What Does YOUR Facebook Page look like?

My daughter is a personnel recruiter for an IT company and the other day she suggested that college kids or anyone else trying to find a job, should adjust their Facebook page. Many employers are doing their due diligence and checking social media sites for prospective employees for information that may be considered in the hiring process. Here are some tips:

1. Make sure that your cover and profile photos are appropriate. Recruiters and employers today are checking your page! "A survey conducted by CareerBuilder found that the top reason employers reject candidates is for posting inappropriate photographs."

2. Watch what you put on your social media pages about alcohol or drug use. How you acted at a bachelor or bachelorette party, might have potential employers misjudge you for the workplace.

3. Make sure that you have an appropriate e-mail address. Sexylady78@gmail.com is not the email that you want your potential boss or employer contacting you at.

4. You may not want to "like" pages that show your political affiliation or your opinion on various social or religious issues.

5. Control who sees your social media pages. You may not be able to delete those crazy photos you posted from Las Vegas, but you CAN control who views them through your privacy settings. Make sure that you have the settings right!

Social media, such as LinkedIn can be beneficial for job hunting and making professional connections. Professional discussion boards can also highlight your strengths for potential employers. So, be careful with Facebook!!!

Don't Give Up!! Keep Pursuing Your Dream!!

You have just finished college, earned a Bachelor's Degree in Education and are looking for a teaching position. You have taught for a few years, and now have relocated to a new area, city or state and are looking for a teaching position. You graduated with a Bachelor's degree in another degree area besides Education and now have completed your Master's in Education and are looking for a teaching position. No matter what your story is, finding a teaching position in this economy is difficult. Schools are increasing class size, eliminating classrooms, reducing staff and looking for the least expensive teacher to hire.

Talking to principals who are posting vacancies on the online sites, they receive an average of 800 applications for any one position. Can you imagine reviewing or sorting through applications to find the 8-10 candidates that you would like to interview for the first round? How can you make your application stand out? How do you continue to pursue a teaching position AFTER the school year has started? How do try to get yourself noticed in a school?

1. Make sure that your cover letter is connected to the goals of the school or district. In your cover letter, you do not need to reiterate your education, student teaching experiences or how much you love teaching. Your cover letter should outline the goals of the school and how these match your goals and what you can contribute to the school. Your experiences with PLCs, unit development, assessments, student data and the common core would be areas that you should highlight in your cover letter. THOSE are the experiences that principals want.

2. Your resume should outline your professional competencies-- your strengths, what you can do very well. Make a bulleted list: establishing procedures and routines in the classroom? collaborative team work? work with the common core? use of student data to differentiate instruction?

3. Your resume should outline your work experience. Again highlight the experiences that you had in either a teaching position or student teaching. It is not necessary to say, "developed science units on electricity and energy." It would develop more interest to the reader to see, "developed science units identifying essential outcomes for student mastery and designing assessments."

4. Tailor your resume to the teaching vacancy. You should tweak your resume if you pursuing a kindergarten position vs. a 2nd grade position vs. a fifth grade position. There are different literacy competencies that principals would be looking for dependent on the grade level.

5. SUBSTITUTE teach. Get out and get in those schools and sub!!! That is how you get to know the school or district, get to know the goals of a school or district, get to know the teachers and staff, and get to know the curriculum. If teachers see your professionalism, they will request you. They want a sub who can follow their plans and that will continue the learning in their classroom.

6. Know what is going on in education. Professional Learning Communities, Common Core Standards, in IL, the new teacher evaluation process, balanced literacy, formative and summative assessment, collaborative work with a team, are some of the buzz words that you need to understand and be able to talk about. Can you?? Look at the IL state website, www.isbe.net, read my weekly blog on www.theteacherguru.net and check out my Facebook page, The Teacher Guru, for the most up-to-date educational issues.

7. Keep checking the vacancies!! I am so excited that one of my clients just got a teaching position this week, the last week of September!! Schools/districts have vacancies that occur during the year for a variety of reasons: maternity leaves, medical leaves, and increase in state or federal grant funds, to name a few. So check those vacancies every day!!!

What Do YOU think About Homework?

Homework....can be an issue that teachers have to deal with especially at the middle school and high school level. How much to assign? What to assign? How to monitor homework? How to make homework meaningful? What if the kids don't do the homework? Is homework included in the student's grade? What if a student never turns in their homework, but does well on all their assessments?

It is time to take a look at homework again. There are many research studies on homework and the effectiveness on student achievement. Homework should not be just answering the questions at the end of the chapter.

Here are some key ideas for you to think about:

"There is no evidence that any amount of homework improves the academic performance of elementary students. There is only a moderate correlation between homework and achievement in middle school. Even in high school too much homework may diminish its effectiveness and becomes counterproductive." (Cooper, Harris, Jorgianne Civey and Erice A. Patall, "Does Homework Improve Academic Achievement? A Synthesis of Research 1987-2003." Review of Educational Research, 76, 2006, 1-62).

Students need feedback on their homework and they need it in a timely manner. Doing homework and then putting it in a bin in the classroom and receiving the homework back with a check mark on it serves NO purpose for student learning. That type of homework is simply making students comply rather than using homework as a learning or assessment tool. Design the homework so that you can provide meaningful feedback to the student, acknowledge student understanding and point out any issues that need reteaching.

Teachers need to develop homework that focuses on smaller pieces of learning so that students can practice the skills at a deeper level. How about homework developed around the instructional target that you are focusing on in the essential outcome of your unit? Having students practice more on focused concepts will increase learning. "Mastery requires focused practice over days or weeks. After only four practice session students reach a halfway point to mastery. It takes more than 24 more practice sessions before students reach 80% mastery."(Anderson, 1995; Newel & Rosenbloom, 1981).

