Spring is right around the corner, and with it we leave behind the winter blahs as blue skies are ahead. As an educator, it’s easy to get into a rut this time of year with everything that is going on—spring activities kicking into full gear, local and state assessments, curriculum changes for next year, and so on.

Just as nature around us begins to show renewed growth, we too feel the new energy that we can carry into our classrooms. Although it may be easy to pull out lessons from previous years to use, it can be exciting to try out new ways of teaching lessons or exploring new ideas to motivate our students. Designing new lessons can take some time to ensure it meets your needs, but the end result is well worth the investment. Here is our collection of themed content to get you ready with new lessons for March:

February may be the shortest month, but it has so much to offer! From Valentine’s Day and Presidents’ Day to Black History Month, there’s plenty of interesting facts, people, and history to weave into your lessons this month. Here is our collection of themed content to help you keep students engaged in February:

I’m a sucker for new beginnings—the chance to be a better me at home and at work. I love the sense of starting over, improving, and making changes that a new year offers. Each January, I try to write out personal and professional goals, usually things like “be more organized” or “keep my desk clean.” (If you saw my desk, you’d see why this is a yearly goal!)

The professional goals I want to make this year are more resolutions of the heart, in how I engage with the students I teach and how I approach my vocation. Here are my new beginnings for 2019—I hope they also help you as you begin your new year of teaching!

Happy New Year! As you return to your classroom this month after the holiday break, it’s the perfect opportunity to spruce up your lessons. Here is our collection of themed content to help you keep students engaged all month long:

 Teachers Make the Worst Students!

Teachers say it themselves all the time: Teachers can make the worst students. While we know there are no bad students, we do agree that professional development needs to be truly excellent to make an impact. From the thousands of PD sessions we have delivered, we’ve learned there are five key insights that may help you develop and deliver more effective PD—especially when technology is part of the mix.

‘Tis the season to be jolly, but it’s also a great time to engage your students with fun lessons. Here is our collection of themed content to help you keep students engaged all month long:

December Calendar and Morning Meeting: This themed lesson pack will take you and your students through the month of December with calendars, morning meeting activities, an attendance chart, graphing and math activities, and more. 

Holiday Gallery Pack: This fun themed pack contains a variety of images, lessons, and activities to get you in the spirit this holiday season! Use the templates and clipart to create your own lessons, or use our pre-made lessons and activities located in the Lessons tab.

Holiday Hangman: Join us for a bit of fun with Holiday Hangman—it's a great way to practice spelling words or introduce and practice lesson vocabulary! 

Build a Santa: This fun holiday-themed activity is a great way to practice addition and multiplication math facts. 

On September 24, my district had an in-service day. The homeroom teachers in my building were piloting a new writing program and were asked to attend a training. This left specialist teachers with nothing to do, as we would not need to be trained on this new program.

We were all wondering what our duties would be for the day when we received an email from our principal encouraging us to make arrangements to observe in another district for the day. She proceeded to help us find schools to host us—fellow teachers will understand why this was amazing. When do we ever have the time to go to other districts without painstaking measures of using personal days and arranging for subs? And how many of us have principals who understand the importance of observing others in our same content area?

Since its creation in 2005, YouTube has grown to over 1 billion active users each month, with over 400 hours of video content uploaded each minute. This can make it almost impossible to filter through the massive library of videos to find the best educational content––whether you’re looking for your kids, your students, professional development, or pure curiosity.

To help you with your search, we sifted through YouTube’s countless channels and picked out our favorite creators of educational content. Here are the best educational YouTube channels for every kind of learner: 

In a recent conversation I had with teachers, we were asked to name one thing we had learned recently—these could be very basic tasks or skills, or even “life lessons” that were reflected upon. Once we all had something in mind, the next question was the critical one: How did we go about learning this? The answers ranged from experience to failure, YouTube to books, and colleagues in person to colleagues on Twitter. Of the eight of us in the room, we had eight different avenues for new learning.

This is the norm both in education and in life. We don’t wait around until the next training opportunity, just like we don’t wait around until 8:00 for Cheers to come on the television like we used to. Our world is more “on demand” than ever before, and learning is no exception. 

As a K-12 educator, you may think that the term “MOOC” is made up at first—it sounds like a nonsense word from a first grade phonics test! But in higher education, MOOCs have become pervasive and have altered how education is delivered across the globe. 

The acronym MOOC stands for massive open online course. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, topics, and disciplines. The concept is fairly simple: higher-level courses that are available for free to anyone who wants to take them. Most of the time some college credit is available, at a cost, if the student is in need of that.