What a new teacher should include on their resume

Heyyyyy new teachers!  You're about to graduate and super excited about looking for that first job!  It is such an exciting time as you start the job hunt, full of anticipation for getting your own classroom.

Most school districts have online portals that you will use to submit your application.  Some will ask for a resume, a few may not.  Regardless, you need to have a high-quality, professional looking resume at the ready to upload for applications or to print and hand out at interviews and career fairs.

But what exactly do you put on a teacher resume when you have no experience?

Been there, done that.  Jobs want people with experience but you can't get experience without a job. It's a lousy circle that just keeps going.  Never fear, even as a brand new teacher, there ARE things you can list on your resume for experience!

1. Any actual, paying jobs, working with kids.

Did you pay your way through college by working at a childcare center?  Go home every summer to work day camp?  Put those experiences on your resume!  You can add that you were responsible for a group of X children, supervised field trips, created an activities schedule, etc. Whatever is applicable to your role!

2. Student teaching

You didn't get a degree in education without student teaching. That experience is what you will draw from the most in interviews, so be sure to include it on your resume under experience.  You can specify what you did such as: "responsible for teaching five 7th grade social studies blocks per day", "planned and facilitated reading intervention groups",  "assumed all classroom responsibilities for 23 second graders", "contributed data to IEP case conferences" and so on.  Think back to all you did during the student teaching experience to choose the best highlights for your resume.

3. Field Experiences / Practicums

Most teacher preparation programs include many hours of pre-service work, classroom experiences before full student teaching.  These can also be added to your new teacher resume!

"100 hours of 2nd grade field experience in which I was responsible for leading a math center each week that targeted fluency skills".  

There you have it! 3 things you can put on a resume when you're looking for your first teaching job and don't have experience!  Remember: keep the resume to 1 page and print on high quality paper!

Good luck on the job search!

3 Crucial Things New Special Ed Teachers Should Focus on (and 1 to avoid!)

Hello new special education teachers, welcome to the wild world of sped! If you are new to teaching children with disabilities, there are 3 crucial things you need to focus on in your first year of teaching.  And one to not worry about.

1. IEPs

This is a doozy. You have to follow them, write them, present them to parents, and progress monitor.  The first year can be overwhelming with how long it takes to write an IEP.  But don't panic.  It gets easier the more you do it and I can whip out high-quality IEPs in warp-speed these days.

Reach out to your mentor, other special ed teachers, and your principal for help on writing goals.  SLPs are a fantastic source of help as well!

2. Quality Instruction

Focus this year on delivering fabulous instruction.  Lessons don't have to be "cute" but they should be engaging and standards based.  If you don't get to visit other teacher's classrooms for support in the general education setting, or for observations, ASK to visit some.  It's great to see how other teachers manage the classroom and present information.

Find a professional development and ask your admin to send you.  Participate in Twitter chats.  Look for a free webinar.  Make your goal to deliver superb instruction.

3. Build Relationships

With staff: 

• Don't gossip!  
• Be friendly to everyone.  
• Say 'thank you' every time the secretary or janitor does you a favor. These people are THE key to school.  We know teachers are underpaid.  School secretaries and janitors are paid even less! 
• Participate in the staff events. Dinner night out, lunch time pitch-ins and secret pal swaps all let others get to know you and will help you form relationships.
• Let others overhear you talking POSITIVELY about someone else "Did you see Mary's bulletin board? It's so clever!"  "I heard one of Mrs. Jones' students say the cutest thing..."

With parents: 

• Send newsletters with updates on lessons you've taught, a resource (article from Understood.org or local event happening). Always include your contact info. Never include photos of students due to privacy laws.
  
  
• Send positive notes home with students frequently.  A ton. As much as you can.
  Sammy told a cute story.
  You're so glad to get to work with Tom. 
  Alice read 4 new sight words today! 
  Maria helped tidy the room. 
  Luis had a wonderful day!
  
  
• Call all parents the first week of school.  "Just wanted to say how much I am enjoying getting to know Ayden.  He's got such a good sense of humor!"     "Tanya is just precious! I'm so glad to get to work with her this year."
  

With students:

• Greet them by name.
• Show an interest in them. Discuss the character on their t-shirt, ask about the Pokemon backpack when you see them in the hall.  Compliment their headband.  
• Smile. A lot. 
• Celebrate successes with them.  "Mr. Jones said you were so good at the recorder he had you helping other students! Man, that's awesome."     
  "You read more sight words today than ever before! A new high record!"
  "I saw you out there with the hoola hoop.  You go girl!"
  
