Shannon Costello

Tomorrow is the first day of the third quarter.
Tomorrow also begins my turn at lunch duty. I have it for the rest of the year, so now is the time to put aside thoughts of freedom and adjust my attitude. Every job has its down side and if one is going to maintain any [...]

Good communication is essential to a healthy relationship.  In order for good communication to occur each party must actively work to reach out to the other parties.  Good communication is difficult with two persons.  My guess is that the difficulty level increases significantly as the number of persons involved increases.
Consider the group [...]

It’s less politically correct now, so I use it less, but I used to regularly inform my students that my classroom was a dictatorship and not a democracy.
With that sort of attitude, how could some poor intern hope to get teaching opportunities from me? Of course we planned some, but other than that [...]

1) This is the first year I have used a particular text with my 8th grade Spanish classes and I am having trouble pacing myself. If I go too fast I will be frantically inventing creative lesson plans at the end of the year. If I crawl along too slowly my students [...]

I left school feeling pretty good about my stopping point. Mostly I have felt horribly behind this week. However, we have survived the first quarter! A couple of moments stand out from this week…I’ll try to capture them here.
Weirdest Moment
Sometimes I can’t believe what I am saying…or the tone in which I say it. [...]

Re: Classroom Management
Amazing how much of a difference a bit of accountability can make in the classroom.
It is easy to be less intense than is wise in the classroom…maybe I will only walk around once, or perhaps I will not take paper, pen, and clipboard with me when I walk, half-listening and [...]

Honks — pleasure honks — must satisfy some deep auditory need in the heart of mankind, particularly children. A little effort may reward you with deep, resonating sounds that thrill right through you and ring in the air about you. For a moment there is nothing but the delight of the [...]

1) Early in the first of my back-to-back classes this morning I realized I was missing an important tape. As soon as class was over I quickly shoved the cart into the next room and went speed-walking down the hall to my desk in the planning room. No tape. The [...]