Teaching is a great responsibility. I teach English and believe that the ability to communicate, at a personal and societal level, is what builds strong communities and ensures ownership over one’s future. Thus, it’s important that we teachers spend a lot of time on our craft—deliberating the best ways to teach and make lessons fun, interactive, and relatable to students. Professional development thrives on discipline pedagogy and school departments meet to align goals and assignments and to discuss data assessment.

Over the years, I’ve developed the following steps to help myself remember the names of my students. These tips can be used by any type of teacher at any grade level.

This past year, in a small Midwest community, we lost a student to a drug overdose. We have lost many more to drug addiction, and although we haven’t attended their funerals, they are no longer the students we once knew, while some are unrecognizable.

I, among other things, define myself as a rapper, and it’s a fact of which my students are all too aware.

In my experience with teaching the Charter, a great way to connect the priorities of fifteen-year-olds with the values of this significant document is by thinking like a teen.

As an elementary school art teacher, it is my job to engage my students and get them thinking critically about what and how they create.

To many in the field, a poor first year of teaching is the first step in an accepted, almost ritualistic career timeline. Perspectives on a teacher’s first year seem to have shifted, though, since my generation entered the workforce.

Throughout my years of teaching, I’ve discovered that students are often more eager to read and discuss horror stories than other material.

Certain buzz words and topics come and go in the arena of education. Currently, the word to know is STEM, the acronym for science, technology, engineering, and math.