• Leave them positive notes on their desk. I like to leave one before I go home for the day so that they will discover it when they come in the morning "Hi Alice!  Hope you have a great day!"   

The one thing a new special ed teacher should not worry about:

A cute classroom.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with having an adorable classroom. However, cute classrooms don't make students learn more effectively.  A perfect double-border bulletin board with a punny saying has 0 effect on whether or not your students learn the difference between long  and short vowels.

And quite honestly, if you have students with emotional challenges, the cute decor you spent hours laminating can get ripped off the walls and destroyed in a matter of seconds.  

You can have a theme. You can hang cute stuff. But don't spend hours and hours on it right now.  Book bins can be labeled with hand-scrawled post it notes.  Even if your handwriting is meh.  

Sometimes the best teachers have the blandest rooms.  

Your hours are better spent on webinars, learning the curriculum, hanging out with the kids at recess if you have the chance, fine-tuning lesson plans, and observing other seasoned teachers.  Let's not forget, you're going to be busy writing IEPs too!

Related: {8 Essentials for Special Education Teachers}

{Games to Boost Executive Functioning}

{Using Post-it Notes for Classroom Management}

The *Best* Teacher Pens

Move over Papermate Flair.  Take a seat, Gelocity.  There's a new favorite pen in town.

If you know any teachers, you know we have a thing for pens.  Fun colors make grading more fun (and more fun for the kids), filling in our calendars, and taking notes.  When I started teaching, my favorite pens were Papermate Flair.  They are nice but more like a marker than a pen.

Then my son introduced me to Gelocity.  Very nice. Great colors, but I find that they occasionally skip while I'm writing.

From there I hit on Pilot FriXion.  The advantage to these is that they are ERASABLE. But not like the old school erasable pens. These are more legit and they aren't clunky to write with.

Until one day I borrowed a pen from my principal.  A kind I'd never seen before.  I was hooked. 

These are also Papermate, just not flair.  These are Papermate Inkjoy GEL.  GEL is important. The other inkjoys are nice but...well, they are no Inkjoy Gel.

The best teacher pens ever

I treated myself after we started the lockdown because I wanted some new pens.  These bad boys came in the mail and make doing my teaching-from-home a little more fun.  Plus I'm writing lots of cards and letters to my grandparents these days so these come in handy for brightening it up.

If you are looking for a pick-me-up treat for yourself or a teacher in your life, I would highly suggest the Papermate Injoy Gel pens.  This is not a sponsored post. Papermate gave me nothing to write it. I just LOVE a good pen!  These Papermate Gel pens run about $15-20 for a pack of 14 pens.

AMAZON  I  TARGET  I  WALMART

  *Amazon links are affiliate links-if you purchase something through the link, I may receive small commission.

"Don't Break The Ice" : A Social Skills Game

Last week I talked about the many ways to use this $10 game for academic concepts in the classroom.  Today I'm back with ways to utilize this game for your social skills group.  I use a lot of Zones of Regulation curriculum but of course you can adapt my suggestions to match your own classroom needs.

Don't Break the Ice is a game available readily in stores and online.  The amazon option is usually listed at just under ten dollars.

Here are some ways to use it in your social skills group!

1. Just play the game as-is!  Great for turn taking and dealing with frustration!
2. Students get to take their turn after they state which color "zone" they are in at the moment. For those of you without Zones of Regulation, just have the student say which emotion they feel right then.  Or they can point to an emotion face if they have trouble verbalizing.
3. Give a scenario and have them identify which color zone the fictional person is in. Then they can take their turn.
4. Give a size-of-the-problem scenario. Have the child state how big the problem is.
5. Practice asking and answering questions. Child can draw a card with a question on it and then choose another group member to ask the question of.  Ex: "How are you today?"  "What time is lunch?"  "Can I have a pencil?"
6. Hold up a colored card (red, yellow, green, or blue). Ask the child to state when someone might be in that color zone.
7. State a simple feeling (tired; nervous; ready to learn) and have the child identify which color zone that is before they take their turn.
8. Use the game to reinforce tools for self-regulation.  Ask the child to state a tool they can use to get back to the green zone. Then they can take their turn. Tools might include: stress ball, bouncy chair band, carrying heavy books, weighted lap pad, lazy 8 breathing, jump on trampoline, squeeze putty, get a drink, etc.
9. When teaching a breathing strategy, have the child practice the strategy once or twice before they get to take their turn. Example: once you teach Lazy 8 breathing, have the child do two rounds of it before they take their turn.  This can motivate some of your more reluctant breathers to give it a try since they have to do it in order to get a turn at the game. ;)
    

Have more ideas?  Share in the comments!  I'm always up for learning more ways to help kiddos practice their social skills!

