I Got Caught!

My principal caught me on Friday. She happened to see me as she walked down the hall.While the current occupants of my future room were out, I was measuring and creating my floor plan.  She laughed when she saw me stepping off the distance between walls and marking my grid but she knows I can't keep myself from future planning. Later I borrowed a tape measure from a custodian and discovered I'd done a really good job of estimating! I was off by less than a foot! The inset is the beginning of my floor plan. Do you think it will be difficult for me to fill all those cabinets?

Now I know!

The last few weeks have been exhausting! After deciding to go back to the classroom, I waited for several weeks for the news as to where and what grade. It was hard to wait but I'm excited for the news I received this morning. Next year, I will be teaching 2nd grade at the same school I am currently working at as an Instructional Coach! I will be joining a great team that has already welcomed me aboard and I'm stepping into the place of a retiring teacher who has taught for 37 years. Now my teacher brain that seeks to make plans can work without hesitation!

My next steps:

• Rewrite my belief statements
• Begin planning zones and room arrangement
• Spend time in the curriculum and pacing guides to become more familiar with them

In the next few weeks I will be reflecting on the last 10 years and planning for the next. You can read my thoughts right here and even respond to them. I'll take any input I can get!

Letting Go

The Coaches' Office/PD room - My home away from home for the last 4 years.

     Now it feels real. I am leaving this office at the end of the month and will come back to a classroom next fall. Most of these boxes are filled with books; children's and teacher's books. I'm really not used to the office looking this way. My book characters have been taken off of the cabinet tops and stored in a plastic bag. Will I have a space for them next year? I hope so. The table is big enough for 8-10 teachers to sit around. I've used that conference table for 10 years; a witness to countless hours of conversation with collegues, passionate debates, laughter and yes, some tears. I'll be trading it and the adult-size chairs for a table with seating for smaller people next year.
    Seeing the room this way helps losen my grip on the past. If I don't let go, I can't grasp on to next year.

I think I found my twin! I didn't write this but I could have!

Putting the Nerdy Teacher Back in the Classroom - Let Project Based Learning Begin

Sep20

The most wonderful thing happened to me this year – I lost my job.  After several years in full time tech integration, budget cuts landed me back into the classroom.  Isn’t that a strange twist of fate?  Yes, I was a bit bent out of shape at first, but quickly (and I mean in just a few days) realized how amazing it would be to take all the training I’ve been doing with teachers and directly give it to the students we’re trying to impact.  What would it be like to actually run my own 21^st century classroom?  What tools would I need?  What projects would I want to run?...

more at:

http://mrssmoke.onsugar.com/Putting-Nerdy-Teacher-Back-Classroom---Let-Project-Based-Learning-Begin-5147479