Basic Brain Gym Exercises

By Dr. Jane BluesteinJune 14, 2022 ADD/ADHD, Behavior Management, Body and Brain, Differentiating Instruction, Learning, Learning styles, Life Management, Non-traditional learners, Parents, Special Needs, Teaching brain gym, making connections, movement and learning, neural communication, wake up your brain Leave a comment

4 simple activities to wake up the brain These are the four core Brain Gym exercises, also referred to as PACE exercises (Positive, Active, Clear, Energetic). I have described these exercises as they were taught to me. There are dozens of videos and PDFs with these and other Brain Gym exercises available since I first…

Book: The Beginning Teacher’s Survival Guide

By Dr. Jane BluesteinAugust 13, 2021April 27, 2023 Assessment and Testing, Avoiding burnout, Avoiding power struggles, Beginning Teachers, Behavior Management, Behavior Management, Body and Brain, Books, Building responsibility, Classroom management, Creating community, Cultural Changes, Culture and Community, Discipline, Educators, Emotionally safe schools, Feedback and encouragement, Health and Safety, Homework, Increasing Positivity, Intervening negative behavior, Leadership, Learning, Learning styles, Life Management, Mentorship, Modeling positive behavior, Motivating cooperation, Non-traditional learners, Parent-Teacher relationships, Problem solving, Professional growth, Recognition and reinforcement, Relationships, Rules and Boundaries, School climate, Schools in Society, Self-care and Inspiration, Social and Emotional Growth, Special Needs, Taking care of yourself, Teacher Appreciation, Teacher retention, Teaching, Teaching, Tolerance and Respect, Win-win authority avoiding power struggles, beginning teachers, boundaries, challenges for new teachers, creating community, difficult students, discipline, emotional safety, emotionally safe classroom, learning differences, parent-teacher relationships, positive consequences, professional development feedback, professional growth, professional identity, school culture, self-care, student behavior, student self-management, teacher retention, teaching

Win-Win Strategies for Success by Dr. Jane Bluestein At the start or your career or at the end of your rope… Get your teaching career off to a winning start—or recharge your passion for your work! The new & revised edition of Dr. Jane Bluestein’s pivotal guide for your teaching career! A great gift for new…

Wish List for Beginning Teachers

By Dr. Jane BluesteinApril 24, 2016April 30, 2022 Beginning Teachers, Educators, Teacher retention, Teaching autonomy, beginning teachers, community, difficult students, discretion, education profession, encouragement, new teachers, status, support, value, what teachers want, wish list Leave a comment

Interviews with new teachers reveal what they want most: • Encouragement: Feedback that builds on their strengths, not just cautions to “do better” or “try harder.” • Fairness: Not being placed in the toughest schools, given the most challenging students, or being the first asked to make last-minute room or grade level changes • Honesty:…

Fear, Stress, and Learning

By Dr. Jane BluesteinApril 19, 2016April 30, 2022 Body and Brain, Counselors, Educators, Emotionally safe schools, Parents, School climate, Teaching anxiety and learning, brain-compatible learning, classroom climate, cortisol, downshifting, emotion and cognition, emotion and retention, emotional safety, fear and cognitive functioning, fear and learning, fight or flight, learning and survival, learning and the brain, stress and learning, stress and memory, stress and student behavior, stress hormones, survival vs. learning Leave a comment

Obstacles to the learning process Excerpt from “Learning and the Brain,” chapter 4 of Creating Emotionally Safe Schools by Dr. Jane Bluestein © 2001, Health Communications, Inc., Deerfield Beach, FL. This excerpt was extracted from the manuscript for this book and may be slightly different from the actual printed copy. The entire bibliography of Creating Emotionally Safe Schools is available on…

Why I Teach

By Dr. Jane BluesteinMay 15, 2015May 2, 2022 Avoiding burnout, Beginning Teachers, Teacher Appreciation, Teacher retention, Teaching, Teaching 2 Comments

Looking back at a tough first year If you had asked me back in the beginning to tell you why I teach, I don’t know how I might have answered. It wasn’t the money— back in my days as a teaching intern [in 1973], I was bringing home a mere $318 a month, which wasn’t…

Making a Mistake in Front of Your Class

By Chick Moorman and Thomas HallerMarch 20, 2015May 2, 2022 Educators, Leadership, Perfectionism, Professional growth, Teaching 2 Comments

A defining moment in every teacher’s life How do you handle mistakes you make in front of your class? Some important lessons these two authors learned in observing teachers. In Anchorage, Alaska, a first-year teacher made a spelling error on the board during the first week of school. As often happens in these kinds of…

Starting Off on a New School Year

By Dr. Jane BluesteinAugust 8, 2014May 2, 2022 Beginning Teachers, Classroom management, Educators, Leadership, Teaching, Teaching 2 Comments

What to do on those first few days As is common for this time of year, I’ve been working with groups of educators getting ready for the beginning of a new school year. As is also common, I found that in addition to the usual questions I get about authority relationships, challenging

Is Homework a Headache at Your House?

By Dr. Jane BluesteinNovember 2, 2013May 3, 2022 Counselors, Educators, Homework, Parents, Teaching 1 Comment

At what point is the load too heavy? Note: This post comes from my October 2013 newsletter. The reaction was so strong, I thought I’d add it to the site. While I was back east earlier this month, I got to visit with my sister, Janice Patton,* and my niece Morgan, a freshman in a…

What About Homework?

By Dr. Jane BluesteinDecember 4, 2012May 20, 2022 Counselors, Educators, Homework, Parents, Teaching 2 Comments

Considerations for educators and parents I google the word “homework” and discover 70+ million results, many of them, on the first few pages, at least, pointing to websites offering homework help, tools, or information to use in assignments. Look for research and you can support just about any position you’d like! This is an issue…

Test Time

By Dr. Jane BluesteinNovember 28, 2012May 18, 2022 Assessment and Testing, Body and Brain, Counselors, Differentiating Instruction, Educators, Emotionally safe schools, Learning, Learning styles, Non-traditional learners, School climate, Schools in Society, Teaching Leave a comment

Bringing balance and sanity to our schools How often do you hear yourself urging a student, “Come on, you have to learn this. It’s going to be on the test!”? I hear this appeal in classrooms all the time, and am certainly guilty of having uttered it myself. Still, I have to laugh, because after…