"I just love having summers off." Said No Teacher Ever
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.
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!
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?
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.
I do think the students need exposure to coding, but you can do some great experiments in science!