Author: McKenna McDonnell

No Excuses

I’m baaaaaack. It’s been awhile friends. I had my baby in March, a whopping three weeks early and I’ve been soaking up all the time I can with her. About two weeks ago she started sleeping through the night and I’m finally feeling human again; so I figured what the hell? Why not do a blog post.

Change has been heavy on my mind over the past few weeks. Then today, it was like everything was telling me to make the moves I’ve been scared to make. As I was going through my Sunday Reset I started thinking about what I would write about in this post and it came to me pretty quickly. While I’ve had a great excuse for the last 14 weeks to take a break and not put too much pressure on myself, I started thinking about what my excuses were before I had my daughter. I realized there are things I want to accomplish and do that I’m constantly standing in my own way for so I’m gonna hop right back on my soapbox and get into it.

The Excuses: I’ve wanted to write a book my entire life. I’ve started, restarted, and scrapped hundreds of ideas. Last year I finally told myself I’d do it. I would self-publish my contemporary romance and commit to finishing it. Then I didn’t. I put in all the leg work: planned the series, started the book, twice, and looked into how to copyright and publish a book. Then I didn’t. Then, in January, while I was very pregnant I started thinking about it again, and I restarted it, kind of, again. I was going to publish it this time. I even bet I could finish it before I had my baby. Then I didn’t. You know what was standing in my way? Sure, I had a baby and I’ve been busy for a few months, but what about the year and a half before that? I was standing in my own way. Coming up with every excuse I possibly could. Including my least favorite: there’s not enough time in the day. I can’t stand that excuse, because it’s obviously true, but it’s so easily fixable! (I’ll get into that later.) If I’m not actively taking the steps to work toward something, it isn’t going to happen. I can relate this easily to a real-life scenario. Every time my husband gives my daughter a bath they play with every single one of her bath toys. She has a ton of them, it leaves a disaster in the tub. Every single time, my husband leaves them scattered all over the tub. Do I ever say anything about how this bothers me? No. I mean, I do the typical wife thing and loudly sigh as I clean them up, yet again. But I have never once said anything to him about cleaning them up. How can I expect there to be a change if I’m not doing anything to make it happen? Doing the things we want in life takes the same sense of action. How will you get rich or be a best selling author if you never put in the action steps to make it happen? So, I’m posting this in an attempt to not only motivate you to take the actions you need to work toward any goal that’s lingering in your head; but to also hold myself accountable. It’s time to make the changes that will help me finish my damn book.

The Morning Routine: This is where I come back to the whole ‘there’s not enough time in the day’ excuse. If you don’t feel like you have enough time, make the time. I know some of you will read this and be like, yeah right, when? Well, that’s where the morning routine comes in. I challenge you to wake up one hour earlier than you need to –where my morning people at?!– and do the things that you seemingly don’t have the time for. I’ll tell you what my morning routine is: I wake up at 4:15, give or take 15 minutes and how friendly my finger and snooze button get with each other. I brew my coffee (prepared the night before because getting the coffee ready in the morning is the literal worst), and then I enjoy my first cup of coffee in silence while I read a few chapters in whatever book I’m reading. Sometimes it’s a nonfiction, self-help type book, and sometimes I enter the wonderful world of smut. I’ve got a wide array of tastes, what can I say? Then I read a chapter in the bible. Weird sentence to follow my previous one, but it is what it is. Also, if you’re not religious, I’m not telling you what to do with your life, I’m simply stating what I do with mine. Because of my current state of life, I typically do all of these things while I pump so that when my baby wakes up she can get her morning bottle. After this, I work out. Elle Woods said it best, “Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy!” By now my baby has definitely woke up at least once so at some point in the middle of all of that I feed her. Then I take a shower, get as ready as any SAHM will get and make my to do list for the day. This varies. Sometimes it has 2 things on it and sometimes it has 50. It depends on the day of the week and honestly how motivated I am. When I tell you I’m a happier, better person after completing my morning routine (before my kids wake up), I can’t recommend it enough. It’s the best change I’ve ever made. On top of this, I’ve recently started doing a Sunday Reset. Let’s get into that.

The Sunday Reset: Sunday has always been the start of the week to me not the end. I worked retail for a relatively long time and maybe it’t the fact that our POS system started on Sunday but it’s just always worked for me. I make a huge to do list on Sundays. Some of it is simple like, watch church (live streamed because, children) or work out. Then there’s the ‘to clean’ half of the list which is basically a checklist of every cleaning task that needs to happen. Which is every cleaning task ever because I have a 4 year old hurricane that lives with me. But getting this checklist done starts my week off right. I’m not saying you have to do this, I mean if anything, the fact that I have to complete a giant to do list in order to feel sane probably says a lot more about me than anything else. But I love Sundays. They’re sacred to me. I like to stay home, get tasks done and get ready for the rest of the week ahead of me. If I skip my Sunday Reset, my entire family can tell, I’m basically a monster. I highly suggest finding something you enjoy doing and doing it every Sunday. I’m willing to bet it will have quite a positive affect on your mental.

