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Dear [member_name_first],
The month of October is chock full of events you can use as teaching tools in your classroom. Everything from National Fire Prevention Week to Eleanor Roosevelt's Birthday and Farmers Day can be found on the October calendar! Depending on what you want to emphasize in your classroom, the choices are seemingly endless.
Since October is Diversity Awareness Month, we have found a number of rich resources you can use in your classroom to help increase your students’ understanding of the many cultures that make up our world. The Scholastic website features Culture and Change: Black History in America, which highlights famous African Americans, an interactive timeline, and the history of jazz. Move on to the Authentic History Center's Teaching Diversity with Multimedia website for a lesson on the historical stereotyping of Native American, African, Latino, Asian, Jewish, Arab, and Irish people. Log onto the History Channel website to learn about Hispanic Heritage Month (September 15 - October 15) featuring online video clips, teaching materials, and recommended links. The History Channel website also has a fun section on the History of Halloween which features information on the origin of the holiday, ghost stories, and how Halloween is celebrated around the world. For more Halloween fun, you can log on to the Teachnology website to find Halloween-themed lesson plans. And finally, the A to Z Teacher Stuff website has a section on Columbus Day full of arts & crafts, activities, and song ideas you can share with your students.
Professional Development Resources for Teachers
TeachersProfessionalLearningUnits.com - Need plu's? Go to this website and find all the latest workshops, conferences, and courses that will help you meet your professional development requirements.
TeacherClockHours.com - Need clock hours? This is the resource for you where you can find everything you need to know about workshops, conferences, and courses that provide clock hour credit for teachers.
TeachersContinuingEducationUnits.com - Need ceu's? God to this website and find all the latest workshops, conferences, and courses that will help you meet your professional development requirements.
Need graduate or undergraduate credit and want to take your courses in the comfort of your own home? Check out the universities section of our website to see a list of all our partners who offer the kind of credit you need in your state. Just select the university you want to go through and find a list of all the courses offered, type of credit offered, and total cost per course.
Classroom Respect, Behavior & Learning
by Mick R. Jackson, M.Ed.
 Stand on the playground during recess or in the hall during lunch and you’ll hear the usual conversations about boys, girls, sports, homework, teachers, and student life in general; but what you’re also likely to hear are many disrespectful comments being made by one student to another. Generally these are not scathing comments that will scar an individual for life, but they are rude, disrespectful, sarcastic, and basically inappropriate comments for anyone to make to another.
Sometimes as teacher we forget that our job is not only to provide the opportunity and information to learn--it is also our job to provide a safe and positive school and learning environment where learning may take place. Most of us are quick to stop outright aggressive behavior or violent talk, but far too often the more mild disrespectful and sarcastic comments are allowed to go unchallenged.
Whether we are conscious of it or not, we are behavioral models for all students. If we allow or ignore disrespectful comments between students, regardless of how mild, we are sending the message that these types of comments are acceptable. Our ignoring or refraining from commenting upon these comments actually reinforces this behavior, increasing the likelihood that such comments will continue to be made. As teachers, we can't control what happens in a student's life at home, at work, or even in the hallway--but we can control what happens in our classrooms (Beamon, 2001; Daniel and Benton, 1995).
Click
here
to read the full text of this article along with intervention
strategies and with Mr. Jackson's short bio
(word format).
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