Teaching is such a complicated, difficult profession. Don't worry about being great at it. Focus on being faithful.
Be Faithful to Teaching
Feeling Everything
Is everyone in your classroom, including you, feeling ALL of the emotions? These are 15 practices I've embedded in my classroom to help students reflect on their emotions and better manage them. I know I personally have a LOT of feelings, and if you're a teacher, you're probably a bit of a mixed bag as well. Maybe this can help you and your class(es) process all those feelings. Stay well!
What are you already doing?
This year held some regrets for me over what I wish things had been. I had to change paths and reroute so many times, but I am proud of the way I responded to change. There are a lot of great things I did this year with students. They learned. I know what I did mattered to the kids in front of me. I have already done a lot this year. I bet you have, too. Give yourself some credit.
Moving to Concurrent or Hybrid In Person Teaching
This week, I am back in the physical classroom for in person learning! I have been wrapping my brain around all of this for awhile, and today I'm sharing my lesson plans for the first week back as well as procedure posters and a few other structures. I hope it helps someone out who is jumping into concurrent or hybrid teaching.
Bullet Journal Love
I love my Bullet Journal! If you are a Pinterest browser like me, then you've probably seen many gorgeous journal pages. One quick search of #bujo will elicit a ton of images, designs, graphs and charts, calendars, and to do lists. I love my Bullet Journal because it is so many things to me. My bullet journal is my planner, my contact list, my post-its in a book form, my scrapbook, my calendar, and my diary. It can do whatever you need!
11 Ways I changed my thinking
We're in the people business. We need to examine our beliefs and constantly make room for ourselves to grow not just in learning new tech tools for distance learning. I want to interact with others in a way that creates a better world.
A Letter to my Students
I wrote a letter to my class the day that school closed for the year. It made me cry a little so I didn’t send it off. Everything was sad enough. I added a piece today because we had a great (3/4 of a) year together and this journey online is a bit unforgettable too. My class this year is fun online; I feel lucky that I get to do this with them. At the same time, my heart aches for their losses as the capstone year of elementary school. It may not compare to the loss of graduation for a senior, but their young hearts are broken nonetheless. Many have waited for these special events since Kindergarten. Their life will move on for sure, but there’s so much loss tied up in this pandemic. This is just a little slice.
This is the place
This week as I kept typing the links to "classrooms" I have been missing my real classroom. This whole video chat stuff is good. It's better than email. It's better than digital worksheets, but it's not a classroom. A classroom is another home. I miss the space we can say is ours.
5 Reasons I use Digital Readers’ Notebooks
I love having kids reflect in journals on paper and take notes in notebooks; however, I've enjoyed using Google Slides as digital reader's notebooks. Read here to get a set of slides you can adapt and use for free.
Charmed by Challenge 