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

The End of an Era (This may be too sentimental for some people.)

Today I presented what is probably my last inservice presentation as an Instructional Coach. I am really going to miss this particular duty. I know... I'm an education nerd but I just can't help it!

I have always felt fortunate that the people that make up the staff at my school are very patient and supportive. I try to engage the staff with useful and timely information, humor, interesting activities or media but these people have also sat patiently through some less than perfect sessions, technical difficulties and an assortment of other misadventures. Sometimes the speakers aren't working well and they must lean in and listen intently to the soft sounds coming from my computer. My bright ideas don't always work out exactly the way I had planned but they display flexibility and understanding and it works out. Inservice and PD days are never long enough for what I'd like to get accomplished. What I have to present isn't always what teachers want to hear but they laugh at my jokes, ask honest questions, speak their mind without attacking and take it all seriously. (Well, as seriously as they should.)

Researching, connecting, preparing, PowerPointing, creating, introducing, instructing, discussing, questioning, directing, facilitating, wrapping it up - I love it all.

It's a really good thing that I don't have to give up any of those favorite things.

Next year... I will be in a different setting. My students will be younger. The topics will be from a different point of view.

Next year... I will be able to research the best teaching strategies and interesting content to use with my own students, make connections from learning to my students' lives, prepare engaging lessons, choose just the right technology, create a successful learning environment, introduce my students to new concepts, teach them how to learn, lead them into discussions so they can learn from each other, invite them to question, direct their activities, facilitate opportunities for my students to feel successful, and wrap it all in a love of learning.

Next year... I will rejoin the ranks of the hardest working people I know. And... I'll continue to teach.

20th or 21st Century Educator?

I read over my list of things I didn't have last time I had my own classroom today and realized that most of them are technology based. I didn't have a lot of technology in my last classroom. Over a decade ago, I had one computer for 26 students and a teacher. Even though technology is important and necessary for teaching in today's schools, there is much more to being a 21st century teacher than bringing out a piece of technology and then trying to "work it into" my lesson.

I will soon have a chance to step into the many roles of the 21st Century educator. It won't be easy. I expect to have times when I fall back into traditional methods but I will try to stay in the correct century and engage my students in a way that will help them learn best.

Technology provides many of the tools but teachers provide the opportunities to learn and apply 21st century skills. The diagram below will be my map for the next year.

My Teaching Timeline

1978-1979 - Kindergarten at a pre-school
1979-1980 - Kindergarten as a long term sub
1980-1985 - First Grade full time
1985-1993 - Second Grade full time
1993-2000 - Second Grade job share
2000-2002 - Reading Resource Teacher and Core Knowledge Grant Manager
2002-2004 - Instructional Coach for two schools
2005-2011 - Instructional Coach based in one building
2011-            - Back to the classroom - Second Grade