It can ruin even the most carefully designed lessons: An activity you had planned takes way longer than you thought it would. Or worse, it takes way less time. And sometimes it can be both, with some students finishing a task in five minutes while others need half an hour. Getting classroom pacing just right is an art that takes practice and technique. In this episode, I'll share 10 habits you can build into your classroom routine that can prevent many of these problems from happening, or help you deal with them much more effectively when they do.

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Thanks to Renaissance and Erikson Institute for sponsoring the episode. To read a written version of this podcast, visit cultofpedagogy.com/classroom-timing.

To learn more about my upcoming course, Mastering the Lesson Plan, visit cultofpedagogy.com/teaching101.

When a student behaves in a way that disrupts their own learning or someone else's, our response is often limited to a reprimand or a punishment. While this usually stops the undesirable behavior for a while, it doesn't often solve the problem long-term. What has longer-lasting impact is viewing the misbehavior as a sign that a student is missing an important skill, and if they are taught that skill, the behavior should naturally improve. In this episode, we learn more about what this approach looks like in practice from Nathan Maynard, educator and author of the new book, The Science of Discipline.

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Thanks to Listenwise and Erikson Institute for sponsoring the episode. To read Maynard's article about replacement skills, visit cultofpedagogy.com/replacement-skills.

To find Nathan Maynard online, visit HighFive.school.

To learn more about The Teacher's Guide to Tech, visit teachersguidetotech.com.

Students are coming to school with more needs than ever, and a lot of those needs aren't strictly academic: anxiety, withdrawal, behavior issues, and learning differences that don't always have quick or obvious solutions. These are problems that often send us to the internet in search of answers, but the nuances of each individual situation can make it hard to find exactly what we need. Ideally, we'd have a colleague with a lot of knowledge and experience who would listen carefully to our problem, ask us questions to make sure they understood it, and offer solutions. Now there's a new platform called Ellis that may be the next best thing. This free, chat-based tool created by the Children's Health Council is designed to give educators practical guidance in those moments when something isn't working and you're not sure what to try next. In this episode, I talk to Cindy Lopez from the CHC about how Ellis works. All educators are invited to give Ellis a try now at askellis.org and see how it works for you!

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This episode was sponsored by Ellis. To read a full transcript of this interview or watch a video of how Ellis works, visit cultofpedagogy.com/ellis.