Hey Teacher Tapp Community!
Week 23 and the Teacher Tappers are still growing!
Another week, another amazing round of insights from our growing Teacher Tapp community! Plus – our first Starbucks gift cards have been sent out! We still have space for more teachers – so please help Teacher Tapp grow and tell your friends about the app!
☕ Reminder: Keep tapping! If you answer 30 days before the end of April, you’ll earn a Starbucks gift card as a little thank-you from us. 🎉
This offer is limited to the first 1,000 teachers who sign up, so tell your teacher friends to be quick! Send them this blog and tell them to join the app today and help correct the narrative about education in the US.
To qualify, you must:
✔️ Be a K-12 teacher currently employed in a US school 🏫
✔️ List your school’s name in your Teacher Tapp profile ✏️
✔️ Be a legal resident of the United States 🇺🇸
🔗 Read the full terms and conditions here
Want to make the Teacher Tapp community even stronger? Invite your colleagues to join! The best link to share is onelink.to/teachertapp – it takes them straight to the app store! 📲✨
Now, what did teachers tell us this week? Let’s find out…
1. The power of ‘thank you’
Telling people you appreciate what they do is the right thing to do, period. But, it’s also worth looking at what the impact is when people hear (or don’t hear!) a ‘thank you’.
By comparing how teachers who responded to the question about when they last remember being thanked, to the question about how frequently they think about resigning, we can see a pattern.
Those who were thanked more recently are less likely to be considering resigning.
Teachers who were thanked in the last two weeks, 31% never consider resigning, compared to 13% who were thanked more than a month ago, and 17% who can’t recall being thanked at all.
Similarly, at the other end of the scale, teachers who were thanked in the last few weeks were the least likely to say they ‘constantly’ thought of resigning (9%) compared to those who cannot recall being thanked (20%).
At the moment, these numbers are only small, and that means that the margins of error put a bit of a question mark over the statistical significance of the results.
One way to make this evidence stronger is to grow Teacher Tapp! There is still time for people to earn their Starbucks gift card if they sign up to the app, so do be sure to tell your friends about the app and help us paint a more accurate picture of life in the classroom.
Teachers satisfied with the recognition they receive
Is a simple ‘thank you’ enough to make a difference? Maybe!
Another question this week was about satisfaction with the recognition received at work. Good news! 🥳 Overall, more teachers feel satisfied with their recognition than don’t (41% satisfied vs 33% dissatisfied with 13% unsure). However! When we cross these results with those who have been recently thanked, a pattern emerges…
Teachers who were thanked in the last two weeks, just 6% were ‘very dissatisfied’ with their recognition at work, compared to 46% of those who cannot recall being thanked.
Of course, it is entirely possible that alongside these ‘thank yous’ there is an abundance of other ways these teachers feel their work is recognised – but it’s worth considering the power of a simple thank you!
2. Is it okay to…
The majority of teachers believe you should forgo a glass of wine or a cold beer while grading papers!
- 28% think it’s okay to drink alcohol while grading classwork
- 24% feel drinking alcohol and grading tests is okay
- 73% believe grading classwork in a cafe is fine
- 64% would say it’s okay to grade tests in a cafe
With many NOT picking these options, it seems that the majority of teachers believe booze and grading don’t mix – but how does that compare to the pub-loving Brits? Are attitudes in England very different to the US?
It turns out that actually, far more English teachers believe that drinking and grading is okay, with around half saying they think it’s okay to grade classwork and drink (51%) and slightly fewer agreeing that drinking and grading test papers is fine (43%).
Do these differences surprise you? If you have other questions that you would like to say cultural comparisons for – drop us a message either through the app (settings > contact us) or drop us an email at usa@teachertapp.com
3. Does the WAY we ask a question make a difference?
Sometimes on Teacher Tapp different teachers will see different questions.
That might be because elementary teachers are asked something different to middle school teachers and different again to high school teachers – and as the Teacher Tapp community grows questions can be targeted to teachers who specialise in certain subjects, or even teachers working in specific states.
Another neat trick is to split Teacher Tappers into two groups, and half see one question, and the other half see the same question with a small tweak. This is what happened this week with the question about critical thinking skills being taught independently of subject knowledge.
Half saw ‘I don’t believe it is possible to teach students the skill of critical thinking independently of subject knowledge’ while the other half saw: ‘I believe it’s possible to teach students the skill of critical thinking independently of subject knowledge’.
What difference did it make? Quite a bit! When posed in the negative, 29% agreed, 18% neither agreed nor disagreed, and 52% disagreed with the statement.
However, when posed in the positive, 68% agreed, 12% neither agreed nor disagreed, and just 19% disagreed with the statement.
What does this tell us about how people respond to questions? Firstly, while the panel is still growing all conclusions must be drawn with caution – BUT – in time we will be able to experiment with different phrasings of questions, and draw out interesting findings about life in the classroom using these tools.
+ More Starbucks!
This week the first Starbucks gift cards were flying out to your inboxes!
Over 300 Teacher Tappers received their Starbucks gift cards!
Starbucks gift cards have been zooming out of Teacher Tapp HQ to our 30-day Tappers! BUT! It’s not too ‘latte’ (sorry not sorry) for other teachers to take part!
Tell your friends about the offer and they can join you in a celebration coffee at the end, as we still have spaces left for new teachers to join.
And that’s not all…we made an important change to how we calculate your Starbucks gift card counters…
Keeping a 30-day streak to earn your gift card without missing a day is tough. When we launched our Starbucks offer, we wanted it to be a fun challenge – but we’ve listened to your feedback and made an important change! 🙌
🔺What’s Changing?🔻
You now only need to reach 30 days total by the end of April to earn your gift card- your counter won’t reset if you miss a day.
All gift card streak counters have been updated — previous “streak breaks” no longer count against you.
Daily Reads
We know lots of teachers on Teacher Tapp LOVE the daily reads! If you have ideas of reads we could feature, get in touch by emailing usa@teachertapp.com and we will check it out!
This week our most-read blog was all about the impact word games have on your brain!
