When I wrote the book Happy Professor two years ago, I was living in a studio apartment with my husband, who drove a beat up car and was interning with the company he now works for, while I drove to college campuses all over Central Florida to teach as an adjunct, only having dabbled in…
If you haven’t figured out how to cut down on the time you spend answering student emails, I may have the answer for you! When I tell other teachers that I have a number of stock email responses ready to go in the Notes app of my iPhone, some of them are relieved to have…
As I was reading Shonda Rhimes’ book The Year of Yes the other day, I started feeling like I wasn’t quite measuring up. In my mind, I had been living the ‘year of yes’ since I was a college freshman, deliberately grabbing every opportunity that came my way, and I had decided that 2016 would…
Every teacher knows that sometimes you have a class that’s super motivated, while another class is barely hanging in there. There’s not necessarily a rhyme or reason for it, it just happens. The solution? I won’t attempt to go into that at the moment, but you can do a variety of activities, see how things…
I know I’m not the only teacher that feels completely wiped out by the end of the workday. I tend to run low on energy whether I’m lecturing on my feet all day, or grading papers from a coffee shop. And since I gave up my regular caffeine fix nearly a year ago, I decided…
When I was preparing to travel to Los Angeles, Thailand, San Diego, and Arizona for a month, I didn’t have the type of schedule that would allow me to exert the time needed to do the type of planning necessary, so I took the most logical steps I could: I jotted notes to myself in…
The other day I was sifting through some old ideas in my ‘Notes’ app, and I stumbled on some helpful student success strategies that never quite saw the light of day, so I thought I’d share them here. These are my top 5 super easy and fun ways to engage students in a way that…
Teaching online while I’ve been traveling for the past 3 weeks has been much more manageable than I expected. Yes, there were mornings in Bangkok where I graded papers on the hotel bathroom while my sister slept in, and one morning in particular that I had a Skype interview for a new school at 6…
(*Disclaimer: This is not an ad for Groupon.com, AffordableAsia.com, or any travel company, I was just super impressed and wanted to share :)). I just finished a 12-day trip to Thailand, and I have to say, I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the affordability, ease, and convenience of traveling with a tour group after booking with…
On my recent trips to LA and Thailand, I discovered a few essential travel items that I will never again vacation without. I’ll skip telling you that an iPod, headphones, portable phone charger, and credit card are your essential items- that’s a given. I think the list below might surprise you, and also change the…