Angela Watson's Truth For Teachers

Join me today for an interview with Regie Routman, as we discuss engagement, excellence, and equity in the classroom. Regie has over 40 years of experience teaching, coaching, and leading in diverse schools across the United States and Canada, and has been publishing books since 1988. Regie is among the top five people who have influenced my teaching practice and philosophy, and having her on the show was such an honor.  Click here to listen to the audio, or read or share the highlights from the interview and participate in the discussion.  

In this episode, I'm sharing one of the biggest mistakes I made as a teacher. I have a feeling it’s something you’ll be able to relate to, particularly if you have a couple of students who you just don’t feel like you are equipped to handle. The choices I made took a bad situation and made it worse. I'll share what I wish I'd done differently, how I ultimately changed my approach, and what YOU can do to prevent the same problem from happening to you. Want free resources to help you enjoy your work, even when it's super challenging?  Visit https://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/unshakeable and enter your email address. I'll send you a downloadable calendar with ONE simple, actionable step you can take each day to enjoy teaching more. I'll also send you a link to join the online book community for my book Unshakeable: 20 Ways to Enjoy Teaching Every Day...No Matter What. Join more than 9,000 teachers who are sharing ideas around how to infuse more joy into their teaching and stay connected to their purpose.

The biggest pitfall that most teachers face with report card comments is overcomplicating the task, which creates overwhelm. I want to help you keep this super simple, so I created a 5-step formula for generating report card comments for ANY student. The end result? A positive, empathetic, and truthful set of comments that will be helpful for parents and facilitate their cooperation as you work together to help their children succeed, with you spending half the time! Join me today as I discuss a new resource I created for my TeachersPayTeachers store, the Stress-Free System for Report Card Comments: Generate comments in half the time! It's available now to purchase or preview and at a discounted price through March 1, 2018.   Click here to read or share the transcript and audio or participate in the discussion. Click here to view my new report card system resource in my TpT store.

There are a lot of trendy phrases from popular culture and the positivity movement which have infiltrated our thinking and practices as educators. They are helpful with a great deal of truth to them. However, I think we’ve gotten a little bit out of balance with the positivity movement and the rallying cry to be supportive of one another as teachers. Join me today as I discuss three trends from the positivity movement, comparing their truths and how we can take them too far. I believe that we need to be having these critical conversations about the issues and challenging one another to do better. Moving past truisms and getting real is the only way we are going to shift school culture to truly be about what’s best for kids! Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, take a pledge or participate in the discussion.

There's a lot of talk about the importance of morning routines; however, it's not something that I commonly hear discussed in teaching circles. I think for most of the educators, having to be at school so early means that a morning routine is basically just getting yourself and your family out the door as quickly as possible and making sure you're in that classroom before your students are lined up outside your door waiting for you. Join me today in listening to why morning routines are so important for teachers, and how to create a morning routine that works for you through intentionality and new habits. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, download a free morning planner, or participate in the discussion.

In this special extended episode between podcast seasons, I’m sharing practical time-saving strategies and simple mindset shifts that will help you: * Reduce your workload * Eliminate the unnecessary * Automate processes * Delegate responsibility to students * Get more done in less time * Create a sustainable work schedule From lesson planning to grading, you’ll walk away with lots of ideas for small changes that add up to big results, and get a fresh dose of motivation for the new year. It’s so simple to create change that you can try out just ONE of the dozens of approaches shared and save an hour a week, right away. There’s something for every teacher here–don’t miss out! ----------- Want more support with productivity? Click here to learn about the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club, which is open to new members from Dec. 30th-Jan. 9th.      

What do you want your life to look like? When you look back on it all at the end, what do you want to feel like you've accomplished? How do you want to have spent your time? What will be your legacy? Those are deep questions for sure, and most of us just don't have the time or energy to try to answer them. It's not because we don’t care. We're just too tired to take a step back and try to figure out a better way. And yet, getting clear on what matters to you could change everything about the way you use your time and where you focus your energy. Even though "there’s no tired like teacher tired," a few changes in your mindset and habits can totally transform that.  I created a free challenge called "Goodbye, Teacher Tired" with five of the most important things you can do to stop feeling tired all of the time and maximize your time, and energy and focus. Listen in to get a summary of the five steps covered in the challenge. You can sign up for the challenge and participate in the discussion by visiting the or

Have you ever felt like an imposter? Or the feelings that you have no idea what you're doing as a teacher or that you're not capable of doing everything that needs to be done? If you can relate to any of those feelings, you might be dealing with a phenomenon that’s commonly known as Imposter Syndrome. It’s that feeling of being a fraud, an almost panic-inducing sense that at any moment, other people are going to figure out you have absolutely no idea what you’re doing and have no business being given the level of responsibility you have. This is a real thing, and it can be paralyzing.  On today's episode, listen in as I share some strategies from personal experience that help with countering Imposter Syndrome and managing the self-doubt. I’ve chosen seven specific things that have been helpful for me over the years, and I hope they’ll be helpful for you, too. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, or participate in the discussion.

