Teaching middle and high school students is complex, demanding work. Secondary teacher professional development often misses what actually matters: how we can keep the job sustainable while balancing content standards, literacy development, AI in education, and the daily reality of of everything our students are going through.
If you feel overwhelmed, it’s not because you’re doing something wrong. The expectations placed on today’s teachers are often unrealistic, and most professional learning resources don’t address that. You don’t need another productivity hack. You need permission, perspective, and a few tools that actually work.
That’s where I can help.
This free short email course is built for secondary teachers who are doing everything right and still feel like it’s not enough. Over four short lessons, you’ll get the framework I use after 25+ years in the classroom to triage an impossible workload, the language to set boundaries without guilt, and the reminder every teacher needs: adequate is not failure.
Inside the course:
If you’re looking for practical professional development designed specifically for middle and high school classrooms, my online courses for teachers provide ready-to-use strategies you can implement immediately. These self-paced trainings focus on AI integration in education, strengthening literacy in secondary content areas, and instructional practices that increase student engagement without adding to your workload. Each course is built by a classroom teacher, for classroom teachers, so you gain tools that work in real-world settings.
Looking to boost student literacy across all subjects? This summer series introduces 6 proven strategies that form the foundation of student success. From purposeful close reading to confident essay writing, each week unpacks an essential skill that builds upon the last. Whether you’re a veteran teacher or new to the classroom, these practical strategies help students become engaged, independent learners ready for our rapidly changing world.
The series includes templates and resources through the Free Resource Library to help you implement these techniques seamlessly in your classroom. Click the links to explore each strategy and transform your literacy instruction this all year.
I’ve been a public school teacher for over 20 years. I’ve taught middle and high school–almost every subject in social studies and ELA. It’s been a journey.
It’s no doubt a tough job–that’s why so many teachers get burned out. I don’t want that to happen to you for one simple reason. Your students need YOU.
That’s why I want to help make your journey a little bit easier with secondary classroom-tested tips, strategies, and resources. And I want to give you time to remember that no one else can offer your students what you can.
I’ve been trying to implement Free Read Friday with my students. I give my seventh graders ten to fifteen minutes to read whatever they want. No skill to pull out, no worksheet, just a book. It should be the simplest part of my week. Instead, it turned into the most chaotic ten minutes I’ve had all year.
It’s the beginning of October. The back-to-school adrenaline is gone, grades are due, and the workdays that used to be for finishing them are now professional learning days. I know teachers who are thinking about taking a personal day to grade. If that’s you, this encore episode of If Teachers Ruled the World is for you. Teacher exhaustion in October isn’t a sign you’re doing it wrong.
My first year of teaching, a student came at me to hit me. Other students held him back. And for the first and only time in 26 years, I seriously thought about using the Georgia law that lets teachers remove disruptive students from her classroom. So why do so few teachers ever use it, even when classrooms are harder than they’ve ever been?
A screen check during a digital test showed me something I couldn’t unsee: a student answer that clearly wasn’t in that student’s own words, and no way to actually prove it. That frustration is at the center of this episode. I’m talking about teaching synthesis skills in the age of AI, and why summary, the thing we’ve spent years teaching kids to do well, was never actually the goal.
Every teacher knows this job is immense. So many demands coming at us from all directions. But…and hear me out…what if self-imposed deadlines teachers put on their own plates are adding to the noise. In this episode, I discuss teacher perfectionism, burnout, setting boundaries as a teacher, and my favorite–how to make stress your friend (seriously). You don’t want to miss this one.
Lessons are taking longer this year, and it’s not just you. There’s a connection between AI and student attention spans. We’re using 2024 research on how this generation of students learns differently to makes the case for why scaffolding versus rigor is a false choice. The real answer is teaching up while providing the support kids need to get there, even when that support takes more time and energy than we’d like.
