1. Say hello!
2. Shake their hands as they come in.
3. Give them a high five.
4. Welcome them in Pig Latin.
5. Say Hola!
6. Write a message on the chalkboard/overhead/digital screen.
7. Have a positive song playing as they enter.
8. Play a musical instrument.
9. Recite an inspirational poem.
10. Sing a happy song.
11. Give them each a piece of candy.
12. Give them a fortune cookie.
13. Scramble the words Welcome Back on the board and have them solve it.
14. Do a tap dance.
15. Play a clip from Dead Poets Society or another inspirational movie.
16. Have them punch a time clock as they enter.
17. Perform a singing telegram.
18. Say Wilkommen!
19. Introduce yourself.
20. Teach them how to line dance
21. Yell, “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
22. Play “Zombie Nation” by Kernkraft 400.
23. Play a YouTube video.
24. Breakdance.
25. Take a picture of the class to remember their names.
26. Lead them in a prayer service.
27. Hand them a free pencil customized with your name.
28. Recite “Pioneers, O Pioneers” by Walt Whitman.
29. Ask all your online teacher friends to send well wishes and advice via email, and read the best ones.
30. Bring in a brown bag filled with objects that define you, explain the objects, then invite your students to do the same.
31. Laugh like a mad scientist (BWAH HAH HAH!).
32. Bring in plain donuts, frosting and cake decorations and invite them to decorate their own breakfast (or make one for a friend).
33. Have them introduce themselves.
34. Have them introduce themselves while doing jumping jacks.
35. Have them break through a big Go Get ‘Em poster, like a football team running onto the field.
36. Ask for their autographs for your autograph book of Future Famous People.

Be sure to add your own suggestions by commenting below.

And, as a bonus, 10 ways NOT to welcome students back:

1. Show them a slide show of your summer vacation.
2. Tell them the results of your annual physical.
3. Hand them a discipline slip as they enter and tell them not to lose it, because they’ll probably need it soon.
4. Slap them on the butt and say, “Way to go! You actually got up in time to make it to school!”
5. Sit at your desk reading Retirement Planning for the Aging Schoolteacher
6. Assign them seats based on last year’s standardized test results, highest scores in the back, lowest scores in the front.
7. Play grunge music and start a mosh pit.
8. As they walk into your room, have your principal point out individual students who got in trouble last year.
9. Hand them a Christmas list so they can get working on your gift early.
10. And finally, point out the big countdown you’ve posted in the front of the room that marks the number of days until school gets out.

Books:

• Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen
  
• Lifehacker: 88 Tech Tricks to Turbocharge Your Day by Gina Trapani
• The Now Habit: A Strategic Program for Overcoming Procrastination and Enjoying Guilt-Free Play by Neil Fiore

Websites:

• 43 Folders – The best personal productivity site on the net. Be sure to see the following articles: Inbox Zero; Getting Started with “Getting Things Done”; A Year of Getting Things Done
• Lifehacker – Another essential site for organizational tips
• Teaching Smarter – Organizational tips designed specifically for teachers.  Read some of her techniques and sample chapters from her books.

• Teach for America – “Teach For America is the national corps of outstanding recent college graduates of all academic majors who commit two years to teach in urban and rural public schools, and become lifelong leaders in ensuring educational equity and excellence for all children. Our mission is to build the movement to eliminate educational inequity by enlisting some of our nation’s most promising future leaders in the effort. Since 1990, more than 14,000 exceptional individuals have joined Teach For America. They have directly impacted the lives of two million students and form a growing force of civic leaders committed to ensuring that our nation lives up to its ideal of opportunity for all. Currently, 3,500 corps members are teaching in over 1,000 schools in 22 regions across the country.”
• Scholarship America – “Founded in 1958, Scholarship America has distributed more than one billion dollars to more than one million students. Scholarship America is the nation’s largest private scholarship and educational support organization. We work to expand access to educational opportunities by involving and assisting communities, corporations, foundations, organizations and individuals in the support of students and in the encouragement of educational achievement. Scholarship America programs include Dollars for Scholars, Scholarship Management Services, and ScholarShop.”
• Big Shoulders Fund – “The mission of the Big Shoulders Fund is to provide support to the Catholic schools in the neediest areas of inner-city Chicago. The funds raised by Big Shoulders are used for scholarships, special education programs, instructional equipment, much needed facility improvements, faculty support, and operating grants. Serving both Catholics and non-Catholics, Big Shoulders Fund supported schools are seen as anchors in their communities and in the lives of the families they serve. It is our hope to provide the inner-city Catholic schools with the resources to prepare Chicago’s young people for a productive future. The Big Shoulders Fund seeks to offer inner-city children and their parents the choice of a faith-based, value-centered education.”
• Reading Excellence and Discovery Foundation – “Reading Excellence and Discovery (READ) Foundation was established in 1999 to address the high proportion of low-income students demonstrating below grade level reading skills. READ’s founders sought a research-based educational approach, which would yield measurable results for students and address reading difficulties before they became barriers to learning. READ employs one-on-one research-based reading instruction to prepare at-risk children to become proficient readers. READ recruits, trains and employs teens to teach reading skills to their younger peers who are struggling with learning to read. READ targets economically disadvantaged students and teens.”
• Teaching Matters – “Teaching Matters is a professional development organization that partners with educators to improve public schools. We use technology in the classroom to prepare teachers and their students for 21st Century learning and achievement. Founded in 1994 by teachers, technology experts, and business leaders, Teaching Matters provides teachers and principals with hands-on professional development in the classroom, in group workshops, and online. From the arts and literacy to science and social studies, we design programs that support your school’s curriculum and make learning more relevant and engaging.”
• Donors Choose – “DonorsChoose, pioneered by teachers at a Bronx public high school in the spring of 2000, is dedicated to addressing the scarcity and inequitable distribution of learning materials and experiences in our public schools. DonorsChoose is a simple way to provide students in need with resources that our public schools often lack. At the DonorsChoose web site, teachers submit project proposals for materials or experiences their students need to learn. These ideas become classroom reality when concerned individuals, whom we call Citizen Philanthropists, choose projects to fund. Proposals range from ‘Magical Math Centers’ ($200) to ‘Big Book Bonanza’ ($320), to ‘Cooking Across the Curriculum’ ($1,100).”

