Empower Students Now

How big is the stack of books you want to read this summer? If you are like most English teachers, the stack is sky high. This is exactly why I’m hosting The English Teacher Summer Reading Series!It’s a free event that is happening between June 4th-August 7th!Attendees of the event will:Go deep into 8 super popular professional development books without reading a single word (unless you want to of course!).Receive a 5 minute video overview of each book every Saturday (except during my camping adventure vacation to Colorado, I’m finally getting out of the house woohoo!) The video overview will include a one sentence summary of the book.Participate in discussions with other teachers in a private Facebook Group!Receive 5 key insights gained from each book. Get recommendations about how to use each book to improve your teaching practice.Access a whole bunch more bonuses, learn more here!So, in this episode I kick off The English Teacher Summer Reading Series with an important book I recently read called 7 Myths About Education by Daisy Christodoulou.Sign up for The English Teacher Summer Reading Series here: http://bit.ly/summer-reading-series-2021Read the blog post here: https://amandawritenow.com/english-teacher-summer-reading-seriesfirst-book-up-7-myths-about-education-by-daisy-christodoulou/

Have you ever gone through a paradigm shift before? A paradigm is a set of patterns. Stephen Covey, author of 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, says paradigms are just beliefs. But, what if those patterns, beliefs or paradigms shift? What if the beliefs you've held for so long begin to change? In this episode I discuss 5 paradigm shifts I've had recently when it comes to best teaching practices and the books that caused them!https://amandawritenow.com/when-you-find-out-youve-been-teaching-wrong/

Are you often feeling overwhelmed with all you have to do? Maybe you feel scattered and aren’t sure what to focus your energy on. Mindfulness in your personal and professional life can most definitely help alleviate these anxieties. In this blog post I’ll share ten ways you can begin to bring more mindfulness into both your personal and professional life. You’ll learn what mindfulness is and how you can begin practicing in your personal life so you can start bringing these practices into your classroom.

Have you ever felt you weren’t supporting a group of students with writing? Maybe these students had IEPs, maybe they didn’t, maybe they were the students who turned in writing that was all over the place, spelling mistakes, run-on sentences, no paragraphs...you know what I’m talking about. And you just didn’t know how to support these students or even where to start!?!You are not alone. I’ve felt at a loss for how to support struggling writers every single year of my 13 years as a teacher.There are so many varying levels within one classroom. It can be hard to wrap your mind around how to support students who are struggling with writing and seem far behind all the other writers in your classroom. However, there are things we can do, that all students can benefit from, both advanced writers and struggling writers. According to Natalie Wexler, author of The Knowledge Gap and co-author of The Writing Revolution, students who struggle with writing, and all students for that matter, need explicit instruction at the sentence level. After reading Wexler’s books, I couldn’t agree more. In this episode I discuss 5 simple mini lessons you can teach this week if you wanted!

https://amandawritenow.com/15-ways-to-engage-students-in-meaningful-discussions-in-person-and-online/There are so many discussion tech tools available to teachers these days! Parlay, Jamboard, Back Channel, Voxer and even Google Slides and Docs can be used to facilitate discussions among students virtually. But, what always gets me thinking is…these tools are great, but how do we get students to actually have meaningful conversations with each other? You know what I’m talking about, a real conversation…not the fake kind, where everyone is trying to compete to impress the teacher and get a good grade. Getting students to have meaningful discussions isn’t as hard as you might think. Listen to this episode to learn 15 things you can do to try and facilitate more meaningful discussions online or in person!

Every human who wants to better themselves goes through this cycle...They set a goal or a resolution and may even accomplish the goal but eventually things seem to situate themselves back to the way they were before. This can be such a frustrating experience! It’s so frustrating in fact that I have read hundreds of books about goal setting, habit formation and the brain to solve this annoying problem. I’ve definitely accumulated a whole lot of information about this but still...the application of this info is lacking. In this episode I discuss three things you can do to make your goals permanent!Check out the show notes here: https://amandawritenow.com/how-to-actually-accomplish-your-goals-for-teachers-and-students/

Our classrooms are microcosms of the society we live in.The sad reality (that many have a hard time admitting) is race matters in our society and it matters in our classrooms. A person’s race impacts so many aspects of their day to day experiences. When we ignore this fact or pretend to be colorblind, we are perpetuating the problems of stereotyping, prejudice and systemic racism. The majority of teachers in America are white and female. Schools and neighborhoods are segregated by race. Students socially group themselves by race (and so do adults).How do we approach issues of race with our students? How do we help students develop their racial identity and consider how our racial identity impacts our lives? I don’t pretend to have all the answers. I’m still reading and learning and incorporating what I learn in small, incremental ways. For now, I’m leaning a lot on mentor texts. In this episode I discuss how to use mentor texts to approach issues of race in your English Classroom. I talk about 6 mentor texts and how I'd go about using them.

https://amandawritenow.com/how-to-quit-grading-so-much/So, you want to know how to quit grading so much? Or maybe you just want your grading process to be more systematic and meaningful for students. Well, listening to this episode is the first step to making both of these things happen!My mission is to make teachers’ lives easier. I resigned from teaching because of COVID-19. After making this huge decision one question has been on my mind constantly…how can I help teachers?Let’s get honest here. Teaching during a pandemic is mind-numbing, tedious, and terrible! Sitting on a screen with students or having to teach with a mask on…this is an awful time to be a teacher. If you are continuing to have a positive attitude, you amaze me!One of the ways to ease teachers’ stress is by reducing the grading burden. Below, you’ll find 6+tips for how to stop grading so much. Some of the tips are obvious but that’s okay. Teachers need reminders just like students.You’ll also find ideas I gleaned from an amazing book called Point-less An English Teacher’s Guide to More Meaningful Grading by Sarah M. Zerwin. This book is a game changer for teachers because Zerwin documents exactly how teachers can work within their school’s grading policies to make grading more meaningful.I believe we can both stop grading so much and make the way we grade more meaningful!

Students in our class need to feel that their unique voices, opinions, and experiences matter. In this article, you’ll get inspiration and ideas for distance learning community building activities for middle school and high school students.https://amandawritenow.com/distance-learning-community-building-activities-for-middle-and-high-school/

https://amandawritenow.com/how-to-teach-reading-and-writing-workshop-from-a-distance/Many teachers are wondering, can I still teach reading and writing workshop from a distance? The quick answer is... absolutely!Whether you want to admit it or not, the current state of the world requires we simplify what we normally do. This is exactly why we should continue doing workshop...I've been arguing for years that workshop makes teaching simple! At this point, you might be thinking, what do you mean Amanda!?!? How is it simple? What do I do? Well, read on my dedicated, wonderful teacher friend!Below I've listed the main components of reading and writing workshop and how each component can be tweaked to meet distance learning requirements. If you are new to workshop here are the main components: mini-lesson, work time, conferencing, charts, mentor texts and publishing.