Back to the Excuses Part: Just don’t make them. I mean, I’m sure I’ll still make excuses sometimes. I’m especially good at excuses if it’s to get me out of doing something that involves me pretending to be extroverted. But something I think everyone can stand to remember is that every time you make an excuse, you’re just getting that much further away from the end result. If you want to lose weight but you make an excuse to not work out every day you’ll never lose that weight. If you want to quit drinking but you’re constantly making excuses as to why you need a beer will you ever quit drinking? Anyway, maybe I’ll be back on here more often, maybe I’ll finally post that lesson plan I was talking about like 6 months ago. But until then, later friends!

June 22, 2025

blog, excuses, health, life, mental-health, morning, motivation, routine, writing
Middle School or Fight Club?

I feel like this will be a time where some of you that read my posts may disagree with some of my hot takes on this topic. But I don’t post these things for everyone to agree with them so that’s fine.

I remember vividly the first fight I broke up. It was hardly considered a fight and actually took place in my classroom my first year teaching. I was in 4 inch wedges and miraculously did not snap my ankle off while scurrying over and pushing the two 12-year-old boys apart. My adrenaline was off the charts which is hilarious because little did I know that was a cake walk compared to some of the fights I’d separate later in my career.

For some reason I was always in the right place at the wrong time when it came to fights. Being in positions to separate boys twice my size with no one in sight to help me. If I knew I was unsafe, I’d wait or yell to someone that I knew would help me, but when I tell you I had the worst luck with being alone separating fights I’m not joking. I’ve separated a girl fight with upwards of 100 students surrounding us, one of the students tried to push me into the fight. That was cute, I even had to prove it to her mom later.

We once had a fight that was a borderline riot where 13 girls were cited. There’s a part of the chaos where you see me on the CCTV camera just standing there staring at the havoc like I knew deep down this was not what I got paid for. But I managed to hold one of the girls back and only broke a few nails while doing so. That actually happened twice that year, where I was holding a female student back that was so angry and fired up that in the process of getting her to a safe space I’d had nails ripped off my hand.

I once followed a large crowd of students into a classroom where a boy that probably weighed 250 tried to attack another boy around the same size. Desks were flying everywhere and thank god a male teacher came in to assist me because there was absolutely no way I was getting in between those two if they really started going at it.

Let me get to the point. In no way were those all of my experiences, I could tell you about the hilarious 6th grade girl fight I separated too but I want to talk about why I’m bringing all of this up. I want to talk about why students in low socioeconomic areas are more prone to violence and I want to talk about the fact that school districts need to do more about it.

Why do a lot of these students work through their problems with their fists? It’s not “just this generation” either. This kind of behavior is all some of these students know. They grow up in chaotic households and have faced trauma that some of us can’t even imagine. They may not have doting parents who teach them how to work through their emotions properly. They may have no parental figure at all. If you’ve never heard of the ACE test I highly suggest taking it. It asks 10 questions about traumatic experiences you may have faced before the age of 18. You then score 1-10 depending on how many yeses and no’s you answer. Any score over 4 has proven to have lasting effects on people’s brains.

Many students that grow up in low socioeconomic areas score relatively high on this test. This isn’t necessarily an excuse to “throw hands” with anyone that looks at them wrong; but it does provide an explanation as to why they may choose to do so. Providing students with different outlets and more opportunities can help prevent violent tendencies. But districts want to pay their school boards and their superintendents obscene amounts of money instead of putting that money toward programs proven to help.

The last school I was at had fights almost every day. But no matter how much my administration begged; the district never gave us a school police officer. Something about under-funded and blah blah. Listen, the people’s tax dollars go to education, and that means all aspects, instead of providing Title 1 schools with more money than they’ll ever need for school supplies why not take some of that funding and put it toward a salary for a school police officer? As someone that absolutely does not get paid enough to be an educator, a parent, a coach, AND a referee I can tell you how much pressure it would take off those of us that strive toward doing what’s best for these kids.

Did you know if a teacher gets hurt during a fight there’s nothing they can do about it? We can’t even file workers comp. Because it’s ultimately in our rule book that we aren’t supposed to step in between a fight and try and stop it. You’re telling me I should just stand there and watch two kids hurt each other? Absolutely not. I don’t want an armed guard at the school to instill fear into the students, I want someone who is trained (correctly) in defusing situations that will help everyone in the building feel safe.

Anyways, I’m not sure why I woke up today and decided this was the rant I wanted to get on but there you have it. I’ll have the TKAMB lesson plan out next week!

February 23, 2025

coach, education, educator, learning, school, students, teaching
My dream home

Write about your dream home.

I feel like this prompt popped up at such a perfect moment in my life that it almost feels like divinity.

I just found my dream home on Zillow the other day, and as a teacher and potential struggling author I know that now is definitely not the time to be looking at homes on Zillow. But a girl can dream.

Location is most important to me. I was born and raised in a city that seems to never stop growing and honestly it’s getting old. So, I have to live somewhere with a slower pace of life. Corvallis, MT or Hamilton, MT or literally just about any town in Wyoming would be an absolute dream for me.