During today's episode, I am excited to feature an interview with Dan Tricarico as part of my Truth for Teachers podcast. Dan and I met when we were both speaking at a conference a couple of years ago, and I remember walking away from the conversation with him thinking, “This guy is the real deal.” That’s the phrase that stuck in my head because he just came across to me as being so grounded and so sincere in everything he said -- he was truly passionate about everything we spoke on and had a pure heart for helping kids and teachers. Last February, I was out in San Diego for another conference, and he and I sat down together and hashed things out a bit. We’ve been working for the past 7-8 months on creating something together that addresses teacher anxiety. It’s called Finally Free: The teacher toolkit for conquering anxiety, overwhelm, and the pressure to do more.  Today, we’re going to give you some of our favorite mindset shifts and advice from the toolkit and talk about some ideas that will really make a

Listen in on the second half of my interview with Tamara Russell and Sarah Plumitallo on building trust and relationships with families! I've invited two current teachers, Tamara Russell and Sarah Plumitallo, onto my Truth for Teachers podcast to talk about what they're doing with their students.These two ladies are in the trenches, so to speak, on a daily basis and they share about their work on social media, which is where I first connected with them. We’ve had countless conversations about an issue we’re all very passionate about, which is education equity, and I invited them both on the show so that more educators can learn from their experiences. Our conversation ended up running for over an hour! For the first time ever on Truth for Teachers, I've decided to air almost the entire interview and split it into two episodes. The first half hour of our conversation was focused on classroom-based work, and the last 20 minutes was focused on building trust and relationships with families. Click here to read

Today I've invited two current teachers, Tamara Russell and Sarah Plumitallo, onto my Truth for Teachers podcast to talk about what they're doing with their students. This is something that I hope to do on the show more often because it’s just another angle of expertise that I think is important for you to hear as a teacher. These two ladies are in the trenches, so to speak, on a daily basis and they share about their work on social media, which is where I first connected with them. We’ve had countless conversations about an issue we’re all very passionate about, which is education equity, and I invited them both on the show so that more educators can learn from their experiences. Our conversation ended up running for over an hour! For the first time ever on Truth for Teachers, I've decided to air almost the entire interview and split it into two episodes. The first half hour of our conversation was focused on classroom-based work, and the last 20 minutes was focused on building trust and relationships with

In today’s episode, I’ll talk about 6 steps to stop worrying about problems before they happen. Teachers are faced with an enormous amount of stressors throughout their days, weeks, and school years. Just the possibility of being moved to another grade level or school (and in some cases having no position at all) will keep the teacher's lounge abuzz with nervous energy and speculation about who's retiring, who's taking leave, and what's going to happen to everyone else. You see, anxiety, worry, and apprehension are completely useless emotions because they're based on potential problems in the future. Unlike fear, which is a response to problems we're facing in the present moment, anxiety does not produce anything positive. And, anticipating problems is an especially dangerous habit in the field of education, where policies and procedures seem to change on a dime for no apparent reason and against all logic.  Listen in today to discover ways to consciously set our minds on the present reality and remind oursel

The episode of the Truth for Teachers podcast featured here is a free coaching call I conducted with a graduate of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club. Her name is Kristen, and she’s a year 4 teacher in Australia, which is equivalent to 4th grade in the U.S.  Kristen is in her sixth year of teaching and feeling like she’s spending way too much time communicating with parents and answering emails, and also feeling nervous about what cutting back on the amount of time she spends on these things and other tasks might do to her reputation in the school. Listen in today to the second half of this conversation where we’re focused on email communication and giving yourself permission to stop correlating hours worked with effectiveness. Click here to read this podcast online or download it to listen on the go.

I am always looking for ways to save energy. I shared in my book Unshakeable that energy is one of our most precious resources because unlike time, energy does not naturally replenish itself. We have to be intentional about how we use our energy. If we don’t pay attention to the things that drain it and do less of those things and pay attention to things that are energy-giving and do more of those things, we’ll find ourselves feeling depleted all the time.  Today I’m going to share with you 4 habits and practices that drained my energy as a teacher for years, and I’ll share the solutions I uncovered that completely transformed the way I approached my work. Click here to read or share the transcript and audio, or participate in the discussion. Click here for the no prep, collaborative learning strategies resource we discussed.

