Hey, hey! Thank you for reading the first (in a 40 week series of posts) on being awesome with a reasonable amount of extra effort. Teachers are busy, tired, and burnout. I figure no matter how tired you are, anyone can add 5-10% more effort. These ideas (GMTTI-Give More To Teaching Ideas) are meant for you to try out each week, and if you receive a lot of joy or success from one, add it to your routine.
How To Make It
Here’s the gist: Create a private list of all your students. When they do something awesome, i.e. stick up for a friend, turn in their homework continuously, ask a good question, you write a little note by their name. Then you have a list of positive things you can refer to with each student.
What It Does For You
- Parent teacher conferences
- Notes home
- IEP skills
- Tracking positive behaviors
- Helping to nominate student’s for awards
- Points if there is a struggling student
- Points out if the teacher is struggling to look for positives with a specific student
- Allows teachers to use positive praise more actively in teaching (one of THE BEST behavioral tools)
- Keeps you positive because you’ll be looking for positive
Wrapping It Up
This idea really is a little bit cheating when referring to adding 5-10% more effort a day or week… because it is 5% more ongoing throughout the year. BUT this is still going to up your teaching game for minimal effort. You can do this!
Let me know if you have any questions or if you try it out! Have any other ideas about positivity in the classroom? Share them here too!