Managing Wellbeing

There’s a curious phenomenon that many teachers experience when they begin to shift practice towards structured literacy.  They start to do a bit of reading before quickly ‘going down the rabbit hole’. After a little while they come to understand (or hope they understand) the fundamentals of the evidence of reading instruction, then something funny happens. Suddenly, they feel lost and begin to doubt every single move they make.  They second guess every decision, every moment of instruction and …

For a while now I have been in contact with an early career teacher who co-teaches with a teacher who is more experienced than her. This arrangement might work out beautifully, except that the more experienced teacher is an ‘expert’ in a balanced literacy approach and the early career teacher is firmly ‘on the bus’ of evidence informed practice. This leaves my young colleague in the precarious position of taking 2 steps forward and then doubting everything she does.  I know that there are so man…

The new school year has started and most people here in Australia are a week or more into their new class. I remember when I was first teaching and every year I would imagine how it was going to be when the next batch of shiny eyed cherubs landed in my room. I would spend  hours programming, preparing and trying to ‘up the anti’ on what was happening in my room. Inevitably I exhausted myself before school even started.   And then of course, what came from that was actually not good. Because I ha…