ESL SUMMER READING AND MRS. OBAMA

Happy Fourth of July!  If you are a dog lover and an American, you probably have experienced this puppy shaming to the right!  We are experiencing it right now– all three of our furry friends are cowering under the desk as I write this post late Friday night.  As always, we’ve included a lot of links as helpful resources on these topics- click on the blue links and we’ll take you right to an article, video, or product you can use!

First things first, all the free downloadables for this post are on our Home Page.    We are super excited about these new counseling and ESL resources and we hope you find them helpful.  We’ve moved all the 2013 free homepage resources to our Resources Page, if you still need them.  Secondly, we have given our entire website a face lift with a new Reviews Page, a simplified (and much easier to navigate) Products Page, our newest favorite website links on our Resources Page, and more!!  We hope you have some time to play around with our new and improved website pages.  Finally, we are thrilled to announce that our newest ESL lessons guide has hit the presses: ESL for Beginners Volume Three. It’s our final installment in our Beginners series and it’s a doozy! This simple, easy-to-follow, chronological set of 20 lessons has everything you need to instruct your students on topics such as past tense verbs, articles, community & family vocabulary, numbers to 100,  and more!  Have fun teaching your students with dynamic activities such as Funky Phrases, Create Your Own Dialogue, and more!  We are also excited to announce that we have 2 brand new guides coming at you in the next month or two: Girl World Group Counseling Sessions Guideand The COMPLETE ESL for Beginners Lessons Guide!  Check out our Home Page for more details on these two guides.

For our counseling post, we HAVE to talk a bit about the First Lady’s visit and speech at the American School Counselor Association in Disney this week.  While we couldn’t be there in person, we took a break from all our counseling guide writing to watch her speak live.  It was pretty exciting and we feel the winds of change blowing for us PSCs!!!  Not because of the new White House school counselor initiatives explained by the First Lady, but because the White House is putting the spotlight on school counseling and what needs to be fixed in our profession (ridiculous ratios, inappropriate job duties, etc). All great change starts with that first baby step! Here’s a video of the main parts of the speech.  Here’s the written speech so you can read the 3 initiatives for yourself.  And here’s a good article of commentary about Mrs. Obama’s speech, the Reach Higher initiative, and her presence at the conference. To borrow a key phrase from the article, “At last, a policy maker truly understood the needs of school counselors.”  What do you think?

For our ESL post, we have lots of food for thought as you teachers enjoy your time off.  Just in case you are still teaching, here are 2 fab summer ESL activities from our fav, Busy Teacher:  Outdoor Activities for ESL Students andSummer Holidays.

Here’s a great list of beach reading if you are a teacher with some time off and you’d like to use it to recharge those professional batteries:

• End of Year Self Reflection Qs for Teachers
• Staying Calm When Smoke is Coming Out of Your Ears
• Parents Love Teachers Because…
• Educational Myths (that will make you do a face palm!)
• The Greatest Article Ever Written About Problems in American Education
• And…Ending on a Positive Note if You’re Thinking About Going into Educational Administration

So, that’s it for July’s Post.  Hope to see you back here the first Saturday in August for our post on all things “Back-to-School.”  Please leave a comment about your favorite summer reading or your opinion on Mrs. Obama’s speech.  We hope July is good to you!  In the meantime, you can find out about our latest promotions, free stuff, or our counseling/ESL adventures by following us on our Facebook Page or Twitter Page.