Edutainer

Along with the many tools available for teachers online, Tumblr is an excellent way for you to connect with and learn from teachers across the country and around the world. Tumblr is a microblogging site, like Twitter, which allows users to post text, video, pictures or audio to their Tumblr page. Whether it’s pictures of cute arts and crafts projects that their students completed in their Pre-K classroom or a rumination on the trials and tribulations of teaching high school mathematics, Tumblr serves as a platform for teachers everywhere to share their experiences. Tumblr features hundreds of blogs that deal with topics like education and teaching, so to help you wade through the myriad different pages out there, here’s our list of five great Tumblrs to follow:

1. Teaching Essentials
As its title suggests, this Tumblr offers valuable resources for educators who want to grow and improve professionally. Teaching Essentials is based out of the United Kingdom and offers free high-quality teaching resources, ranging from classroom materials to popular education links. It’s full of educational videos and images that any teacher could use to improve his or her classroom.

2. Positively Persistent Teach
A good mix of text and picture posts, this Tumblr runs the gamut of topics any teacher would be interested in. From images of fun and educational classroom materials to discussions of pertinent New York Times articles on the state of American education, Positively Persistent Teach provides a great combination of social commentary and teaching insights. The Tumblr is owned and operated by a professional teacher with real life experience that shines through in her posts and commentary.

3. Teachers. Classrooms. Worldwide.
Whether you’re teaching in New York City, Berlin or Shanghai, you can easily become engrossed in the world of your classroom, forgetting that teaching and education are worldwide considerations that receive close attention. The decisions and advancements made in the world of education affect us all no matter where we teach. This Tumblr focuses on the trends and developments in education throughout the world, and should serve to remind all teachers that they belong to a global network of classroom educators.

4. Education Policy
This Tumblr compiles links and posts that deal with education policy and other topics of interest to educators and educational professionals of all types. This is an excellent blog to follow if you want to remain up-to-date about the developments in education, whether that be in policy or research. With a constant flow of links to popular teacher-centric articles like “What Teachers Want to Know: When Will Testing Company Employees Get Laid Off?”, this Tumblr is a must-follow.

5. Revolutionize Education
This Tumblr is perfect for educators looking to harness the power of Web 2.0 in their classrooms and throughout their professional lives. With social media platforms like Twitter, YouTube and Facebook quickly becoming major factors in the world of pedagogy, this blog highlights how and in what ways education stands to change in a world increasingly dominated by social media. Revolutionize Education also provides links to articles and other blogs that deal with happenings in educational policy, classroom techniques and other subjects of interest to teachers.

Photo by Lisa B Photography

New York City is one of the best places to teach in the world. With such diverse students and different types of schools, there are almost too many options to choose from. New York City features some of the oldest, highest performing and innovative private and public high schools in the nation. To help you figure out which one is right for you, here’s a list of five of the best schools in NYC for teachers:

1. Stuyvesant High School
If you are looking for a school with a well-known brand name, a proven track record for successful graduation rates and a college acceptance list that annually features top-ten universities, then Stuyvesant is the right place for you. Founded at the turn of the 20th century, Stuyvesant is a public school open to all New York City residents. Acceptance is based on an examination taken in either eight grade (for incoming freshmen) or ninth grade (for incoming sophomores) that tests both math and verbal skills. Since its founding, Stuyvesant has become one of the best high schools in the nation for developing students’ talents in math, science and technology, and has rightfully gained national recognition as one the country’s premier high schools.

2. The New York City Museum School
Tourists who come to New York invariably find themselves roaming the halls of the many museums the city has to offer. These institutions are fonts of knowledge that oftentimes remain untapped by the citizens of New York. In an attempt to harness the educational power of the museums, The New York City Museum school uses museums as primary resources to teach history, science, math, English and research skills. New York City is one of the only places in the world that can offer a professional opportunity like this, one in which you will be able to supplement your curriculum with hands-on learning experiences like museum visits. The school combines the academic rigor of a pre-college preparatory school with a progressive pedagogical mindset; together, these make the Museum School one of the most unique places to work and a truly exciting employment opportunity.

3. KIPP NYC College Prep
Teaching is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling career paths. As an educator, you have the opportunity and privilege to influence the lives of children for the better. If this noble cause is one of the reasons why you became a teacher, then you should look into teaching at a KIPP school. The Knowledge is Power Program (KIPP) NYC College Prep High School serves the needs of high-performing, low-income minority students, offering them a free education. KIPP schools are beginning to sprout up across the country and have become a popular destination for teachers on the job market due to competitive salaries and an institutional philosophy that favors educators. At KIPP schools, teachers are not fettered by restrictive curricula and are immediately given full reign over how and what they teach. Teachers gain access to a broad network of over 3,000 KIPP colleagues who are there to support and advise one another. For more details on why you should consider teaching there, check out the top 10 reasons to teach at a KIPP NYC school.

4. United Nations International School
One of New York City’s defining characteristics is its multiculturalism. This diversity can be found in almost every NYC high school but is most evident at the United Nations International School (UNIS). International schools have always been an attractive place for teachers to pursue employment, especially when teaching abroad. UNIS has many of the same features that make these institutions popular around the world, with the added comfort of being in New York. UNIS serves the families and communities of the United Nations, which means that many, but not all, of the students are children of diplomats. The school offers these students top-tier academic instruction, especially in the English as a Second Language (ESL) field. If you are interested in teaching ESL students or just experiencing a type of diversity only New York can offer, then UNIS is an excellent place for you.

5. The Abraham Joshua Heschel High School
New York City is home to many private religious high schools, like AJHS. These are excellent places to find competitive salaries, high-performing students and small class sizes. One aspect of the Heschel School, a non-denominational Jewish high school, that sets it apart from its competitors, and also makes it a great place to teach, is its investment in and commitment to the use of educational technologies. At Heschel, every teacher is given a laptop computer, every student receives a laptop in ninth grade, and every classroom is fully equipped with a Smartboard and projector. This technological advantage allows physics teachers to use high-tech software to convey scientific concepts, while art teachers teach graphic design and history teachers develop students’ research skills through online databases in the classroom itself. If you are interested in teaching at a school that is at the technological vanguard of pedagogy, AJHS should be at the top of your list.

Are you interested in becoming a teacher in New York? Check out our page on New York teacher certification.