Roxanna Elden's Blog

I’ve always loved speaking at new teacher orientations. These speeches have been one of my favorite forms of time travel—a way of visiting that past version of myself who was sitting in a squeaky chair in a Houston auditorium, taking notes in a double-wide binder, trying to plan my first day lesson without having any... Read more »

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Most of the time, when you’re going through emails, you’re just trying to keep up. And that’s fine. But every now and then, it’s time to deep clean your inbox. Deep cleaning your inbox is different than just going through your emails because as you go along, you’re putting systems in place to make things... Read more »

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Fun fact: I do a small amount of personalized message training and storytelling training for educators. There are a limited number of available slots for this and they are mostly filled by direct referrals, but I love putting my highly specific, educator-novelist nerd skills to work during these conversations. As an educator, you’ve probably taught... Read more »

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Teaching isn’t for everyone, but leaving teaching is a big decision. Here are some things to consider first. The basic pros and cons of quitting your teaching job Technically, you could stop here. But you might not want to. A few items to make sure you’ve considered as part of the pro and con lists... Read more »

The post Thinking of Quitting Teaching? Answer these Questions First. appeared first on Roxanna Elden.

After 36 weeks, no one knows what kind of teacher you were better than your students do. Administrators visited your class a few times. Your students were in there every day. Yes, I am using the term every day loosely here. And yes, a good number of surveys will come back with answers like “Let... Read more »

The post 11 Questions to Include in your End-of-Year Student Survey appeared first on Roxanna Elden.

Feed-based media relies on dopamine, the brain chemical of quick wins.  Our dopamine pathways fire up when a reward seems within reach—when we are one click away from blowing up on YouTube, or getting rid of our belly fat, or making a (weirdly-specific) $158,000 per year.  The business model of feed-based media is based on... Read more »

The post Riding the Feed vs. Curating Your Own Playlist appeared first on Roxanna Elden.

I want my students to learn To see the world with an open mind, To read the fine print before they sign, And… not to believe everything they read, But to read anyway Because when it’s their turn to be heard I want them to have the right words to say. I want them to... Read more »

The post All of the Above (Teacher Poem) appeared first on Roxanna Elden.

“Teaching” is really an umbrella term that covers many, many smaller tasks and micro-skills.  Some of these are things you enjoy; they might even be the aspects of teaching that brought you to the career in the first place.  Other parts of the job are slogs.  There might even be a few things about teaching... Read more »

The post How to like teaching more appeared first on Roxanna Elden.

Recently, I did a presentation at my kids’ elementary school career day. I could go on a true-but-not-particularly-interesting digression here about how much I appreciate the work that the school staff puts into Career Day, or how nervous I was to speak in front of my own kids’ classrooms. But I’ll spare you. The biggest... Read more »

The post An Underrated Teacher Superpower that Might Be Part of Your Origin Story appeared first on Roxanna Elden.

You’ll hear people say you have to learn from your mistakes as a teacher. It all sounds very encouraging. And yet, when you ask fellow teachers for stories about mistakes they’ve made, something changes. The details flatten into generalizations. A teacher might confide something like, “I relied too much on the textbook early in my career,” or, “I... Read more »

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