Teacher Talk Tuesday

It's the day to give advice to new teachers over at Blog Hoppin'! Since I'm pretty much a new teacher myself, I can only offer a year's worth of advice. Hopefully, it benefits someone out there! :P

Okay, first of all, take breaks! Don't feel like you have to change the entire world within the nine months you have your precious kiddos. It's easy to think about/do school all the time, but you'll go insane. Give yourself some you time!

Secondly, work hard to build strong, positive relationships with the parents and families of your kiddos. The closer you are to them, the bigger the impact you can have on your students. Families are super important, so make sure you acknowledge that in your classroom.

Thirdly, don't set yourself up on an island. Seek out your co-workers and use them! Their experience is valuable to you. Trying to do everything by yourself will drive you crazy!

Fourthly, start organized and stay organized. The second you let piles start to grow on your desk you will find yourself drowning in stuff to do. Take time at the end of every day to put everything back where it belongs.

Finally, write everything down! Kids say the funniest, most ridiculous, craziest things, and even though you want to remember them, you won't. You have too many other things to think about to remember the funny thing Johnny said at breakfast. Write them down as soon as they happen so you have an account of them. When life starts getting you down, you can pick up your Funny Things Kids Say journal and laugh and laugh and laugh, and suddenly, life won't seem so horrible.

Like I said, I don't necessarily have all that much experience in this crazy field, but hopefully what I do have to share will help some new teacher out there!

Meet the Teacher

Okay, so I might be a day late in the post, but I didn't know about the Teacher Week going on over at Blog Hoppin' until I stumbled upon it today. I figure better late than never, so I'm going to jump right in.

A little something about me...

Well, I'm in my second year of teaching, and I teach preschool in a Christian preschool. Last year was pretty awful. I spent most of it trying to rebuild the program after the previous director left unexpectedly. Thinking back on that now, it seems like a lot of responsibility for a first year teacher, but I survived, and the program has definitely grown! I got married last November to my high school sweetheart, and we moved to a new house last month. We're finally feeling "settled in" and are talking about starting a family now!

How long have I been teaching?

Well....I guess I answered that in the first question. I'm going into my second year. I was pretty fortunate to find a job my first year out of college, even if it wasn't the job I originally envisioned myself doing. I love it though, and my passion for early childhood education has really started to grow since I tangled my life with the lives of a bunch of three and four year-olds.

You might not know...

That I grew up in the middle of four brothers. Now that I'm old enough to really begin to understand the demands of being a parent, I wonder how my mom and dad managed. I have an older brother who is very dainty (he hates to get dirty!) but very smart (he's a pharmacist). My three younger brothers were always the ones who caused the most trouble. The oldest of the younger ones is in college, and last I checked with him, he dreams of managing a store of some kind (his dream changes about as often as his clothes). The two younger ones are twins and they are juniors in high school, which is something I'm still struggling to comprehend. They seem too young to be close to graduating from high school.

What am I most looking forward to this year?

I am most looking forward to actually knowing what I am doing! I did a lot of trial and error last year, which helped me understand what to do and what not to do, but, at the same time, it wasted some precious time. I'm also looking forward to being able to devote all of my time to preschool. Last year, I was working on my early childhood endorsement while taking five classes through the local area education agency and working two jobs. I didn't have much time to really devote to preschool.

What do I need to improve?

I need to be more organized! Instead of waiting until I had a stack of anecdotal notes that touches the ceiling, I need to record them every day before I leave school. I also want to be a little better about not devoting too much time to school. I rarely saw my husband last year, and I missed him. I can change that.

What teaching supplies can I not live without?

Post-It Notes!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I love them and use them all the time. I like that I can make one note on each post-it and then throw it away when I've taken care of it. It's very therapeutic.

I also love my label maker! It has really come in handy the last few days as I try to organize my classroom.

I feel compelled to mention the obvious - books. As a teacher, I can never have too many books!

What I've Been Up To

In the midst of the late-notice new students, I've been super busy getting my classroom put together for a new year.

One week ago today, this is what the room looked like:
Pretty sad, huh?

Since then, all furniture has been brought back in, and I've added a few touches.

For example, the bulletin boards:
This one is for displaying art projects the kids make. Each kid has his/her own spot!

This will be where I post pictures of the kids. I think it'll be a good reference for name recognition too.

My Morning Meeting board! It's completely interactive this year, which I'm excited about. I got the weather chart from Confessions of a Homeschooler. I made everything else - the job chart, daily schedule, emotion of the week chart, and alphabet strip. I just feel much more organized!

I'll post more pictures soon. I'm working on organizing all the "stuff" I have in the classroom today, and hopefully I'll be able to put some more thought into how to set up an outdoor classroom.

Marathon Day

Today was crazy busy! I started rolling this morning at 8, and I got home at 8 tonight. I'm not necessarily complaining; I like that I have things to do.

I started off by heading to the nearest city big enough to have a Walmart. (It's 30 miles from here.) I managed to secure some poster board for my morning meeting board, a shoe organizer for my bucket filler door, and some tablecloths to cover my bulletin boards. Then I headed off to Target to find some buckets for the bucket filler door and some lunch. (I forgot to make my lunch before I left the house this morning.) I also hit up Staples to find some binder rings.

I managed to create my bucket filler door, my weather station, and get a good start on my bulletin boards during the day! That was in between phone calls to organize home visits, visits from various board members, a few conversations with co-workers, and preparing for a spontaneous meeting.

