Thankfully, the majority of my friends and family know better than to ask what I do all summer, but it does seem to be a long perpetuated myth that teachers just bask in the sun and read books all summer long. I distinctly remember a professor in college toting this as a reason to become a teacher. Ha! What a load of bologna. The image above is the current running list of things I need to accomplish within the next month. Sadly, I know that there are several things I am forgetting, so I have been reaching out to fellow teachers and asking them what other tasks I have yet to consider that need to be completed before the first days of training begin in August.
The tabs on my computer are growing with half-written assignments, powerpoints to complete, and education blogs for how to prepare for my first year as a teacher (again). Luckily, I have done this once already so, I am a little more prepared for the crazy that is about to ensue. Hopefully my husband is as well. @quantumanomaly, remember I love you and it gets less crazy as time goes on. One of my teacher friends suggested I start hunting down back to school deals for supplies, decorations, etc, but I am a minimalist at heart and would rather decorate with student work and reuse items collected from other teachers. Luckily, my cooperating teacher from student teaching just accepted a new position and will be cleaning out her classroom this week, so hopefully I will inherit some nifty hand-me-downs.
Anyway, I don't really know what this post was supposed to be about, but my brain has been on overdrive ever since we got settled and I realized I haven't blogged in a while and I miss you all! Hopefully I can get a little more regular in interacting with you all whenever I am looking for a brain break from school stuff. If any of my teacher pals see this and have any suggestions for what I should do to get ready for the first couple of weeks I am all ears. Also, before you suggest it: yes I have purchased and am re-reading Harry Wong's The First Days of School. Why I sold it after class I dunno, I can only guess I was a poor college student and didn't recognize how important the book would be to my first years of teaching. Every teacher friend has recommended it immediately when I asked them what I should be preparing for my classroom in the Fall.
Stay awesome and hope to hear from you all soon,
Nice to meet you! I'm a teacher as well. I have not started getting ready for this school year yet, but I plan to get started tomorrow. I am teaching 2 new language arts classes to high school students. My plan is to create lessons that can be posted on Teachers Pay Teachers so that I can make a few extra bucks with my lessons. I do everything in Google Classroom which has made my life so much easier!
I teach high school and you can throw Harry Wong out the window when it comes to high schoolers.
I started following you! I plan to write some posts about teaching soon. Feel free to check out my page @legosnjoysticks.
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Thanks! I am curious to see how helpful First Days is with 8th graders, myself. It's been recommended enough that I figure it is a good place to start. I have quite a bit saved on google, but my new district is tech deficient in comparison to my last, but hopefully printing hard copies isn't too challenging. I expect TpT will be getting a lot of my business in the upcoming year. At least until I can iron out the tried and true activities and lessons over the tried and tossed.
Good luck! I look forward to seeing what you share as well!
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I thing it is more difficult when the district is tech deficient. I would be doing a lot of stuff with stations, so that the students have access to as much tech as possible. I would love to have my students do something with Steemit, but I have a feeling it will be blocked, and they don't all have phones to create accounts.
What are you teaching?
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Science! Thankfully it is not too terribly tech reliant since there is so much hands on and stations are easily adaptable. But I would like to incorporate some coding and interactive activities like virtual fieldtrips and review games.
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I do think the students need exposure to coding, but you can do some great experiments in science!
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