Now, let’s get into layout. 5 bedrooms, the master and 2 bedrooms for my family and then one in home office and one in home gym. The master would have to have a big closet (not Lisa Vanderpump big but big enough to walk around in). The master bath has to be big enough to have 2 sinks and a separate shower and tub. Ideally, the house is two stories, the three bedrooms my family is in on the top floor and the extra bedrooms and a game room on the bottom floor. Oh can’t forget the kitchen. Big. HUGE. (Thank you Pretty Woman!) but seriously, all the counter space and just for the hell of it two sinks.

As for the outside? At least 2 acres with a space for goats and chickens. And my two beautiful but insane dogs need an area to run around and live their best lives in. A shop for my husband and our future 4 wheeled toys. Some kind of play gym for my kids. And the house needs to sit far enough back from main roads that we don’t hear traffic.

I feel like I could add more and more but I’ll leave it at this for now. With just a little bit of a manifestation for this dream home becoming my reality very soon.

February 11, 2025

dailyprompt, dailyprompt-1845
My First Week

Few things in life are as nerve-wracking as the first day on the job. My first day as a real life teacher was no different. I don’t think I had ever been so nervous in my entire life (and I had been a cheerleader so performance and competition was not a new experience for me). I remember exactly what I was wearing: A cream long sleeved dress with red flowers on it, red tights (ew), and high heeled boots. I remember standing in front of my first period of the day trying so hard not to smile (because I had been given that weird advice) but I couldn’t help it. I was way too excited. My first year was spent at a Title I school in a low socioeconomic area in my hometown. For as long as I could remember (even when I was in middle school myself) this school had a less than stellar reputation. But I didn’t care, it was my dream to help the kids that needed it most and dammit I was going to do it!

That excitement I was talking about? Very quickly dashed by the lovable, yet somewhat evil minds of seventh graders. I tried to go through my expectations (I only had 5 but they covered all the things, I’ll post about the importance of short and simple expectations sometime). I was immediately interrupted. “Are you going to let us cuss? The last sub let us cuss.” “Are you going to give a lot of homework? Because I won’t do it.” I mean it was like I was standing in a war zone getting missiles thrown at me. I had been so unprepared for the push back and the questioning. I had this vision that I would be this perfect cross between Miss Honey and the Trunchbull. Like not so sweet I get walked all over but also not so mean that I’m out here chucking children by their braids. Yeah that was not the case. I kind of ended up somewhere between a scared fainting goat and a panicked kitten.

But I kept showing up. Because this was my dream. My passion! That first week honestly feels like a fever dream looking back on it. It was absolute chaos. That Wednesday I had a kid fall asleep in my class and just not wake up. I called admin who called 911 and the kid didn’t even budge when the paramedics pricked his finger. Come to find out, his parents weren’t paying attention to his medication and were giving him way too much. I vividly remember listening to my principal and assistant principal discussing which one of them would be calling CPS. Dude. That was my third day! You know that voice over that goes “It was then that he realized…he f***ed up.” Yeah that played in my head for sure. I doubted my ability to actually be able to do the one and only thing I had dreamed of doing since I was 5 years old. Obviously I didn’t quit after that third day, or I wouldn’t be where I am now. I’m thankful I didn’t, but it’s almost comical to look back at how much of a disaster my first year was, right off the bat, and think about the fact that I stuck with it. I am nothing if not tenacious.

That Friday one of my students crawled under a table and had a complete meltdown. Like legit screaming, holding the entire class up M-E-L-T-D-O-W-N. I honestly couldn’t tell if she was joking or not it was that insane. She just sat there and cussed at the rest of the class and cried and yelled. Once I coaxed her out she started laughing. I felt like I was in a horror movie. I still to this day don’t know if that girl was actually upset or just wanted to ruin my Friday morning.

The only homework I gave out in the beginning was a reading log. Y’all they didn’t even have to summarize what they read, just record the date, title and amount of minutes read. They could have easily faked it. Of my 150 students I’d get about 7 turned in every week. Coming from someone who loved school, and lived for reading, I could not fathom why so few of my students were doing this homework. It wasn’t until later in my career that I realized the why and that’s another blog post for another time.

Overall, I want to look pack at my past self and hug her and thank her for sticking with it. Teaching was rewarding, challenging, and somewhat horrifying but it was so, so worth it. I have oodles of fun stories about my experiences that I plan to share. But being the analytical type, I had to start from the beginning. See you next time!

February 9, 2025

blog, education, homework, instructional coach, teacher, teaching, teaching first day, writing
Random Teacher Thoughts
Listen, I know I said I was going to post lesson plans here, I’m working on it okay? But I have so many other teacher thoughts swirling around in my ever-running brain that these posts keep taking precedence over the lesson plans. But they’re coming. I promise!

