Hi! I am teaching 12th grade Economics (in the US) for the first time. Does anyone have any tips/resources they are willing to share? I am a student teacher with no help, and have been creating my own lessons off the dome thus far. From what I have seen online, the resources are so skewed and often times misrepresentative of the realities of economics. Any help would be appreciated!

I work in early childhood education (preschool) with 3-5 year olds, and it’s pretty normal for kids to pretend to be police and “bad guys” while playing or say things like “We’re going to catch the bad guy, and put him into jail”, etc. as a way of processing their fears about the world and make sense of how things work. I know they’re repeating things their parents have said, and that it is developmentally appropriate and normal to have a black and white concept of justice and have a hard time understanding complexity at this age, but it feels like an important learning opportunity that if someone makes a mistake or a bad choice the best thing is not to lock them up and police aren’t good lol, etc. I don’t know that I’ve been as successful as I want to be when talking with kids about these things though, and I wanted to hear other teachers perspectives

I usually acknowledge that going to jail is a thing that happens, and ask questions about wether or not we would really want that to happen to another person (framing it like What do we do when someone hurts someone at school, we don’t lock them up, we help them to help the person who was hurt feel better) etc. or I’ll say “There’s no such thing as bad guys and good guys, all of us are people who make choices, and sometimes we make good choices that have a good effect on our friends, and sometimes we make a choice that is bad or hurts someone” etc. But wanted to hear if anybody has ideas about this, questions I can ask the kids, etc? This is not something I would ever bring up to a parent unless I knew they were down. But shifting children’s understanding of these things feels like something that could have a big impact for them and the world!

Hi,

I am active in an antifa group, and want to make a workshop for tails. I got all the expertise needed, we also got USB Sticks and Laptops. This is supposed to be interactively, that everyone ends up with a good understanding of tails, and the ability to use it. I estimate about 10 participants. These workshops will be done semi regularly.

Unfortunately I never taught anything. How can I go about teaching this in a way that doesn't create that much hierarchy?

Alright, so some background, I work at a college and I teach English as a second language. I recently saw another teacher do a version of this project and wanted to tweak it for when I do it. The goal of the project to to help students become more aware of the issues that are currently prevalent in their community and to show them that they are capable of starting/making/organising/participating in change. Basically, the students, in small groups, have to research one or two of the UNESCO sustainable developement goals and do something in the community that raises awareness/improves the state of one of those goals in our city. Afterwards we'll have a round table disucssion about how it went. For example, they might organise a beach clean-up if they want to talk about the water goal or they might facilitate a discussion with other people in their major to raise awareness about common issues regarding a goal, etc.

My main question is, does anyone have any alternatives to the UNESCO SDGs? Not the biggest fan of UNESCO, but I find it's the most organised, categorized layout of this sort of information. Students often remark that a lot of these goals overlap, which they do because they're all interconnected, but I find the organizational aspect helps a lot both on my side and for the students.

My other question is if any of you have suggestions for helping the students come up with relevant ideas for what to do in the community? I know lots of them will end up turning to ChatGPT, but if you guys have any tips, sites, or articles about organising community events, that would be appreciated.

I would deeply appreciate suggestions or critiques for how to improve the project! The more minds put together, the better it can be overall :)

We are exploring factors that enable teachers to avoid burnout and work-related stress. This will help us to inform approaches to support teachers in the future. Please participate if you have a moment and share widely with your colleagues. Many thanks for your time.

(UK based)

I completed my placements and am entering into my first year of teaching in August. I hated behaviour management strategies on placement and it all felt horrific. For clarity, I'm not one of the anarchists who believe in "necessary hierarchies," or "authority once it has demonstrated its necessity,". I do not believe my position as a teacher needs to be a hierarchical one.

However, I will need to demonstrate level of behaviour management both in line with whatever the school policy is and in accordance with generally accepted principles ("start off really strict," etc.)

I'm thinking of a particular instance during placement when I made a decision and the teacher said I should have been strict and sanctioned a pupil, but I didn't even think to do that because I didn't even view it as negative behaviour. I did a riddle at the beginning of every class, and I decided that M could get a sticker even if he didn't word the answer correctly, but the answer still worked. J protested, and said something like, "Oh, come on man!" And I shrugged and said, "That's my decision, sorry,"

The teacher told me he spoke to me disrespectfully and I should have issued a sanction. I don't think about these sorts of things as being negative behaviours, mainly because I don't naturally demand respect as an authority figure.

Does anyone have any effective behaviour management strategies (other than just building relationships and keeping lessons engaging) for when there is behaviour that disrupts learning?

I have a question for other teachers of middle or high school. I am striving to run a classroom that is not dictated, to the best of my ability, by rewards or punishments. In the last few years, (been teaching for 12 years) I've noticed a significant increase in cell phone disruptions. I'd say in most classes about a quarter of students simply cannot stay off their phones, which is a problem because I teach a subject that requires significant attention and concentration in order to flourish. Does anybody have any strategies to manage cellphone use without resorting to punishment or coercion?

HELLO EVERYONE...I AM A STUDENT WORKING ON A PROJECT OF TRAINING AND DEVELOPMENT ON TEACHERS PERFORMANCE . PLEASE FILL OUT THIS GOOGLE FORM AND SHARE YOUR OPINION ABOUT THE STUDY.

https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd4l4mZNgJZy2J9r6ve7UFaXTh-qcb64KZnLyUQ3jri8ujKmQ/viewform?usp=sf_link

Fellow anarchist educators, what are your recommended readings/resources for new anarchist educators?

About a year ago, I began a career shift into education, first with tutoring, and now starting down the road to becoming a public school teacher. (Currently working as a para providing small group math intervention at an inner city middle school; I will be starting my masters in education this fall)

As the new semester starts, I've found myself reflecting on my frustrations with the more conventional teaching model template in our provided materials/trainings. (Emphasis on template- the materials are merely a suggested way of presenting the material. I am given almost complete freedom in how I want to teach.) Going forward, I want to start incorporating elements of anarchist education models into my teaching, both for my own sanity and to allow my students to have more agency (and therefore engagement) in their own education.

So, I ask my fellow educators here, what readings have you found most instructive on bringing anarchist practice to the classroom? General theory and more practical advice on operating within existing education systems are equally appreciated.

Hello all,

I'm a lecturer in my (US) university's math department. I've also recently started considering that I might be an anarchist. My question is, within the bounds of what administration is likely to allow, how would an anarchist educator handle cheating?

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Ideally, there wouldn't be grades as we know them today, so cheating would not be such a problem. But our world is not ideal yet. How do you folks handle cheating?

Hello! I just finished my masters education thesis on "How youth participatory action research/youth participatory evaluation can prefigure an anarchic and liberatory society". It's like 85 pages. Are there any good academic and non academic political publications that might be interested in something like this?

I try to make it as student-centered as possible. Lots of choice.

Other teachers don't understand what I do or how I do it. But downtown loves my test scores....even though I don't follow the curriculum.

Thanks for having this sub!