Seeking Guest Bloggers for Fall 2019

Have a great idea for a blog post for teachers? I'd love to hear from you. Guest blogging for Christian Teacher, Public School may be a great way to get your idea out there and build community with other teachers. Here's what we'd most like to see:

• Posts that discuss the everyday life of teachers who hold to the Christian faith while teaching in the public school. This could be in the form of a journal, a how-to, or any structure that works for you.

• Technology, art, music, and other special focus areas of education. Give us your takeaways from a recent conference, a book you loved, or a class you took. Inspire fellow teachers to hone their craft and be the best they can be.

• Devotionals for teachers. How has God been working in your life recently? What Bible passages has He laid on your heart to share with other teachers? Share ideas for how to pray for students.

• Posts that show us first-hand how you or an interviewee build rapport with students and parents.

• Posts that help teachers understand IEPs, 504s, and how to both relate to special needs students and help them grow academically and emotionally.

• Book reviews of recently-published books for teachers. You could also do a roundup of readalouds, multicultural novels for middle grade readers, or other books for the classroom library. Have you written a book for teachers? We'd like to know.

• Posts that show us first-hand how you or an interviewee teach a lesson, build a unit, organize a field trip, rock a fundraiser, or other practical how-to article.

• Posts that round up resources for Christian teachers in public schools, especially freebies, helpful organizations, teacher hacks, online tools, and basically anything practical for daily teacher life.

If you write about students, be sure to change names and any identifying information. Follow FERPA! And get any necessary permissions from people you interview or photograph.

Some guest blog submissions may be declined, usually because they're not quite what I'm looking for. Follow the above bullet points, and you'll be more likely to have your idea accepted for publication. Feel free to submit more than one idea!

There's no pay for guest blogging with me, but I'll generate buzz through Instagram @amyballardwriter and here on my blog. You'll spread the word to your friends, and our combined readership will get your ideas out there to a wide network of teachers. I hope you'll consider sharing your awesome-teacher insight on Christian Teacher, Public School this year.

All the best,

Do You DARE To Revise?

Now that I'm halfway through the amazing book Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., and Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S., I decided to try out some of the strategies I've been collecting for increasing student learning.

I knew my first Creative Writing unit needed to be revised, so that's where I decided to focus my efforts first. Since the unit includes targeted lessons on revision, I'll be practicing concepts I want to teach as I revise the unit. Way to make it gel!

Here are the steps to my revision attack plan.

1. The first step in revising a unit (or a piece of writing) is to gain some distance. You can't revise a piece you've just finished writing because you're too close to it. So, put the manuscript in a drawer and walk away. Take a two-week vacation. Then you can come back to it with fresh eyes. I've done this by finishing my unit draft and teaching from it last fall, then setting it aside for almost a whole year. Let's just say, my eyes are fresh.

2. The second step is to reread the unit or draft with an eye for revision. Specifically, look for elements that can be deleted, added, rearranged, or exchanged. Notice that these verbs form the acronym DARE. I'll be teaching my students this acronym, but I need to apply it to my unit plan as well.

• Delete: I deleted a few activities that did not support student thinking about the unit's essential questions. While the activities are fun and do promote creativity in writing, I wanted to zero in on my standards and EQs more precisely. So that meant some things had to go.
• Add: I added several opportunities for retrieval practice, a topic I'm learning about through Powerful Teaching. Low-stakes and no-stakes retrieval activities allow students to show what they know and get feedback without fear of losing points. Retrieval practice is a learning strategy, not an assessment strategy. Since I want students to remember concepts like the steps in the writing process for the long haul, I needed to add practice opportunities that reduce the need for cramming. I also added a unit assessment in Google Forms, including feedback for both incorrect and correct answers. Feedback is another of the "power tools" from Powerful Teaching, so I know I'm helping students learn and retain understandings.
• Rearrange: In my original unit draft, my lesson on individual revision practice came before my lesson that allowed the class to work together on a revision. Clearly, students would benefit if I placed the "we do" lesson before the "you do" lesson. I also shuffled some of the standards around, rearranging them to accurately reflect what students are learning in each lesson of the unit.
• Exchange: In some cases, my learning objectives were vague or did not clearly match expected outcomes. I spent some time honing each objective to exchange vague words for specific ones and to match the objective's verbage to its expected outcome in the lesson.

3. Ideally, the third step would be to seek peer feedback on the unit or draft. If you are the only teacher in your department because your school is so small (yeah), it might be more challenging to find a peer reviewer. This is where networking at teacher conferences and harnessing social media can help. Connect with friends, ask for help, and get another person's fresh eyes to read your revision. And if you're teaching throughout the revision, see how the revised unit works in the classroom. Seeing which lessons succeed and which lessons flop is valuable feedback. Put that feedback to work for you!

4. If you have the luxury, step four is to put that manuscript back in that drawer for another two weeks or a year and come back with fresh eyes for another round of revision. Okay, we're teachers. That would be ridiculous. But just as we tell our students, "You are never done." There is always something we can delete, add, rearrange, or exchange to help students learn.