The meeting involved writing an Emergency Preparedness Plan, and it is a pain. So many specific details....So many things to arrange... It's tedious, but it'll be nice to have in place when it's all done. It's a little scary to think about the things that might happen that would force us to actually use the plan....Hopefully we never have to.

Right now, my classroom has been completely disassembled. We're having the floors waxed on Thursday, so I had some people come in tonight to help move everything out and into the rooms across the hall. It's sad to see the room this way. I want it to be fixed again, but it's all good! I'll have beautifully cleaned and waxed floors by Thursday afternoon! Yay!

I'll post pictures of all of my work as soon as I can re-assemble my classroom, I promise.

Creation of the Word Wall!

Today was a great day! Can I just say that? We got another new student signed up, which potentially (haven't heard back from everyone who requested registration forms) puts our total up to 16! Four more than last year! So psyched about this! There is still a lot of fear that the bottom will fall out and all the students will leave (which is probably irrational and unlikely to happen), but I'm praying that doesn't happen.

I really feel like I got a lot done - mostly arranging things, like home visits and volunteers. I'm really excited about a new addition to our routine for this year. Every Wednesday, the church has a free-will donation dinner for the community. The cook who makes all the food has offered to have special cooking sessions with the preschoolers during the day (while she's waiting for her food to cook properly)! The potential here is fantastic. We'll be out of the classroom, in a real kitchen, interacting with another adult and making some phenomenal snacks! I'm really looking forward to the whole deal!

I also worked on my classroom word wall today. Last year, I failed to maintain the word wall's potential. I had one and I would occasionally add words to it, but it wasn't something I kept up-to-date. Geeze, I didn't even have pictures with my students' name cards on the word wall. (I'm pretty embarrassed about that one.) I have learned from my mistakes, and I plan to truly utilize the word wall this year. Here's a picture of what it looks like:

and up close:

I haven't added my students' names yet, but they'll be the first words up there. I plan to take a picture of them when I do my home visits, so I can add a picture of them with their name on the word wall. (I'm also going to take a picture of them with their families to add to the dramatic play center! I got this idea from a class I'm taking, and I'm really excited about it.)

Wooo! I'm flying pretty high right now, which always scares me a little bit. I'm just really excited about this year.

Too Much Stuff...No Place to Put It

Geeze...I feel like I've been completely neglecting this blog. I've been working on getting a classroom blog ready for the parents and families of my preschoolers, and hopping over to this blog has slipped my mind.

The floors of my classroom are going to be waxed next week, which means I have to move everything out of the room and into the Sunday school rooms across the hall so this can happen. Ugh. I'm so not looking forward to it. Having just moved into a new house, I really want to be done with moving for a while....Oh well, we'll make it through.

I've been feeling pretty frustrated in my classroom recently. I know that I've already been able to spend more time in my classroom than most teachers get to spend in theirs over the summer, but I still don't feel like it's anywhere near ready for another year. I'd give anything for another room in which to store the toys and things I'm not using. There are too many cluttered shelves out in the open - they're ugly and disorganized and I'm cheap and really don't want to go out and buy a bunch of pretty totes to make them look pretty and organized. What to do? What to do?

What a disappointing entry. :( I'll try to do better tomorrow.

Vacation Recap!

We survived our vacation. We went back to our hometown for the weekend about an hour after we got home from vacation, so it felt like our vacation was five days instead of three. The five days were a bit of a whirlwind. We:

• hit up the amusement park/water park - I almost fainted (Seriously - I couldn't see anything because my vision clouded over. I was nauseous and sweating profusely.) from the heat while waiting in line for the amusement park rides, so we decided to spend most of the time in the water park. I'm incredibly glad we did, it was a blast! I love me a good water park!
• visited college friends - We finally got to meet our friend's son. We've known her for a year and a half and have heard plenty about him, but we didn't meet him until Thursday night. He's a cutie.
• shopped
• ate at our favorite restaurants
• walked across campus in the pouring rain under one umbrella
• went to a high school friend's wedding - The first wedding I've attended since Kyle and I got married. I never thought about how different a wedding would be when I'm experiencing it as a married person, but it is different. It's easier to see the small things don't matter in the grand scheme of things.
  
• went to one of Kyle's co-worker's son's birthday party - He turned two and loved every second of the attention. He was so excited by every present and even more excited about his cake.
  
• visited both of our families

So, now it's back to work. I'm, in general, feeling much better. Having a week to just be myself helped - I found my grounding again.

Today, while I was at the classroom, I found out about three more potential students for this year! I'm so excited! That puts us at 15 students, which is 3 more than last year, which is just awesome! It's easy to feel like there's no hope for us, but there are signs every once in a while that prove that feeling unnecessary.

I managed to create picture labels for toys and games and art today, so that just leaves me with discovery and dramatic play to take care of. Our open house is August 31, and our first day is September 6. I can get that all done before open house, I think!

Headin' For Vacation!

My husband and I are headed on a mini-vacation until Friday, and I am super excited! We're not going too far, only 120 miles from home, but it's a break none-the-less. We're headed back to the city where Kyle went to college. I fell in love with that town during my countless visits there during the four years we were in college. It's no:

(Maui!)

But it'll be fun. We're going to hit up a local amusement/water park, visit some friends in the area, walk around campus for old time's sake, and eat at our favorite restaurants. More importantly, we're going to sleep in and not feel bad about it and spend some quality time with the Food Network! I'm hoping we can stop at an outlet mall in the area too.

While I love my job, recently I have been feeling like I can't have a personal life because it interferes with my work life. I need to change that; I need to give myself some time to just be me - not be a preschool director/teacher. I'm looking forward to it.