I’ve written my first game specifically designed with my current class of functional high school students in mind. I feel relieved to have revived my lesson-planning mojo. The vibe of a functional class is SO DIFFERENT from the high functioning kids with EBD and ASD I’ve taught for so many years. I’m astonished by the […]
Author Archives: sara
The Dumbest Kid in Class, Part 2: Teacher Tips
After the first post, you may be thinking that the Exeter Math Institute Workshop was terrible and that the instructors were awful. That’s not the case, at all. I got some really cool ideas to share with my gen ed Algebra co-teachers when school starts that I think will benefit students. Naturally, my key focus […]
The Dumbest Kid in Class, Part 1: When You Find Out You’re Dumb
This week, I attended the Exeter Math Institute teacher training program. It was four, 8-hour days of working math problems. Hard math problems. Math problems that require prior knowledge and understanding of how to use a calculator that did not come from Dollar Tree. I will unabashedly admit that, hands-down, I was THE DUMBEST person […]
Of Goats and Cars: A Parable
I’m taking a class this summer for my masters’. The instructor asked us to reflect on the idea that the wrong people are driving the car in the world of education, while the right people left out of the driver’s seat. This. Pushed. My. Damn. Buttons. Because I think there are a lot of people […]
Feeling the Burn(out)
I’ve been on my first totally (okay…mostly) work-free summer in a few years for the past month. No meetings, few e-mails, not even a ton of work for my own website and book. Teacher burnout, particularly among behavior teachers, is a real and exhausting part of the job. There are loads of statistics, studies, and […]
New Book–Less Enraged, Still Engaged–is ON SALE! Free Lessons!
We’re off to the races! The new book, Less Enraged, Still Engaged: Another Year of Social Skills Lessons for Adolescents with Emotional/Behavioral Disturbance or Autism Spectrum Disorders is live on Teachers Pay Teachers. There are FOUR TOTALLY FREE NEW LESSONS available at the listing link; just click on the preview selection on the listing. We’ve also […]
What’s New in Book 2?
Here’s the abstract/overview from Teachers Pay Teachers. Lots of new stuff. We learned so much from the first book, and we’re bringing our “A” game this year! ********************************************** If you’ve endured professional development sessions that stress the importance of social/emotional learning without providing a roadmap for how to actually teach these skills, here is your […]
Book 2 Releasing on Monday. Probably. We Hope.
We’re almost ready! Book 2 is scheduled to drop on Teachers Pay Teachers on Monday morning. Honestly, I’m a little embarrassed looking back at Book 1 now that this one is almost finished. This time, I’ve got standards alignment, cost breakdowns, supply lists, better questions, more games, links to reproducibles stored on our own server…and […]
Holy Cow…What. A. Year. (NEW FREE LESSON)
You may have noticed my absence of blog posts this spring. That’s because you can’t blog when you’re patrolling the lesser-known nooks and crannies of a high school, walkie-talkie in hand, pursuing a defiant teenager like Zaroff in The Most Dangerous Game (shout out to my English teachers!). I’ve been clipping away on the second book, […]
New, Free Lesson for the Downtrodden Social Skills Teacher!
Ladies and gentlemen, I know you’re getting tired. You’ve got about a month before summer break if you’re working in the United States, so grab and extra cup of coffee and some low-key lessons from enraged2engaged.com and pray for a minimum of drama. I’ve been plugging away on the new book and am hoping to […]
