Recently, I felt an immense calling in my heart to officially re-establish my weblog. I have not consistently blogged for about 6-7 years, so bear with me while I am re-embarking on this journey.
I have been an upper elementary teacher since 2004, which means I am in my second half of my seventeenth year of teaching. I devoted 9 years to teaching fourth grade, and I am currently in my 8th year of teaching 5th grade gifted students.
Back in my second year of teaching, I debuted a website to the public that I never realized was going to become pretty big, and it led to a phenomenal opportunity where I learned about blogging. From around 2009 to 2014, I absolutely loved blogging about my classroom adventures and teaching philosophies. I uploaded quite a few resources and became very active in some online educational communities. Eventually, when I established the grades 5-8 Technology Club at my school, I felt called to write about "maker gadgets" as well.
Yet after a while, I stepped away from all of those things and learned a great deal about myself. It was kind of harrowing because being online was always a part of my "identity" as a teacher, but I had to step away for a while and grow even more as an educator. I had to think about the path I wanted to forge and more meaningful ways to connect with my PLN.
I have encountered a lot of experiences along the way. Most importantly, I learned about self-esteem, and self-worth. I have traveled to quite a few states, and while I visited many wondrous places around our nation, I thought about how each and every single one related to wondrous and engaging learning opportunities Additionally, I learned a lot about myself during quarantine because it was the first time I had the opportunity to slow down for quite a few years. I re-organized many parts of my life, learned to appreciate nature in a whole new way, delved into gardening for the first time, and became more experimental with cooking. Last, I have been writing a book since 2018 that I hope to publish in this next year. It is intended for the middle/high school audience, and it taps again into self-esteem as well as self-worth. I had to come to terms with my perfectionism, the sometimes outlandish expectations I hold for myself, and my mind, which seriously wants to accomplish 976,278 things in my lifetime. I have learned to take deeper breaths and extend more grace toward myself.
We are all at different stages with different aspects of our lives, and I feel I am at a confident, strong, energized, passionate place to blog again.
Here are some passions I am ecstatic to focus on as I re-establish this blog...
- Ways to inspire and enrich gifted students at any age
- Being a gifted adult and what it's like to be gifted in general, because it's truly important to take a stand for the gifted youth of our world
- Cross-curricular, creative writing lessons
- Ways to teach writing that focus on pertinent standards but does not feel like test prep
- Ways to incorporate passions and multiple intelligences in your lessons
- Affirming your character, passions, and journey-- believing in your self-worth (for kids AND adults)
- Books that have inspired me
- STEAM (Science, Tech, Engineering, Art, and Mathematics-- because that's my life, every single day)
- And, everyone's favorite-- teaching in 2021, because it's very different. I teach two periods, one of which is fully face-to-face and the other is hybrid. I have a fairly equivalent amount of students in my second class logging in digitally daily as well as sitting in my classroom. I may write about teaching science during this era, too, because it is a very different adventure.
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