Over the last few days I’ve found myself consistently talking about my experiences as a teacher (whether that was against the will of whomever I was speaking to is beside the point). These conversations have broken some thoughts free that I want to share.
1. You are not your mentor teacher. My mentor teacher was truly one of the best teachers I’ve ever seen in action. Nearing the end of her career, she had mastered that nurturing yet stern personality all successful teachers seem to have. I compared myself to her every year for my first 3 years teaching. But you know what I realized? I’m not Mrs. Taylor and that’s okay! She’s amazing, but just because my teaching approach is different, and I’m a little less nurturing and a lot more sarcastic does not mean I’m less of a teacher than her. Don’t compare yourself to veteran teachers when you’re still trying to figure out who you are as a teacher yourself.
2. Bad days are only days. I’ve seen a lot of teachers perpetuate a cycle of constant negativity in this career. If you let whatever happened Monday affect your mood on Friday? That’s a you problem my friend. Troubleshoot whatever the problem was that made your day suck and move on from it. Hell, maybe even learn from it.
3. Always do a Sunday reset. I realize that this is slowly turning into an advice column. That wasn’t what I intended when I started but whatever I’m just going to go with it. I can’t tell you how much better my weeks got when I started focusing on Sundays being productive and rewarding. Every Sunday I make a “to clean” list and a “to do” list and these lists consist of everything I need to get done to make my Monday morning easier. For example, pack lunches is always on my to do list. My to clean list is probably absurdly long to the average human but I like my house to be in great condition at the start of the week, it clears my head. That’s just an example of my reset. Becky, the teacher down the hall could go to yoga and brunch with her besties as her Sunday reset and that’s excellent too! Whatever clears your mind and has you feeling positive for the start of the week.
4. Grading at home is for the birds. Don’t do it people! I know you feel like you don’t have time at school. And if you’re like me and have, at several times in your career, had upwards of 160 essays to grade you know it’s not realistic to cram that into your prep periods (if you get them). But my advice is to take them to your favorite coffee shop or get with a teacher buddy and pick a fun place to sit down and grade together. Commiserate if you will. Just don’t take away from your home zen with crap from work. Remember my post about not getting burnt out? Yeah, add this to the list of ways to avoid that.
5. The big kicker: They won’t all like you. Man when I started teaching, whether I would admit it or not, the students liking me was a big priority. I knew from my practicum and student teaching that building relationships was pivotal when it came to having success with lessons and engagement. But I didn’t really realize it’s impossible to be liked by 150 little humans. They won’t all like you, your personalities may clash, and that’s okay! Do not waste your energy getting Tommy to finally laugh at one of your jokes. Worry about supporting your students in any way they’ll let you, not being homecoming queen (The Teacher’s Version).
Well I guess that’s it for what’s on my mind today. I’ll post that lesson plan soon. But for now, see ya later!
February 2, 2025

advice, coach, education, educator, engagement, experience, instructionalcoach, learning, rapport, school, students, teachers, teaching
Don’t Get Burnt Out

Seriously, it’s that easy.

During my time as a novice teacher coach I watched so many first and second year teachers work themselves to the bone. Eventually breaking down into tears or becoming what I like to call “stress cadets”. Ultimately, they were way too focused on what was happening inside their classrooms and not nearly focused enough on themselves.

If you’re a teacher, you know how exciting it is to plan a kick ass lesson and watch your students have fun while learning important topics. That’s one of my favorite parts of the job, but you know what you don’t need to do? Spend your weekend planning 47 of said kick ass lessons because you want to make sure the kids are engaged at all times just in case admin does a surprise walk through or a drop in observation. You know what barely ever happens? Having an admin walk through during the lesson you literally put your blood, sweat and tears into. You know what will always happen? Burn out and exhaustion when you’re not spending time focusing on yourself.

You are not less of a teacher because you need to take a mental health day. You are not less of a teacher because you lost your voice and need to use an audio recording for today’s read aloud. And you’re especially not less of a teacher than Molly May down the hall who planned a virtual field trip for her students instead of the movie day you planned. We’re allowed to have off days. I know, what a concept right? But it’s true, you do not have to be on at all times. The more human you are in front of your students the more respect and rapport you will have with them.

Teachers, especially new ones, put an unrealistic amount of pressure on themselves to show up and be the next freaking Ms. Frizzle. You know what that is going to get you? Burn out. I’m not saying be lazy and plan a movie day every Friday, and do textbook work every other day of the week (ew, don’t get me started on textbooks). But I am saying that there is a fine line between a teacher that is doing way too much and an engaging one and it’s very easy to go way too hard and ruin your love for the career very quickly.

When I was teaching my novice seminar, I had a new teacher talk to the group about how his partner would tell him something like, “you come home from work still stressed about the day and you spend the entire evening talking about the students and what happened.” I can’t say for sure whether this was causing a strain in their relationship, but I knew for a fact it was causing a strain on this teacher’s love for his career. I gave some pretty profound advice to him that day, unfortunately, I can’t take credit for this advice because it was actually told to me by another veteran teacher.Either way, I said, give yourself 30 minutes. 30 minutes to vent to your partner about all of the shit that happened that day and then enjoy your evening. Don’t let work live in your headspace 24/7. All that will do for anyone is ruin the love they have for it.

