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Evergrowing Educator

If you love teaching, learning new things and bringing creativity and engagement into your classroom, then you're an ever growing educator, too. HI! 👋🏻

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your student is dreading this question

"What did you do over break?” Sounds like such an innocent question, right? It seems like it's a great way to reflect on vacation and have students share. But there's a student who might be waiting for the ground to swallow them when you ask this. A teacher once told me that every year, knowing her mother was sick and her family could not afford trips, she would calculate when it would be her turn to share about her break. As the moment got close, she would raise her hand, rush to the...

5 days ago • 1 min read

(Scroll down for the NEW monthly teacher planner!)There’s this joke I’ve told my students: There was a man who loved archery. He was always looking for new tips and tricks. One day, he was walking through a forest and saw a house with bullseyes everywhere. Dead center. Every. Single. One. He knocked on the door and asked the man who lived there, “How do you do it? I’ve never seen aim like that.”The man smiled and said, “Oh, it’s easy. First I stick the arrow in the wall. Then I draw the...

about 1 month ago • 2 min read

“Can you put us into chatgpt and turn us into lego people?” my kids, huge lego fans, asked me.I explained to them why I wouldn’t do that. Anything uploaded to ChatGPT is stored on OpenAI’s servers and I wouldn’t upload photos of kids (or my students!) to ChatGPT! It did spark an idea though. A few months later, I took out a large canvas and pencil and I outlined lego people, one for each person in our family. Each kid then painted themselves, with their favorite outfit choice, their faces,...

3 months ago • 1 min read

I’ve been seeing this a lot on my feed these days: Definitely been feeling this, too - I’ve been meaning to email all month... and it’s just been a holiday for the past few weeks 🙂 Now that Tishrei is behind us and school is fully back, I’ve been thinking about my own personal “V’Yaakov Holach L’darko” I was listening to a podcast with Carol Dweck, and she was remembering how her middle school classroom was arranged based on perceived intelligence! Imagine having your seat determined by your...

3 months ago • 1 min read

Last week I got an awesome email from Chanie of Coffee & Pi. It was sooooo good, I immediately thought “I have to share bulletin ideas, too!” These are my top 5 over the years, although you may not be able to implement all 5 in a given year, depending on the class chemistry and your personal dynamics. 1) We love questions! I made a board, or sometimes just a “question corner” with a big, visible envelope, labeled “Lo Habashan Lomed.” Every time a student asked a great question, I made sure to...

5 months ago • 2 min read

“You should have teachers sign up to get the marketing package,” my friend (who’s also a business coach) told me. “That way, you'll grow your email list.” “But I don’t want to,” I said. Because my mission has always been—and will always be—to give teachers less work, not more. You already have enough on your plate. I want to help you cross things off your list, not give you homework. So here you go: everything you need to start sharing the contest today is right here: Click here for the...

9 months ago • 1 min read

I was trying to go to canva this morning, but it kept going to cava. I realized my N key is slightly pushed out, making it harder to push down. So to get the “n” letter, I had to push much harder. Why is it human nature to only otice when things are wrong? Dennis Prager calls it the “Missing Tile Syndrome.” We don’t notice perfect ceilings, only those which are missing some tiles. And teachers (and principals!) are probably familiar with this too. So many times we get feedback or text...

almost 2 years ago • 1 min read

I get quite a few text messages that aren’t actually for me.Spam texts, wrong numbers, maybe someone trying to reach whoever had my number before me. When my sister texted me “Can you speak to my 160 11th graders about being a counselor like how to speak to kids and all?” I replied: “Was this text for me? 😂 I don’t do public speaking” That text was probably for my aunt, I figured. “Yes!” She said! “Evergrowingeducator! Can you give some education tips?” I laughed. I had started...

about 2 years ago • 3 min read

My paypal was hacked. Someone hacked my account, added a bank account, and set my available balance to go to their bank each day at 1am. (They did it on Dec 24, right before paypal’s support was closed for the day!) Luckily, I saw it in time and paypal was able to help me undo the changes. How did the hacker get in? While I’ll never know for sure, I was using a password that was a “family password” from 20+ years ago. My father warned all of us not to use it (it’s been breached so many times)...

about 2 years ago • 1 min read

Last week, I was honored to give a workshop at the MEF Convention. It was about student engagement, so of course, I didn't come and lecture - I engaged with the crowd. We played wordle, caught a beach ball, discussed choice cartoons and had a great time (while experiencing student engagement, of course.) At the end of the session, I gave out a bag of ABC noodles and asked the participants to write a phrase for their takeaway, out of the ABC noodles. We were short on time, so I turned it into...

over 2 years ago • 1 min read