My name is Chad Manis, a language arts and journalism teacher with 33 years of classroom experience.

Let me begin by saying thank you.

Thank you for becoming a teacher, and thank you for taking the time to go online in search of resources that you can use in your classroom. That tells me that you are a dedicated teacher.

That also tells me that you care about your kids and that you are devoted to helping them prepare for their and our tomorrows.

Not everyone can be a teacher. It takes a special sort of person with a lot of patience, resilience, adaptability, fortitude, backbone, and an endless ability to multitask.

But, you ARE that kind of person.

I don't have to tell you that the challenges are enormous. If you're like the majority of us these days, you're probably feeling more than a little overwhelmed.

I know that feeling all too well.

Teachers are being asked to do more and more, with less and less.

Too often, the focus seems to be on preparing students for standardized testing, posting online grades and lesson plans, and displaying the "required" items on bulletin boards.

Shouldn't we be focusing on the kids?

It's really no wonder that we feel overwhelmed.

Mission Statement

The entire purpose for Daily Teaching Tools is to provide you with free resources, materials, and strategies to enhance your effectiveness with kids.

Many of the tools that you will find here are mine, but just as many I "stole" from the resourceful teachers I've had the pleasure of working with throughout the years.

Please feel free to steal, uh, I mean, borrow them from me too.

What you WON'T find here is exactly the sort of stuff that I don't like when I visit websites that focus on teachers and teaching resources.

That sort of stuff includes long lists of unexplored websites that were copied and pasted, recommendations for products or services that the authors never tried themselves, stuffy academic language, and above all else, insincerity.

You won't find any of that here.

Rationale

These economic times have been difficult for all of us. In my case, I was forced into early retirement at the age of 59 because of our district's budgetary constraints.

After all, since I was on the top rung of the salary schedule, the money they were spending on me, could be used to hire two new beginning teachers!

More bang for their buck--at my expense, and I think, at the expense of the kids.

I have nothing against beginning teachers whatsoever. After all, I was one myself, once upon a time. But, I also know that experience leads to better teaching and that kids benefit from that.

Which brings me to why I'm doing this--as corny as it might sound, I love teaching. In fact, I am actively pursuing ways to get back into teaching, a task, once again, made more challenging by the state of our economy.

In the meantime, while I'm waiting for an opportunity, why not do something that reconnects me with something I love?

In Return

I DO know that you are a teacher, but I have NO idea whether you have any experience developing websites.

I've been working on Daily Teaching Tools for 14 months now, every day of every week, 7 to 9 hours a day--sometimes more.

Am I complaining? Of course not.

This is my way of continuing to make a meaningful impact in the world of education. And, I am passionate about it.

All I ask in return is that you support my efforts by sharing an idea with your fellow teachers on the Teachers' Ideas page and/or adding a comment to one of my blog entries at The Teacher Beacon.

Take a few seconds to click on my Facebook Like button, or take a minute or two to add a brief comment about one of the Daily Teaching Tools pages that you may have found useful.

Or, how about grabbing a T-shirt or coffee cup at The TeacherMarket?

If you really want to go all out, purchase one of my software products!

Conclusion

This is only the second time in the last 14 months that I've updated this homepage. Daily Teaching Tools has grown so much that I figured it was well past time to do so.

If you have suggestions, questions, or comments related to anything regarding this site, I'd love to hear from you. Please contact me and let me know what's on your mind.

In the meantime, I will continue adding teaching tools and plan to do so throughout the coming year and beyond. If you bookmark this site and visit regularly, I think you'll be pleasantly surprised and rewarded.

The quickest and easiest way to see what's new or what's been updated is to go to the Page Updates page, which appears near the top of the navigation bar at the left. Brief announcements pertaining to Daily Teaching Tools are also displayed there.

Let me close for now with this thought.

We didn't choose the wrong profession. America just chose the wrong heroes.

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