I had a miscarriage last April. This seems like a wild venture into left field (and maybe an overshare) but I have a point. This miscarriage was the defining moment of my career. It was when I realized that I needed to find a way to continue to teach in the least stressful environment I could find. I wanted another baby, and I was not going to be healthy enough mentally in the place I was at in my career. I took a week off after I miscarried. A week. During prime testing season and when behaviors ramp up because the weather it getting nicer and for some reason that makes kids feral (don’t ask me why it’s just science). Never in the seven years I had been teaching did I imagine I could ever swing an entire week off. But I spent that week focusing on my time with my husband and daughter and not once did I think about my students. Not once did I worry about how time was ticking down on the school year and I really wanted to finish the unit my students were on. It was the most relaxing and enjoyable time of my life. Well, maybe since college at least. I guess what I’m saying here is if you take the time off, really take it off. Don’t spend the whole day dwelling on the fact that you should be at work or wondering what insane behaviors your students might be showing to the sub. Enjoy your time off. Soak it in.

The last real point I want to make about this is that you will feel it when you start to get burnt out. You will have less patience for your students, your family, your friends. You’ll constantly be stressed about your lack of time or how much you have to do. I’m telling you, when you start to notice these things, stop, and prioritize what’s actually important. It’s okay if you don’t have copies for next Friday, if you need to take a break and worry about those copies on Tuesday do it. You will survive and your students’ will be none the wiser. Give yourself a gut check every once in awhile and decide if you’re unnecessarily stressed out about things you can control! Make a to do list in order of importance if that helps you organize your mind. But please, for the love of all that is good in this world, don’t get burnt out.

January 23, 2025

burnout, education, learning, school, teacher, teachers, teaching
Bad Habit #2 Engagement is More Important than Curriculum

Alright, I’m going to get on my soapbox a little bit here because two things I will absolutely geek out over? Engagement and anything related to an english curriculum. Engagement is absolutely pivotal in educating today’s youth. Especially in an era where these children have access to just about anything at their fingertips. I will argue this habit until the cows come home. I wrote my Master’s thesis on how engagement is directly correlated with preventing negative behaviors in the classroom. So I’ve put in the time and energy to prove how important this is. There are a few key books I cited for my thesis and that I use in my novice seminars as well that I will bring up in other posts as we dig deeper into engagement. One of the books I constantly revery back to is William N. Bender’s “20 Strategies for Increasing Student Engagement” it’s the best, and I’m telling you right now to go out and get it if you’re trying to spice up your lessons. So for the rest of this post I’m just going to give you all the reasons why engaging your students should be the most important thing to you and hopefully I’ll have convinced you by the end.

Reason 1: They will grasp the information faster. Think about a time you were doing something you were really interested in. The time flew and you were hyper-focused right? Now think of a time you were learning about something you were completely uninterested in, the time dragged on right? Or maybe you found yourself doodling on your paper instead of actually listening to the teacher. Well, despite what we think, no matter how much we love our subject matter, students aren’t inherently going to be in love with it as well. If they’re engaged in whatever the lesson is the first thing that you will notice is that they will be actively listening to you. Have you ever had one of those days where you’re pretty sure you reiterated the directions 5,000 times? Same. If your students are engaged, there will be no repeating! A modern day miracle if you ask me. Another thing you will notice is when students are engaged they’re more likely to understand the concept you are teaching (the first time you teach it) because they are actively participating. They’ll grasp concepts faster because they are excited about what they are doing. That’s a win!

Reason 2: You will have less distracting behaviors. Trust me on this, I’ve done the research and tested the hypothesis. Literally. I wrote my entire master’s thesis on this and based it around a relatively boring topic that I was teaching my students at the time. Taking a topic that may be a potential snooze fest and putting in the time to make it fun, interactive, or exciting for students is going to be such a game changer when it comes to your classroom management.When you have an engaging lesson, a truly engaging lesson, you will have virtually no behaviors to deal with in your classroom. This is not forcing all 35 students to take turns reading paragraphs in To Kill a Mockingbird. You have to open the class period with some kind of fun hook to engage students so they’re absolutely fired up and can’t wait to read about Boo Radley. Then have them do the meat of the lesson that may require a little more focus, and then finish with something even more engaging than your hook. If you’re stoked throughout the lesson and your students can tell how excited and passionate you are about what you’re teaching them they are going to see that and feed off of it. So have fun! It’s not illegal.

Reason 3: They deserve it. Just because the expectation when you were in school was to sit at your desk, shut up, and take notes, does not mean that’s the most effective approach. Times have changed, and with that so have the youth in America. As a teacher your sole duty is to educate children. To pass them on to the next grade level with as much knowledge as they need to have in order to be successful in the next grade. If that’s your goal (it should be) than engaging your students is imperative. So many education courses in college show you that scene with Robin Williams, you know the one…”O’ Captain, my Captain…” Ring a bell? I know so many teacher’s that would clutch their pearls at the thought of hopping on a desk, let alone allowing students to do so. If that’s not your jam, think of a different way to be equally inspiring and exciting, maybe without violating OSHA. Student’s aren’t going to look back and remember a math formula because you said it was important, they’ll look back and remember it because you made it important. You made it fun.