Growth mindset has been a buzzword in education for quite awhile and I think a lot of teachers and kids are already familiar with it. But I’ve noticed a pitfall that seems to occur fairly often: growth mindset is introduced to students near the beginning of the year and then the curriculum demands seem to take precedent. When you have so many skills you have to teach and so many standards for kids to master, it’s hard to remember, much less make time to talk about growth mindset. Fortunately, there are some simple ways you can infuse growth mindset into what you do on a daily basis. Join me today and listen in for these regular practices that help you ensure students will be willing to try new things, stick with hard tasks and not give up, push themselves to do their best work, and believe in themselves and their own ability to learn. Click here to read this podcast online or download it to listen on the go. Here's quick access to the resources I recommend in today's podcast: Dr. JoAnn Deak's Fantastic Elast

The majority of the Truth for Teachers podcast episodes are on topics that will help improve your teaching practices with ALL of your students, but in some cases, I like to talk about specific student populations. It’s okay to focus for ONE episode on meeting the needs of English Language Learners, or students with special needs. And it’s okay to focus for an episode on students of color.  In this case, I chose to focus even more specifically on that: to talk about black males in particular. My guest today, Principal Kafele, is a black male himself and is a nationally-renowned authority on his work with black male students. There’s a tremendous amount of research showing that many black males in the United States are facing unique challenges and are underserved. We do a disservice to our students if we pretend that the outcomes that our students experience from our school system are all the same regardless of race. Our black male students can do better, and we can do better by them.  The question of HOW to do

In this coaching call with a teacher named Rachel, I think you'll recognize a very common dilemma for teachers: spending exorbitant amounts of time doing lesson planning, and still feeling like you don’t know what you’re doing from day to day. If you're caught in a trap of planning every night for the following day, forgetting to do certain things with students even though it’s in the plan, and constantly running out of time before getting to finish the lesson...this episode can be a game changer! Listen in as Rachel and I tackling all of these problems. Her lesson planning process is essentially done in three steps, and you’ll hear me articulate each of those steps as we go through them, because I think it’s a good model to follow. Certainly it's not the only way to plan lessons, but I think many teachers have never heard another teacher explain exactly how she plans, and everyone’s process is unique. It's fascinating to listen in on her process, which sounds great in theory, and try to figure out where the

I receive emails on almost a daily basis from veteran teachers who are completely overwhelmed at how the job they signed up for 20, 30, or 40 years ago is nothing like the job they are being required to do today. I want to amplify the voices of teachers who are experiencing this, let them know they're not alone, and talk about what can be done. My hope is that this is episode will be useful to you even if you're NOT facing this situation yourself, because every teacher works with at least one colleague who is in a similar place. You might actually be feeling frustrated with these teachers, believing that they are not pulling their weight and aren't changing with the times. So I hope this episode will strengthen the relationships between you and your colleagues as well. If you ARE that teacher--someone who changed children’s lives year after year and are suddenly finding the expectations on you to be exhausting and impossible to meet, I want you to know these 9 things shared in today's episode. To share this w

In this episode I'm talking with Persida Himmele about how teachers can provide access to higher-order thinking opportunities for all students. We'll go through 5 specific examples which you can use in your classroom today. Learn why calling on students should be the last thing you do to find out what kids know, and how total participation techniques are a simple way to engage all students equitably. Click here to access the free resources and printables we discuss: http://thecornerstoneforteachers.com/truth-for-teachers-podcast/total-participation-techniques/  

Listen in on a coaching call I conducted with a graduate of the 40 Hour Teacher Workweek Club. His name is Jim, and he’s entering his 4th year of teaching. Jim works on a grades 7-12 campus and is a high school geometry and 7th grade honors math teacher. The questions that Jim submitted to me were mostly about getting student buy-in with room arrangement and routines/procedures. But the part that I wanted to share with you here on the podcast is where we do a deep dive into getting student buy-in with a cell phone policy. Like most teachers, Jim already has most of the solution inside of him, and it’s just a matter of helping him uncover the different parts of that solutions and put them together. Notice how each of his responses to me is like a clue which leads us to the next piece of the puzzle, until we have the whole thing assembled. It’s a really fun process to participate in and I think it will be fun for you to listen to, also. What we’re doing in this conversation is partially about ironing out the de