How do you develop homework so that students will DO the homework? Homework should not be too easy or too hard, it needs to be at the appropriate level that ensures learning with some challenge. How can you design the homework so that it is relevant and meaningful and that the students see the benefit of the practice?

Look at your grading practices. How much does homework count in the quarter or semester grade? Think about the impact of one low homework grade on a student's total grade? Is the "grade" about doing the homework, or about the student's mastery of learning?

Happy Homework!!

Start Preparing for Parent-Teacher-Student Conferences

It seems like school has just started, in fact school has been in session about 5 to 6 weeks. In about another 5 to 6 weeks, your school will be holding parent-teacher conferences, an annual fall event. I would like to talk to you about parent-teacher conferences and how you can make them more meaningful for parents, students and YOU, as the teacher.

• As you prepare for conferences, review the learning outcomes you have developed for each unit, the instructional targets and assessments that demonstrate student learning. Using the Common Core standards now should allow you to assess students on each standard and know exactly where they are!
• Tell parents how their student is doing on the learning outcomes. Use your assessments to demonstrate their learning. It means nothing to say that the student has a grade of an A, B, or C…that does not tell how the student is doing. Be concise, develop an agenda that you can use in your conferences to share information effectively. Use language the parents can understand; with the educational jargon we use, that can put parents on the defensive.
• Have samples of student work to demonstrate progress. YOU do not need to compile all of the student’s work; have the students select work that demonstrates their progress and put in a folder to share. This engages students in understanding their current level of performance and how they are progressing. You should start this at the beginning of the year with students; if you haven’t, start at the next unit.
• Involve students in the conferences. Even little bitty Kindergarteners know what is easy and hard for them. By having students a part of their conferences, there is no hidden agenda, they understand how they are doing and they should be able to communicate that to their parents. Can you imagine your principal doing your evaluation with your husband or mother?!!!! Students are the learners and should be part of the process in understanding their progress and achievement.
• Some conferences with parents and students might be difficult. If you anticipate that, ask the principal, department chair, or another support staff to participate in the conference with you. Remember to communicate regularly with parents on student issues and not have conferences be the first place to discuss student difficulties or significant issues.
• Listen to what the parents have to say. Most parents are genuinely concerned about their student and if you listen to what they have to say, you will

build a better partnership with them. If there are issues that need to be addressed, have two or three solutions that you and the parents can work on together.

Making Targets Meaningful for Students

Teachers need to do more than just list the targets on the board. Making the target meaningful for students involves a student knowing what the target is, when they accomplished it and how working on and mastering the target will assist in their understanding of the essential outcome. Each lesson builds student learning to the bullseye, the mastery of the essential outcome.

Students will understand the criteria for the targets by how the targets are presented. For younger students, "I can" or "I will" statements can be used.

Older students can have a list of the essential outcomes and all the targets that students will need to know and be able to do.


Students need to know the steps to mastery, what they need to KNOW and DO, how will they know that they are successful and lastly, why do they need to learn it.

Students can use a variety of tools to monitor where they are in the learning process. Rubrics can be used to see how students are progressing and the level of learning for each student. Older students can use a notebook or an electronic list with targets outlined in order to monitor their learning progress.

Homework and assessments should all include the targets being listed on them so that the students can always connect their learning. This makes all learning explicit and students actively engaged in their own learning.

Instructional Targets

As a teacher, you want students to be engaged and accountable for their learning. Teachers design their units, based on the Common Core Standards, and then begin to break that standard down into small teachable, learnable and assessable parts.

Take a look at the photo I have attached. This chapter/unit overview is from an Algebra I class. The essential outcomes are outlined for the chapter/unit as well as the targeted learning that will help students master the essential outcomes.

The teacher starts each lesson with the overall goals of mastery of the knowledge and skills. Students can see what knowledge and skills are necessary to master each essential outcome, can assess what they DO know and ARE able to do, and what they will have to demonstrate to show their learning. There is no hidden agenda; there are no "gotcha's"; the learning outcomes are specific and explicit to all.

Based on the essential outcomes and the learning targets, teachers are better able to monitor student learning. It is more than a grade-- A, C, or F --- it helps teachers know where EACH student is in the learning process and what their students need; to be able to differentiate, remediate and enrich. Students are better to monitor their own learning as well! THEY KNOW what they know and can do!

Try this with your next unit. The next step is to have students review the process for the essential outcomes and targets at the beginning of the lesson, rather than the teacher.

Welcome Back to the Common Core!!

You are now back in the grind now for a few days!!! I am sure you are tired, you are not used to getting up early, getting everybody off in the morning, and driving to work before 7:30 a.m.!!! Well you know what? Neither are the kids or the parents used to it yet either!!

By now you have set your classroom expectations, are establishing routines and procedures, and beginning to teach your first units for the year.

Things may be a bit chaotic, due to the implementation of the Common Core standards, and you wanting to get your units, outcomes and assessments aligned to the Common Core. Most of you worked on "unpacking" the standards last year and will continue to do so this year. It is so critical that you do this "unpacking" with your Professional Learning Community or team/grade level so that everyone is on the same page. Remember the Common Core outlines the knowledge and skills that all students must have, but the Common Core does not outline HOW teachers do that. Working collaboratively will help everyone so much on the HOWs of implementing the Common Core. Don't forget about the Common Core website, www.corestandards.org!! The website has many resources that can assist you in the implementation.

Robert Marzano has a website that also has some great resources that will come in handy when implementing the Common Core, http://marzanoresearch.com/services/ccss.aspx.

Itunes has several apps that you can download for free, whether a teacher or principal:

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/common-core-standards/id439424555?mt=8http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/common-core-look-fors-mathematics/id467263974?mt=8
http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/common-core-k-6/id438620859?mt=8

Check them out and see what you think!!!