If none of those charities interests you, check out CharityNavigator.org for more choices.

First, does the following description of the the Hitchhiker’s Guide remind you of anything?

In many of the more relaxed civilizations on the Outer Eastern Rim of the Galaxy, the Hitchhiker’s Guide has already supplanted the great Encyclopedia Galactica as the standard repository of all knowledge and wisdom, for though it has many omissions and contains much that is apocryphal, or at least wildly inaccurate, it scores over the older, more pedestrian work in two important respects.

First, it is slightly cheaper; and second, it has the words DON’T PANIC inscribed in large friendly letters on its cover.

Sounds a lot like Wikipedia to me. In the words of Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia, “Imagine a world in which every single person on the planet is given free access to the sum of all human knowledge. That’s what we’re doing.” Wikipedia has always struck me as very similar to the Hitchhiker’s Guide–occasionally inaccurate and sometimes irreverent, but always extremely useful. The only difference between Wikipedia and the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy has been the fact that to use Wikipedia you need a computer, cell phone or pda with Internet access. Not any more.

Amazon’s new electronic reading device, Kindle, is nothing less than a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy. A lot has been written about Kindle in the past few days, some positive and some negative, but I think people have overlooked how amazing the Wikipedia access is. For less than $400 you can carry around a book-sized device that weighs 10 ounces and that gives you access to every single article in Wikipedia from wherever you are without paying a monthly service charge!

The Kindle requires no computer, no Internet access, no Wi-Fi hotspots, and no monthly subscription. Out of the box, you can access Wikipedia from wherever you get cellular phone service. Amazing. And that’s without even mentioning the main purpose of the device, which is to function as a electronic book reader.

The Kindle is a portable book store and a portable library. You can read books and buy books from anywhere you have cellular reception.

Of course, the Kindle isn’t perfect. As an electronic reading device, it’s still in its infant stages, and I expect it to undergo many refinements and price drops. But the concept is mindblowing.

Imagine students sitting at their desk with a notebook and a Kindle that contains every one of their textbooks. No more lugging heavy backpacks home; no more going to their lockers after every class; the ability to instantly get the definition of any word in their text by selecting it on the Kindle.

Imagine taking students on a field trip to Washington, D.C., New York or places in your own town and having instant access to articles on the Lincoln Memorial, the Empire State Building, or your own local landmarks.

If you can’t tell yet, I love the entire concept. But I do have a few suggestions for Amazon as they go forward with the Kindle:

• Make sure that public domain texts can be converted and used on the Kindle at no charge. Users should be able to take out-of-copyright texts from place like Project Gutenberg and read them on the Kindle without having to pay for them.
• Send ME one, so I can really review it and show it to my students.
• And finally, print the words DON’T PANIC on the cover.

Click on over to Amazon.com to watch several videos about how the Kindle works, and to watch Toni Morrison, Neil Gaiman, Guy Kawasaki and others rave about it.

Go vertical, she says.

“…take all the papers for a particular class, fold them in half the long way (like a hot dog bun) and put a rubber band around them.  Make sure the writing is facing out so it is easy to see which set of papers is which.  Then take a box and stand the rubber banded papers upright in the box.”

This simple change worked wonders in my own classroom.  Not only does it help keep my desk from being cluttered, but it also distinguishes student work from the other miscellaneous papers that pile up during the course of a week.  The banded stacks of paper are also much easier to carry back and forth from home.

Give it a try and let me know how it works for you.  For more great tips, visit the Teaching Smarter website.

“locavore” was coined two years ago by a group of four women in San Francisco who proposed that local residents should try to eat only food grown or produced within a 100-mile radius. Other regional movements have emerged since then, though some groups refer to themselves as “localvores” rather than “locavores.”

Hmmmm…not a very exciting new word. I actually liked one of the runner-ups better, previvor: “A person who does not have cancer, but who has either precancerous cells or a genetic mutation known to cause cancer.”

Check out the full article from the Oxford University Press blog to see the other runner-ups.

• “Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.” — (Louis) Hector Berlioz
• “Academy: A modern school where football is taught.”  – Ambrose Bierce (1842-1914) – The Devil’s Dictionary, 1911
• “Education … has produced a vast population able to read but unable to distinguish what is worth reading.” – G. M. Trevelyan
• Education is what remains after one has forgotten everything he learned in school.
  - Albert Einstein (1879-1955)
• “Who dares to teach must never cease to learn.” — John Cotton Dana
• “Good teachers are those who know how little they know. Bad teachers are those who think they know more than they don’t know.” — R. Verdi
• “An educational system isn’t worth a great deal if it teaches young people how to make a living but doesn’t teach them how to make a life.” — Source Unknown
• “The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with the wish to teach himself.” — Edward Bulwer-Lytton

Thanks to Sylvia at Classical Bookworm.

In any case, the tag line says everything there is to say about teaching: A Glass and a Half Full of Joy.  For those of you starting school today, especially first-year teachers, may your year be full of wonder, inspiration and joy.

The Teacher’s Rap!:

An Average Day in the Classroom!:

Parents Evening, Part I:

Parents Evening, Part II:

Parents Evening Part III:

Make sure you check out Sam’s YouTube page for more of his original comedy sketches.