*Links may be affiliate links. See full disclosure here.*

Games to Boost Executive Functioning: Task Initiation/Completion

We all have had students who have a difficult time with impulse control, planning ahead, time management, starting a task, completing a task, working memory, sustained attention, or organizing materials.  These are all executive functioning skills.  The frontal lobe of the brain is responsible for these.  The frontal lobe doesn't fully develop until adulthood so we can't expect students to operate on the same level as adults. However, some students lag behind our expectations for their age group.

Students with ADHD often have a difficult time with at least one executive function skill.

Games are a great, fun, non-confrontational way for students to practice their executive functioning skills.  In this post I am sharing fifteen games that help with the specific skill of task initiation/completion.  These are for the student who is still on #3 when the rest of the class has finished #20 and is already sitting at the rug for story time.  This is for the student who starts their project but can never seem to actually complete it. For the student who takes 15 minutes to get their pencil out.

Yup.

Note: Games are not a magic wand nor are they the only way to develop executive function skills.  We still need visuals, social stories, color-coded materials, and so on.  This is just one piece of the executive function puzzle.  We add it ALL up to get to success!

*Links are affiliate links.  Full disclosure here.*

I have the original Bop It and just ordered the Bop It micro!  The kids LOVE this game trying to get a new high score.  I love it because it perks up my low-energy students and gets them engaged and working on making a decision---quickly!

Spoons is a game you can play with a deck of cards and actual spoons.  There's a store-bought version of the game (that comes with little spoons) also available. Deal each player 4 cards.  Have one fewer spoons than you have players.  If you have 5 players, start with 4 spoons.  First person takes a card off the deck, discards one of theirs to the left.  That player discards a card to their left, and so on until it gets back to the dealer who then starts the process again.  The goal is to get 4 cards of a kind and grab a spoon.  Once the first person reaches for a spoon, everyone else quickly tries to grab a spoon.  The player without a spoon is out and the next round begins.

This card game is easy for young students to learn and helps practice several executive functioning skills! Uno helps with planning ("The current color is green. Which card will I play when it is my turn?"), flexibility ("Oh no! I was going to play a yellow 3 but the number changed and now I need a blue or a 6!"), and task initiation ("It's my turn. I have to play a card!").

Playing Charades helps students plan and begin a task.  They have to think about the picture/word to act out, plan how to act it out, and then actually act it out!  Most of my students are beginning readers so I have the picture charades version where it has a picture for them to see instead of just a word.

Blurt is a quick game from Pathway To Success that you can play without having to purchase anything!  It helps students think quickly and also control their impulses!

Pictionary is similar to charades.  It works on planning ahead, thinking from another's perspective, and task initiation.

All this game requires is a deck of cards! If you've forgotten how to play since your childhood days, here's a slap jack refresher!

Simon Says requires students to think on their feet, pay close attention to detail, and yes, task initiation!  If you don't do the movement, you're out!

5 Second Rule is for older students (the box says ages 10 and up).  The timer component of the game makes it perfect for helping students practice task initiation--you have to give answers before time runs out!  Pick a card and set the timer. You have 5 seconds to name 3 things from that category.

Have you played this?  It's available as an app and a Facebook game.  You make "recipes" by following the directions: crack eggs, mix, flip, and so on.  There are different recipes to make and you're timed each step of the way.  If you need an app to help a student practice task initiation, this would be a great one to try!

Cranium is perfect for high school students who need fun practice on executive function skills.  The box suggests ages 16 and up.  Teams compete in challenges that Hasbro explains as, "spelling a word backwards, drawing with their eyes closed, and solving a puzzle are just of few of the activities they might do."

Another great game for older students, Scattergories requires teams to compete to come up with things from a category that also start with the letter rolled on the alphabet die.

You'll need a set of ten frame cards for this one. TeachersPayTeachers has various free downloads available.  Here's a free one I like from Primary Delight.

Deal cards evenly between two players and have each player stack theirs face down.  Players turn over a card at the same time.  Here's where you can have some variety:

• Greater Than (first person to say the number that's highest keeps both cards)
• Addition (first person to say the sum of the 2 cards keeps both)
• Multiplication (first person to say the product of the 2 cards keeps both)

Alternatively, play with all the cards in one stack.  Turn one over:

• Name the Number (first person to say the number represented keeps the card)
• Plus 10 (first person to say the number plus 10 keeps the card. Ex: Ten frame card shows 2, student would need to say 12).
• Plus 100 (first person to say the number plus 100 keeps the card. Ex: Ten frame card shows 9, student would need to say 109).

