e., pizza parties, stickers, extra credit)

The list goes on.


These teacher-focused motivation tools got me thinking — if I want my students to be motivated, why am I the one putting in all of the effort to keep them motivated? They should be intrinsically motivated, …

 

Lessons in Lock-Up: What It’s Really Like to Teach in Prison

If you’re a fan of Orange is the New Black (OITNB), you may have been shocked by inmate Taystee’s abrupt return to Litchfield Correctional just three episodes after her release. However, if you’ve worked in the education department of a correctional facility, you’re more than familiar with “bounce-backs,” or as Alice*, a teacher who has worked at three correctional facilities for almost 20 years correctly calls it, “recidivism.”

Teachers like Alice* understand the importance of recidivism, or inmate returns, because it’s the reason their jobs make a difference.

According to a 2013 RAND study , correctional education reduces recidivism by 43 percent. Correctional education includes te…

 

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