I realize I gave you a bunch of reasons why engagement is important and absolutely no way of how to implement engagement strategies in your classroom but I promise that’s coming! Each week I will post a lesson plan that includes all kinds of fun engagement strategies to help push your students to be successful and enjoy whatever it is you’re teaching them. This month I will be posting lesson plans from a unit on To Kill a Mockingbird because in true, english nerd fashion, this is my all time favorite book. I mean, don’t even get me started on how ahead of her time Harper Lee was. But, unlike me, about 85% of America has trouble getting through the first 100 pages. SO each week I will post lesson plans for one cohesive unit that will help make this book the most interesting read your students will ever do. Till next time!

January 13, 2025

coach, education, educator, engagement, learning, lesson planning, students, teacher, teachers, teaching
My Experiences: A Summary

Truly I haven’t really decided if I’m going to break down some of my experiences in great detail or tell you all some of the horror stories I experienced during my career. One thing about parents is they may not hold their own kids accountable for the egregious things they do; but they’ll absolutely crucify the teacher. So in today’s post I think I’ll just do a general summary of some of the fun things I experienced during my time teaching public school. I think it’s important before I get into all the wild details that I remind you of the fact that I loved my job. I loved the students regardless of the things they did. I just needed to take the time to focus on my own family and ultimately had to make a hard decision to leave the profession. None of these experiences I’m about to write about are the reasons I quit. As a reminder, I worked in low socioeconomic areas with students that were experiencing homelessness, mental health issues, trauma, gang affiliation and some had arrest records already a mile long. Keep that in mind while you read.

Year 1: In all honesty my first year teaching feels like a fever dream. I was at a Title I middle school teaching seventh grade English Language Arts. For those of you that don’t know what Title I is, these are schools that are in low economic areas where a majority (if not all) of the students are on free and reduced lunch. They receive funding for school supplies and other aid. I was hired after the first quarter of the school year so my classes had substitute teachers for the first nine weeks… and it showed. The reason they had substitute teachers is because the teacher initially hired to teach the class was an alcoholic that couldn’t be bothered to show up to work. It took them more than 60 days to officially fire him because you can’t get fired for being a drunk. Hence, the subs. If anyone reading this is a substitute teacher, you know what sub days typically consist of. So imagine almost 60 consecutive days of no real rigidity, no routine, and if I’m being honest no real rules and expectations. That’s what I came into. I was so excited and green and smiley and those kids zeroed in on me like I was a target. Think Hillary Swank in Freedom Writers but not nearly as inspiring. It was a long year, and it was my only year at this particular school. I separated fights in my classroom, confiscated scissors from a student who was chasing another student with them while his Dad yelled, “Get him ___!”, and witnessed a student pretend to shoot my entire class (including me) with an imaginary machine gun. This same student jumped on the back of our assistant principal and attacked her and his mother still continued to blame us for his outbursts. I’m not sure where that student is these days but I really hope he turned it around for the better.

Years 2-5: These four years were spent at a different Title I middle school. I had some of my all time favorite students during this time. Especially my fifth year, I’d say 85% of those kids are going places in life and I can’t wait to see what they make of themselves. Anyways let’s get back on track, my first year here I got prank called from the Dean’s office on my desk phone, I answered and it was a student telling me how ugly I was… rude within the same class period I had a trash can (one of the large plastic gray ones) thrown into my classroom while my students were up and moving around. My second year I tried separating a fight between two giant eighth grade boys and got tossed around like a rag doll. This is also the time that COVID happened. The shut down affected all of my students’ differently and it was really sad not being able to say good-bye to a lot of my eighth graders. The entire shift to a digital platform was a complete disaster; students had to check in with their advisory teachers in order to get attendance and news flash: they didn’t check in. I spent half the day posting assignments that I knew students either wouldn’t do or would half ass and the other half of the day tracking students down so I could give them the correct attendance. My third and fourth years at this school were relatively mellow. There were still fights, including a student trying to get tough with a 22 year old female teacher, but for the most part these were probably the calmest years in my career which is to say not calm but not chaotic.

Years 6 & 7: I moved to a new school and honestly I don’t regret it because I think everything happens for a reason and I ended up leveling up my career for sure but I did immediately miss the smaller population from my previous school. These two years were by far the scariest in my career. We had gang affiliated 12 year olds that brought weapons on campus, code yellows out the wazoo and during all of this, a suicide. The first year I was there I was baffled at the audacity of some of these students. One kid threw up “4’s” in my face while his friends laughed. On another occasion two students tried to fight in my classroom. That first year was when we had two sixth graders get suspended for bring literal guns on campus. The guns were brought on campus during a weekend and the students posted pictures on their social media with them. These students weren’t even expelled, they got to come back the following year. Now, year two was when I really got a taste of just how scary it was. I was out of the classroom for the most part at this point. I was an instructional coach and interim dean so I dealt with the behaviors much more on a day to day basis. I spent time chasing eloping students around the campus, separating fights, and calling home for suspensions. It was all very negative for my psyche, especially because I hold rapport at such a high value. Having to balance rapport and discipline at this level was very difficult for me. We had a literal brawl once between two groups of girl friends, I think it ended up totaling like 12-14 girls involved in the fight, I was busy holding one of those girls back for the entire ordeal. There were at least seven staff members in the middle of that fight and several of them got hurt. I separated another girl fight that became dangerous when about a hundred other students surrounded the fight, one of these students was even caught on camera trying to push me into the fight. We had rival gangs that typically, but not always, left their beef off campus, however it still ended up impeding the day to day flow that should be occurring in school.

