School and the City

Hi, friends! It's been a while! I am 4 weeks in at my new school, and things are going... well, it's going! As I try to stay afloat and survive the back-to-school chaos in addition to getting acclimated at my new home away from home, I've been trying to stay positive.  A happy teacher is a good teacher.  Well, that may not be exactly true, but you get the idea.  I've been reflecting on a book that I read over the summer, Move Your Bus , written by the truly incredible Ron Clark. I was able to download the book for free with my free Audible trial. I listened to it while I was packing for my move. A lot of the stories in the book were the same stories that Ron Clark told when I went to visit RCA in May , but I still loved the book, especially because it was in his own voice! I plan to add a hardback to my bookshelf soon.  My Biggest Move Your Bus Takeaways: Don't get caught up in negativity. I know we hear this all the time, but it...

Day two is in the books for me. As always, the back to school season has been crazy and I've been running around like a chicken with its head cut off. Hmm. I didn't realize how strange that expression was until I typed it out. Anyways, we had "Sneak Peek" on Thursday of last week. It went well! Almost all of my families showed up. I love meeting the kids ahead of time and putting a face to parents' names. If a family walked in with hands full of supplies, I went ahead and directed them to the buckets in the back of the room. If not, I directed them to the screen. Visual instructions are important for students AND parents! My table this year wasn't as pretty as last year. I didn't have the time to create or print or laminate signs, so whiteboards worked just fine.  Parents signed in (and provided email addresses) and completed the transportation form while my new students found the scavenger hunt paper and began.  I love to do s...

Don't get mad at me - I am NOT wishing my summer away! However, back-to-school does mean teaching my favorite reading unit! (Also, honestly, I have been meaning to blog about this since, oh I don't know, LAST SEPTEMBER.) I'm unsure about what's going to happen at my new school, but with my old team, we were kind of left in charge of our own literacy curriculum so we used the Readers Workshop model by Lucy Calkins. The first unit for second graders is really quick, and then comes my absolute favorite unit, Tackling Trouble! The unit ties in perfectly with the beginning of football season, and you know how I feel about football season... The point of this unit is to teach kids strategies to help them decode tricky words. This is the next level, after students have developed decoding skills and a decent knowledge of phonics. Strategies build students' confidence so that they can approach books like this: Anywaaaaaays, each Lucy minilesson has a ...

I have a case of the Sunday night blues tonight, and it's not for the reason you'd think. The school year is over here, and tomorrow I have to drive to my school for the last time to get my room checked and to turn in my keys. Y'all. I'm SAD. I mean, let's be real. Teaching is definitely NOT always sunshine and bunnies and rainbows. (In the world of education, those things would be the equivalent of well-behaved kids, huge academic growth in all students, supportive and happy parents, plus simply the ability to impact young little lives in a positive way every day.) But sometimes, that's exactly what it is. Isn't it crazy how we count down the days to the end of the year, and then when the last day FINALLY gets here, it seems like it's arrived much too soon? I think as teachers, we often get caught up in the little stuff: a student with a behavior problem, poorly-designed curriculum, a snarky email from a parent, or only having 20 minutes t...

It's that time of the year again: Time for end-of-year gifts.  (Because YES, I am STILL IN SCHOOL over here in central North Carolina!!!!) Thanks Tara for hosting this fun linky party! GOODBYE GIFTS FOR THE KIDS Did you know that Scholastic has "Dollar Deals" every month? I bought dollar books for my kids for Christmas, and they loved that. I decided to buy a dollar book for each student for the end of year too! In April, one of the "Dollar Deals" was Sideways Stories from Wayside School. We have read all 3 Wayside books as a class this year and the kids absolutely go crazy for them! I figured they wouldn't mind having a copy of their own to re-read. I wrote an individualized note to each student inside the front cover about how great they are, how much I will miss them, blah blah blah....... (trying not to cry)...... We also made some bookmarks that will be stuck inside the Wayside book. I made a blank bookmark for each studen...

A few weeks ago, I had the pleasure of attending the Ron Clark Academy Educator Experience with my team. It certainly was an EXPERIENCE! It was an experience that I learned a ton from and will always treasure. Amy from My Bright Bunch I was the first one in the building, and it was CRAZY! I was guided through a room by a 5th grader with a line of dancing, singing kids on either side of me. It was a lot like sorority recruitment, actually! We had some kids stand around and make small talk with us (also like sorority recruitment) until everyone was inside the building. I say "small talk," but they actually had been trained to ask some pretty thought-provoking questions, such as "What is your lifelong dream?" Dang. Some of my team with the man himself! Ignore the no-coffee bags under my eyes.  Then Kim Bearden, the co-founder, asked the fifth grader I was speaking to if she wanted to jump on the trampoline. Except it turns out that Kim wasn't as...

I finally did it... "It" being the #IWishMyTeacherKnew writing project. I was not expecting my kids to take it as seriously as they did.  I cried. A lot. Big, fat, happy and sad and in-between tears. Here are some of my favorites: Cue tears.  I'd been calling him "Grandpa," too, which was a nickname he gave himself. More tears.  Totally unfair. #kidstruggles AWWWWWW. LOL - Sorry honey. I'm not planning on having any 9-year-old bridesmaids.  This last one made me ugly cry, Kim Kardashian style. It's from my major behavior problem child. He ruins my mood daily and is usually the reason I pour myself a little extra wine at night. He's the one the other teachers ask about at lunch everyday; "How's ___ doing today?" He's the one that causes me to breathe a sigh of relief when he is absent. He is the one that I ride all day long, having to give him a verbal or nonverbal cue every m...