I'm almost ready to tuck my unit away again and not look at it until fall. I'm much happier with the strategies and the structure, and I believe students will benefit from my efforts. All it took was a chunk of dedicated time and the daring to revise.

For more on revising a unit, check out this past post.

What are your favorite revision strategies? Share in the comments!

Enjoy this free download from my store, Brevity!

Visit Brevity on Teachers Pay Teachers for more free encouraging eCards.

Summer Reading to Energize Your Teaching

It takes most teachers a good chunk of the summer to recharge their batteries enough to even want to think about school in the fall. For me, the P20 conference in mid-July is my turning point each year. After sitting in on keynotes and breakout sessions by impassioned speakers, my head is filled with strategies to try in the classroom.

After that turning point, I'm ready to pick up a few good books on teaching. Here are some picks that will give you that needed boost of energy heading into back-to-school time.

Teach Like a Pirate by Dave Burgess

A couple of years ago, I attended Burgess's keynotes at the P20 conference in Twin Falls. This passionate educator uses the acronym PIRATE to inspire teachers to teach with creativity every day for student engagement and achievement. As the book's Amazon page claims, you'll learn how to:

•  Tap into and dramatically increase your passion as a teacher
•  Develop outrageously engaging lessons that draw students in like a magnet 
•  Establish rapport and a sense of camaraderie in your classroom
•  Transform your class into a life-changing experience for your students 

As a writer, I'm always looking for ways to increase the suspense in my prose. Turns out, suspense is vital for student engagement, too. Burgess walks you through it in a not-scary way, even (and especially) if you think you're "not creative."

Powerful Teaching: Unleash the Science of Learning by Pooja K. Agarwal, Ph.D., and Patrice M. Bain, Ed.S.

I'm currently reading this 2019 book, and I'm taking careful notes on the research-based "power tools" and how to use them in my teaching. It's so refreshing to learn that cognitive science shows that many teaching strategies we're already using are dead-on, but there are ways to leverage the science of learning to increase student understanding far beyond our expectations. I highly recommend this book for all teachers in all disciplines and grade levels. You can view excerpts from the book here!

Unlocking English Learners' Potential by Diane Staehr Fenner and Sydney Snyder

This one's on my to-be-read list. Even though my small district has a low population of English learners, we need practical tools to support each student as he or she learns. This fall I'll be presenting a professional development refresher on strategies for teaching ELs to my school staff. While I could just use last year's slideshow as a springboard, I want to dig deeper and have plenty of information and research at the ready. Not to mention energizing my presentation! If any of you have read this book, tell us what you think.


Please share in the comments any great teacher books you have found energizing!


For more summer reads, check out these posts:

Who Is My Neighbor? Better Information Means Better Compassion
Words To Live By, A New Book By Dalene Parker and Linda Gilden
Conference Time and A Few Good Books
Balance and Boundaries

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Conference Time and A Few Good Books

Tomorrow is the P20 Educator Conference at the College of Southern Idaho, always a fun place to pick up some new info and make new friends. This year's theme is "Diversify to Unify." I'll be presenting on teaching narrative writing using Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books as an inspiration. We'll learn to link story pages electronically, so readers can choose their own paths. On Wednesday, I'll present on Faith and the Public School Teacher. There are already lots of educators signed up to attend, so I'm looking forward to seeing you there!

While I haven't had much time for blogging over the last several months, I have been growing as a teacher, a mom, and a reader. Let me share just three of the books I've enjoyed and learned from recently.

A Place of Healing: Wrestling with the Mysteries of Suffering, Pain, and God's Sovereignty 
by Joni Eareckson Tada

A Place of Healing

We're all familiar with Tada's diving accident when she was a teenager because of her book Joni and the ministry she has had since becoming a quadriplegic. In her 2010 book, A Place of Healing, she shares how the heart-shattering new experience of severe, chronic pain has led her to trust God in new ways. I highly recommend this book for any believer, but specifically for those suffering from persistent pain, whether it be physical or otherwise. Visit Joni & Friends to learn more about Tada's ministries.


Reclaiming Surrendered Ground: Protecting Your Family from Spiritual Attacks
by Jim Logan

Reclaiming Surrendered Ground

The Amazon description of this book claims it will "help you and your family:

• Become alert to the enemy and his tactics
• Discover your areas of vulnerability
• Live freely in Christ's victory."

I definitely found that statement to be true when I read Reclaiming Surrendered Ground. If you're raising a family for Christ, give this book a thoughtful read.


The Parables of Jesus 
by Tomie dePaola

The Parables of Jesus

My children and I (and, when I taught Kindergarten, my students) have always loved Tomie dePaola's books with their thoughtful narratives and exquisite, accessible illustrations. In The Parables of Jesus, dePaola retells familiar stories Jesus told in a traditional manner, accompanying them with his gorgeous art. Good for short storytime sessions or a cover-to-cover read. As always with picture books, I recommend the paperback or hardback versions, since it can be difficult to appreciate the illustrations fully in an ebook format.



What are you reading these days? Share your picks for educators and other people of faith in the comments!

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