Alright, I think that pretty much sums up my “teacher highlights”. I could go into detail about any of those stories. I could get on my soapbox about how it is not the children’s fault; that they are just doing what they know, what they’ve learned from home. But I won’t. I don’t tell all of these stories purely for entertainment and shock value, I tell them so that you understand my experience. So that when you read my highly positive posts about how to engage students and build relationships with them you don’t assume I’m some naïve teacher that doesn’t have real experience. If I can stay positive through all of that? You can too my friends. Till next time.

January 11, 2025

behavior, coach, dean, education, educator, experience, learning, school, students, teachers, teaching
Bad Habit #1 Rapport is the Most Important Thing in the Classroom.
Starting off strong and doing a deep dive into probably my worst “bad habit” as a teacher. This is something I will never budge on, I feel so passionately about this that I would set aside time any day of the year to argue with any body about it. Trust me on this.

Listen, I will crack jokes with my students all day long. Honestly, sometimes at inappropriate times but I’m a firm believer in if I don’t laugh I’ll cry. But having a strong and trusting relationship with your students is 100% different than being besties. It’s a fine line to toe and I think sometimes it’s easy to forget that there still has to be a very clear distinction within our relationships with students. That being said, there is nothing, in my entire career, that I believe in more strongly than the relationships you build with your students being the most important impact you will have as a teacher.

I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that my students do the work I assign them because of the relationships I build with them. Honestly, it truly boils down to the fact that I’m not an asshole. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying if your students don’t do their work that automatically makes you an asshole. At the end of the day, some of these kids just refuse to do their work. That’s an accountability thing that I’ll talk about in a different post.Anyways, what I am saying is if you have a good relationship with your students you’ll be able to get to the bottom of why they’re not doing their work, and in turn, maybe find a way to convince them to do it. Or work together to come up with a plan or compromise that works for you both.

Now, this next part is going to make me sound a little full of myself, but you can honestly fact check me if you really want to. Almost every single student I have built a relationship with, give or take maybe one or two, remembers me and refers to me as one of their favorite teachers. I know this because I can’t get rid of them! A bunch of them are still coming back and telling me they wish they were still in my class, or they wish I was still their teacher. The reason I’m sharing this is because that was always my goal. I knew in college that I wanted to be a trusted adult for kids that didn’t have one.

This whole “build relationships” and “be there for your students” mentality didn’t come out of no where. It stems from my experience with my favorite teacher. I’m not going to name drop her because I don’t want to make it weird but I’m going to tell you guys all about my AP English teacher my junior year of high school. If she ever reads this, she’ll know exactly who she is. Junior year I was a disaster. My parents had gotten divorced two years prior and their relationship was contentious. I felt alone and stressed out and had a lot of health (both mental and physical) issues that I was trying to work through. While just about all of my teachers seemed not to notice, or maybe just not give a damn, she did. I had just gotten a big essay back from her and I’d received a C. But the letter grade wasn’t what stuck out to me. It was her note at the top of the paper. It had said “McKenna, please come see me so I can help you with your essay, I think you missed a lot of important classes that would have helped you do better.” Now, it might be important to talk about the fact that the topic of my essay had been a little telling about how my life was going at home, but I won’t get into all that. I just know this teacher noticed. She noticed I was struggling and she helped me be successful. She’d showed me what a caring adult looked like when I felt like I didn’t really have one at that point in my life. I think of this teacher often, and I have based my entire philosophy off of that one experience. I wanted to be what my AP English teacher was to me to every student that I came across that was struggling.

Obviously rapport is important to me, I’ll get on this soapbox all day long. But the purpose of this little post is to give you some tips on how to build rapport. So for the rest of the post I’ll drop some of the tips that I use in my classroom and stop talking about myself.

