Some research on new teachers suggests that new teachers feel "lost at sea" when confronting the complexities of planning curriculum (Kaufman et al., 2002). In the tradition of self-study and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), this article describes a pedagogical approach that has met with some success in the author's own…

The quality of relationships between teachers and students has been associated with academic achievement and performance outcomes for students at all levels of their education. Extensive literature examining characteristics of positive relationships between teachers and their elementary age students exists, but is less abundant in regard to…