Not only do these ten frame games help with number sense and fact fluency, but because there is a need to be FIRST, it prompts students to quick thinking.

Urgency is the name of the game in Hungry Hungry Hippos!  The fast pace will spark students' need to start and complete a task (collecting the most marbles).  Hungry Hungry Hippos is perfect for all ages but especially the younger ages because it is so simple and easy to learn!

Finally, Minute to Win it games are a fun way to practice task initiation when you are short on time!  I plan on doing another post soon to give more ideas for this type of game.  However, here's one to get you started:

You need 2 bowls, marshmallows, and a straw.  Put one bowl of marshmallows in front of the student and an empty bowl next to it.  Give the student a straw. They need to suck into the straw to pick up one marshmallow and dump it into the empty bowl.  They have one minute to see how many marshmallows they can transfer over!

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Games mentioned in this post:
       

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Related Post: Classroom Management Using Post-It Notes

Related Post: 8 Must-Haves for Special Education Teachers

13 Letter "V" Snacks

Looking for letter-of-the-week snacks?  For the letter "V?"  Look no further!  I came up with 13 14 snacks/foods that start with the letter v.  If you can think of any I missed, let me know in the comments!

*Zucchini Summer Blog is an Amazon Affiliate. Links may be affiliate links. Full disclosure here.

1. Veggie tray
2. Venison jerky
3. Vienna sausages
4. Vegetarian anything
5. Vanilla pudding
6. Vanilla bean ice cream
7. Veggie chips
8. Veggie straws

9. Vanilla wafers
10. Vegetable soup
11. Very cherry juice

12. Vitamin water
13. Vlassic pickles
14. Vermicelli (pasta)

16 Snacks for the Letters Q / U

Have you ever tried to come up with a food or snack that starts with the letters Q or U?  It's tough. Let me tell ya.  I did my best and came up with a total of 11 ideas that you could use for your home/preschool/snack time.  Let me know if you think of any we can add to the list!

Update from 2017: I've added more to the list and there are now 16 Q/U foods!  

Q Snacks:

1. Quinoa
2. Queso
3. Quaker oatmeal
4. Quick bread
5. Quesedilla
6. Quiche
7. Quiznos subs (cut into smaller parts for snacks)
8. Quarter Pounder with cheese (cut into fourths if serving snacks and not a meal)

U Snacks:

1. Ugli fruit
2. Unleavened bread
3. Udi's brand bread/bagels/muffins
4. Upside down cake
5. Udon noodles
6. Unsweetened applesauce
7. Uncle Sam cereal 
8. Unsalted pretzels or crackers
   
   
    

22 Snacks for the Letter "L"

This week's letter for our snack list is "L." If you're teaching preschool, homeschooling, or just looking to add some variety and fun to your children's routine, here are some L foods to help you out!

1. Lollipop
2. Laughing cow cheese
3. Lemonheads candy
4. Larabar
5. Lemon
6. Lime
7. Lettuce
8. Lentils
9. Linzer cookies
10. Lemon yogurt
11. Lacey Swiss cheese
12. Lettuce wraps
13. Lemonade
14. Life cereal
15. Lucky Charms cereal
16. Linguini
17. Lemon bars
18. Little Lemon Muffins (baked in a mini pan)
19. Lemon Lime Soda (the off brands of Sprite are often just called "lemon lime")
20. Lime fruit bars
21. Leeks
22. Lo mein

*Don't forget to pin one of these letter-of-the-week snack posts so you can find them later!*

34 Snacks for the letters I, J, or K

Continuing in the series of letter themed snacks for your preschool or homeschool snack time, today we have snacks beginning with the letters I, J, or K.

Enjoy!

I snacks
Ice cream
Italian sausage
Ice cream sandwiches
Irish soda bread
Ice Pops
Icees (you can get a box of a 4 pack in the frozen food section)
Ice Breakers
Iced Tea
Iceberg lettuce
Idaho Potatoes
Italian salad dressing
Italian Ice


J snacks
Jello pudding cups
Jello jigglers
Jam
Jelly beans
Jalapeno poppers


K snacks
Kale chips
Kiwi
Kabobs
Kidney beans
Keebler cookies
Kielbasa
Koolaid
Kalamata olives
Kettle corn
Kix cereal
Kumquats
Kelp
Kashi cereal
Kit Kat candy bars
Kaiser roll
Key lime pie
Kisses (Hershey)

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