What is Reddit's opinion of Teach Like a Champion 2.0: 62 Techniques that Put Students on the Path to College?

From 3.5 billion Reddit comments

Oh, good, it's not just me.

I've found a very small number of other books, but the one book that I tend to actually recommend to teachers is Teach Like a Champion . I'm not a fan of the title, but the actual content is -- shocking! - actually useful, actionable techniques.

They talk about their research methodology towards the beginning, but the nutshell version is that they found great teachers ( which, if I recall, they defined as teachers whose kids improved, and stayed improved ) and found what techniques they had in common.

A decent chunk of stuff is things you likely already know -- for example, tight transitions = good -- but it goes into some examples of ways to tighten up transitions, as well as similar routines that we might not think to teach explicitly, but will save headaches if you actually do ( example: how to put your paper in your folder to take home, how to hand out papers. It seems silly, but as an elementary teacher I have to actually explicitly teach ' take one, pass the rest back ' to my class every year. The fact that I don't tend to have straight lines of desks means I actually plan 'paper paths' so everyone gets one. )

Another example is equally simple but was a ' oh, duh ' moment for me -- putting the kids name at the end when asking a question. ( " What's 5x5 Johnny?" instead of " Johnny, what's 5x5?" ). I tend towards it naturally, but it was a reminder that no, that stuff can actually matter.

No worries! :)

Now I've given it a little bit more thought, one of the contributing factors towards the 'yes' attitude might be that those types of teachers are more inclined to pick up a prac student, so they perpetuate the yes culture.

Aside from saying no, and perhaps picking up this book here, don't hesitate to drop your teaching load. I dropped to 0.8FTE after my first year and it had a massive impact on my mental health and lesson quality - And depending on your tax bracket it might not make that much difference to your pay either.

If you work in the country, in the right town, you can also get free or subsidied goverment housing. It's a huge convience not having to deal with finding a house, applying, making sure it's habitable, etc, before moving to a new place.

And if you're in subsidied housing any rent you do pay is salary sacrificed. If you didn't know, that means it comes out of your income before you pay tax.

In my case I had a 60% subsidy, with my contribution of the other 40% being $250/week. I was about $80 ahead per week.