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"How do you do it all?"

Someone asked me, "How do you do all of this and have a young family?" I am used to hearing people say, "Do you ever sleep?" Yes, I sleep. In fact, I need at least 8 hours of sleep each night. Rest is important for me to function at full speed as well as for my recovering brain. It's a fair question. When I was a beginning teacher, I would arrive at school early in the morning and stay there until past dinner. Then, most nights I was doing work at home before bed. It would've been really difficult for me to be an excellent teacher if I were just now starting with littles at home (not to say that others who are just starting and have littles at home can't be excellent teachers, just that it would've been hard for ME). But due to that hard (and likely unhealthy) work back then, I have a lot of strategies in my teacher tool kit and many resources to pull from. I also spend an hour each day in the summer working on resources that will help me durin...
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Podcasts

I have a 20 minute commute and am always looking for good podcasts to listen to as I drive.  Since The Bachelor is over and I'm OVER that podcast anyway (hey, stop judging me!), I've been looking for something else.  I stumbled upon a podcast called "The 10 Minute Teacher Show" and so far I'm loving it. Today's podcast topic was called "Neuroscience: 5 Ways to Superior Teaching" and they talked about 5 ways to improve students' ability to learn what you are teaching.  For 10 minutes, I was nodding and thinking, "Yes!" and planning how I could be better in my classroom.

 The 5 ways mentioned in the podcast were:

 1.  Memory in recall vs. accessing and practicing
2.  Spoken words and written text don't always mix. Give time for notetaking.
3. Be mindful of the threshold and change things up every 10-15 minutes (although I'm thinking more often for elementary grades). 
4. Tell stories.
5.  Facts should proceed skills.

Here's the link if you want to check it out:

I listen to that podcast on my I Heart Radio app then I still have time to listen to a 7 minute podcast called "This Day in History Class" and I'm learning so much about history that I must have missed in high school. 

Happy listening!

Also, I'd love to hear your favorite podcasts that are kid friendly (since my littles are in the car for my commute).

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