Tips to Build Rapport with Students
1. Know your audience. Whether you have 25 or 160 students, every single one of them has a different threshold for what kind of banter and relationship you can build with them. It’s important to recognize this because if you’re not paying attention to how your students respond to your jokes you may say something that actually hurts their feelings or effects them negatively. I wasn’t perfect at this, I made mistakes that I needed to apologize for and own up to. So pay attention.
2. Know your timing. Alright, this is starting to sound like advice for a stand up comedy skit. But timing really is everything, because while I will always stand by rapport being the most important thing a teacher can have with students, it cannot be the only thing they have. If you’re always chatting it up with your students there’s literally never any learning happening. While that’s a student’s dream, it’s not a very effective teaching practice.
3. Listen. Being the coolest teacher in the building is not the goal of rapport. The goal of rapport is to make your life in your classroom easier and more beneficial to students by building a trusting bond with them. The point of talking to your students isn’t so they know everything about your life, it’s so you get to know them. For example, I know Johnny loves to play Fortnite on the weekends, so when he’s struggling to come up with an argumentative essay topic, I use this little tidbit of information to help him choose a topic. Like, “Violent video games do not make kids violent.” I’ve done two things by helping Johnny with his topic, I’ve helped him make a decision so he can actually get started, and I’ve also reminded him that when he was telling me all about how his parents let him stay up late last weekend to play Fortnite I was listening.
4. Know the trends. At least a little bit. Honestly if I could take back the time of my life I wasted looking up where students got “skibity toilet” from I would. But at least I knew it wasn’t some weird code word for “let’s go smoke in the bathroom.” Which they do by the way, as early as sixth grade. It also opens up an opportunity to use the stupid term and really make my students laugh, or cringe.
5. Smile. Possibly the weirdest and worst advice I have ever gotten as a teacher was “don’t smile until Christmas Break.” WHAT??? Imagine going through your regular morning routine; saying good morning to your partner and children, getting coffee at your favorite coffee shop, getting to work and saying good morning to your co-workers. Now imagine if you did this and not a single one of these people smiled at you. Smiling is a common courtesy, it’s something most humans do naturally. You would have to actively try not to smile at your students and I’ll never understand why someone would do this. Especially when you may be the only safe space that student has in their entire daily routine.
So there you have it friends. Bad Habit #1. Maybe you read this entire thing and thought “How is this a bad habit? Building relationships with students is so important!” Or maybe you read it and increasingly believed I was the most delusional teacher on the planet. If that’s the case, this is definitely not the blog for you, because I love to live in my little delulu world where my students enjoy my class and open up to me. Either way, I hope you enjoyed it! I’ll keep posting either way.
January 10, 2025

advice, coach, education, educator, instructionalcoach, learning, middleschool, rapport, school, students, teacher, teachers, teaching
A Little About Me

My name is McKenna McDonnell and I’m a bad teacher. Not in the, “revoke her license” kind of way but in the “I care more about students’ emotional well-being than I do their test scores.” I want to check in with students and I want them to know I genuinely care about them. I don’t care how they make me look on paper with their test scores, I don’t care if they do their homework once a school year. I care about them. The little humans that they are turning into. And people hate that about me. I cannot tell you how many of my colleagues have either straight up told me or made it clear in their actions how much they disapprove of my teaching philosophy. But really that’s okay, because they’re not the ones sitting behind a desk in my classroom. If my students remember 1 thing about my english curriculum and 10 things about being a good person when they leave my classroom at the end of the school year? Well, that’s a win.

I have two degrees. I’d have more if I could afford it honestly. I’m what people would call a serial student. I have a Bachelor’s Degree in Secondary Education with a minor in English and a Master’s Degree in Curriculum and Instruction. The actual act of teaching is something I enjoy, obviously. But coming up with the curriculum and the lesson and activity ideas? That is my jam. When I went back to get my Master’s, my original plan was to become a curriculum developer. But I got the opportunity to be an Instructional Coach at the middle school I was working at and that’s when I realized what my true passion was. But we’ll get to that later.

I have spent the entirety of my teaching career at middle schools in low socioeconomic areas in my hometown. I have seen and heard things you would never believe are real. Horror stories that 12, 13, and 14 year old children should not be experiencing. I’ve lost several students to gang violence, and been in situations where I was actually afraid for my own life. But, and this is probably where you’ll call me crazy, I LOVE it. I love teaching hormonally emotional preteens how to be better humans, I love having breakthroughs and meaningful conversations with 13 year olds that have more life experience than half the adults I know.

After seven years of teaching and two degrees I wanted to try something new. An opportunity to be the Instructional Coach at the current middle school I was working at opened up and I jumped on it. I got to spend the entire year helping novice teachers get a real handle on what they were doing inside their classrooms. I got to be helpful and be a guide and a confidant to some of the most amazing educators I have had the pleasure of knowing. That’s when I discovered what my real passion was. I wanted to help teachers love the profession as much as I did. I wanted to motivate young adults to build relationships with students before they ever worried about what their SLO or test scores proved of who they are as teachers. So I did. I spent the year leading a novice seminar and standing in as an interim Dean of Students. It was the most exhausting yet rewarding year of my life.

Here’s the real kicker… at the end of this past school year? I quit. I quit teaching public school because as much as I absolutely love it, I love my family more. I love being a teacher but I love being a mother more. Focusing so much of my time and energy on other people’s kids and other people’s careers started taking away from my own kids and time with my family. I couldn’t do it anymore. So I quit public school and became a privately contracted teacher for a home school pod. It’s very different from what I’ve done for the better part of a decade, but it’s still awesome.

However, sometimes I find myself thinking of how much I miss the chaos of those public school days. How much I miss the opportunity to help novice teachers get a better handle on their careers in their first years teaching. So I’ve decided to make this blog where I will cover all things bad teacher. From my experiences while I was teaching in public school, to my experiences as an instructional coach. I’ll post lesson ideas and discuss my stance on how engagement is directly correlated with student behavior. I’ll answer questions and recommend books that helped me survive my time in the field. I have all kinds of tips and tricks on how to be the most amazing teacher you can possibly be even if you’re what some people may call a bad teacher. Come along for the ride!

January 9, 2025

aboutme, coach, educator, help, teaching

Author: McKenna McDonnell

Tips to Build Rapport with Students