Life Tips for Teachers

From self-care to savings to managing your time, life works a little differently for us teachers. It’s Lit Teaching is here to help.

Life Tips for Teachers ► April 18, 2021

Teaching Creative Writing: Tips for Your High School Class

When I was first told that I’d be teaching creative writing, I panicked. While I had always enjoyed writing myself, I had no idea how to show others how to do it creatively. After all, all of my professional development had focused on argumentative writing and improving test scores. Eventually, though, I came to love my creative writing class, and I think you will too. In this post, I hope to help you with shaping your own creative writing class.

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Complete Guides ► April 4, 2021

Effective Classroom Management: A Plan College Never Taught You!

College taught me a lot about teaching. I learned about Bloom’s taxonomy and the Common Core State Standards. But the one thing that my peers and I desperately wanted to learn, but were never taught, was how to manage a classroom. Now that I have eight years of teaching experience in a Title 1 school, I want to share what college didn’t teach you about classroom management.

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Life Tips for Teachers ► February 7, 2021

How to Plan a Novel Study QUICKLY

During my first year of teaching, my novel studies were a mess. We didn’t finish the first two books. I was up all night trying to plan the next day. I had no sense of direction and no idea how long any of my plans would take. Now, I can plan an entire novel study in under an hour. This post will walk you through the exact steps I take to plan a novel study quickly.

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Life Tips for Teachers ► August 9, 2020

5 Preparations You Need to Teach Your New English Class

When I was a first-year high school English teacher, I had no idea where to even begin planning and getting ready for my first year. It probably took me a whole three years of teaching before I had a grasp on what essentials I needed to prep before the first day of class. With another year about to begin, I thought I’d share what I’d learned the hard way. In this blog post, I’ll share the 5 things you need to prepare to teach your new English class!

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Life Tips for Teachers ► May 31, 2020

How to Lesson Plan for the Unexpected

Whether you’re teaching during a pandemic, a pregnancy, or with a sick loved one, sometimes we teachers have to enter into a school year, semester, or week without knowing that we’ll actually be there to see our lessons through. In this post, I hope to provide some tips for how to lesson plan for unexpected events or for when the future is uncertain.

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Complete Guides ► January 12, 2020

How to Create the Classroom Library of Your Dreams 

Everyone should have a classroom library, whether you teach English or another content area. Classroom libraries offer all kinds of benefits: increased student reading achievement, greater access to print material, greater levels of volume of student reading, and more. But starting a classroom library is a daunting task. How do you afford it? Organize it? Maintain it?

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Life Tips for Teachers ► November 17, 2019

How to Give Teachers Time and Money This Holiday

So, you have a teacher in your life. Maybe it’s a family member, a significant other, or maybe you just really want to do something nice for your child’s educator. What you DON’T want to do is hand them something cliche and useless (we teachers really don’t need any more coffee mugs, I promise).

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