Big News!

It has been quite the summer of changes, as I mentioned before, but all the stress, hard work and persistence paid off, because I have an amazing new teaching job! I will be at an incredible independent school in Manhattan, and I cannot WAIT to get started. I will be in a few different grades covering a few maternity leaves. I start in third grade, then to first, then we will see where next! The school focuses heavily on social emotional development, hands on learning, integrated units, and differentiation. So basically, everything I am passionate about. I am not sure how often I will be able to update this blog, as I will be blogging on the school websites, but if I ever can, I will update here too. I am so thankful for this opportunity, and I know it will be a great fit.

End of Student Teaching and the Mystery Project

Andrew and me on our honeymoon to Kaua`i

It's been a month since the end of my student teaching, and what a month it has been!! Aside from the obvious chaos that surrounds the week before spring break and finishing up all of my student teaching projects, there was applying for and receiving my credential in Pennsylvania, applying to transfer that credential to both New York and Connecticut (and WHAT a headache that has been), finally taking our honeymoon, as well as our cross country move to New York, and now applying to jobs all over the New York City- Westchester -Connecticut area- Whew! I have barely had time to come up for air, let alone blog. So the next few posts will be playing catch up with all the great projects that I missed telling you about.

Tech for Kinders

Emi's research and use of Common Curriculum looks very organized (love that!) and comprehensive. It looks like  Common Curriculum can be used to do long-range planning and to adjust those plans as needed while incorporating Common Core Standards. It looks like there is a lot that it can do to help teachers stay on top of their planning and teaching. I will need to take a closer and longer look to fully understand all of it.

 

Lesson Planning with Common Curriculum

As I mentioned before, my school recently got an amazing donation of new technology, and the teachers finally got their MacBook Airs to start using. I have been helping some of the teachers with tech ideas, and last week one teacher asked me if I knew of any great online lesson planning tools or apps. This is something I have been searching for, because I do everything on computer, and having to use a traditional lesson planning book has really been a hassle for me. I told her I was looking too, and I would check into it that night.

Guess My Number Line!

We are busy bees in Math right now, and have been doing a ton of fun activities. Math was the second subject I took over in student teaching, and I am feeling very comfortable with it now, so I am able to move beyond just the typical basic lessons and have been incorporating more of the fun activities I know kids love and get them engaged in learning. This lesson was one I used for a video taped lesson for my teaching program, and I ran into so many technical difficulties- from SD cards filling up and not noticing it for ten minutes to recording over the introduction- yikes! The kidlets were troopers and were so patient with me as I had to re-record certain parts and reset the technology. We pretended we were on a movie set and had to do a second take (lucky we live in LA, huh?).

Magic Circle

"I've learned that people will forget what you said, people will forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them feel"
             -Maya Angelou

I've seen various versions of this saying through the years and I am not sure who said it first but I truly believe it- with adults as well as with children.

The Social-Emotional Side

This post has been knocking around in my head for a while now, so when our Valentines's Day Activity went so well on Friday, I knew that this was the perfect time to write about it all. I apologize in advance for the longest ever post.

I am a big believer in Social-Emotional Learning (SEL). By big I mean huge. Gigantic. Really, I cannot overstate how much I love it. There is so much negativity and hatred in the world. Every day on the news there is another story of violence and intolerance. In our schools, I see hurt feelings, bullying, and just general meanness, not to mention the devastating school shootings that occur all too often (and even once is too often). There are ways to combat all of these terrible things; by teaching students to be kind, tolerant, accepting of others who are different than they are. Teaching them to show kindness and love to others. Some students may not be getting these lessons on empathy and love at home, so we have to try even harder to teach it at school.