About this item
Teaching is a tough job, period. With so much pressure and so many competing demands, it can be easy to fall apart, or to get lost in the daily grind. The Together Teacher: Plan Ahead, Get Organized, and Save Time! is a practical resource that shows teachers how to get it together, to be effective and have a life! Author and educator Maia Heyck-Merlin reveals the life-hacks and habits of Together Teachers, from smart time management hacks to sanity-saving tech. The end goal is always strong outcomes for their students. In this book, you'll discover the concrete steps you can take to achieve greater stability and success in your classroom and in your life. This edition adds sections on efficient lesson planning, grading, and data analysis processes, balance and self-care, juggling teaching with other responsibilities like leading a grade level, managing family communications, and new online resources.
About the Author
Educator Maia Heyck-Merlin knows first-hand the pressures that teachers and mission-driven leaders face. As a teacher, she routinely worked 80 or 90 hours a week, managing intense volumes of work and struggling to keep everything together. She tried different resources to help her "get things done" but none addressed the teaching profession specifically. And then, as a non-profit leader, she realized the need for ambitious goals, but couldn't find resources to operationalize the outcomes. As she worked with other education professionals, she noticed a lack of organizational systems were causing stress, anxiety and burnout. Heyck-Merlin set out to develop a system to create highly effective, organized teachers and leaders who could be successful - and maintain their sanity! Heyck-Merlin's passion to help teachers and mission-driven leaders is the basis for her two books, The Together Teacher and The Together Leader. Both are practical guides that give their audience resources, templates, illustrations and photos to get plan, prioritize and protect their time. A native of rural Maine, Heyck-Merlin holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in child development from Tufts University. She spent two years teaching fourth grade at Delmont Elementary in southern Louisiana and was named Delmont's Teacher of the Year. She went on to teach fifth grade and manage the first summer training institute for TNTP in Baton Rouge, La.Heyck-Merlin served as executive director of Teach for America (TFA) in southern Louisiana, where she oversaw the teaching corps development, which doubled in size under her tenure. She then went on to lead TFA's summer teacher preparation program for three years. Heyck-Merlin founded the National Institute Operations team, which managed the operations for five summer training institutes for incoming teachers. Following this, Heyck-Merlin was the chief talent officer and former chief operating officer for Achievement First, an educational nonprofit organization that operates a network of college-preparatory programs for a set of schools, grades K-12, in Connecticut and New York. She is the founder of The Together Group, a training practice that provides coaching and workshops for teachers, administrators, corporate and nonprofit staff to create customizable organizational systems and habits.Heyck-Merlin and her passion for helping teachers have also been featured in top media outlets like U.S. News and World Report, Scholastic Teacher Magazine and on numerous influentional blogs. She routinely trains teachers and leaders in organizations such as the NYC Department of Education, Madison Metropolitan School District, KIPP, Teach For America, Education Pioneers and Citizen Schools. She lives the Washington, D.C. area with her two elementary school age children. For more information, please visit www.thetogethergroup.com
