My Unorganized Mess

This is where the real test of blogging comes in. Can I blog while I am working at the same time?

It appears that during inservice, I cannot.

But this is what I am working with everyday after 8 hours of sitting.

The room is coming together slowly. But it is coming together. I have 5 days until Meet the Teacher Night. It either gets done, or everything gets shoved into a closet.

It doesn't help that every night I browse Pinterest and come up with new things to add to my to do list. Plus, my mom and sisters are coming to help me next week and I need to have something for them to do!

I need help!

I am asking for you help!

Because I only have two years of teaching under belt, both years at the same campus and under the same principal, I don't have much to compare anything to.

I would like to know how you 4th or 5th grade teachers handle reporting conduct to the parents. Specifically, do you send home a weekly conduct chart or a daily conduct chart. Or do you do something completely different. If you work at a school with very low parental involvement, I would love to hear from you!

If you send a daily conduct chart home, how does that work?  What are the daily steps involved. I am trying to collect ideas and I want to hear some ideas on what might potentially work and want might not work.

Summer is Over and Posters

I have had a professional/staff development everyday this week. Three were voluntary, and then Thursday and Friday were the first days back for my campus. And we still have two weeks before school starts. This is a lot of inservice.

I was excited to see all our teachers and meet the new teachers on our campus. I love being around groups of teachers. We are just so funny.

We wrote songs, we team built, we dug in some data and mostly enjoyed each other's company. I am hopeful/excited for the new year. I think it is going to be awesome.

I found this blog Venspired Learning. She has so much great stuff on her website but what I love most are the free posters she has created.

This is on of my mottos for the year in my classroom.

It is hard to get students to understand that anything worth having only comes through hard work. They want immediate responses, instant results, and sometimes give up too easily. It is a hard lesson to learn, but when they do work hard, I love seeing them realize how good it feels. It is one of my favorite parts of teaching.

The Nightmares Begin...

Ever since I was in school, I have always had back-to-school nightmares. I would show up to school without any supplies, forgetting my name, with no friends... anything horrible.

This "tradition" has not stopped now that I am a teacher. And I had my first nightmare this week.

I show up to school the first day with all my desks still in a corner, no copies made and my principal informing me that I will now be self-contained.

I have also had the dream where all of my more spirited students are back for their second time in my classroom.

Or the one where I have horrible classroom management, my classroom is at the temple ruins from Lost, and all the administration is in my "classroom" to observe.

To prevent any of these from actually happening (especially the no copies on the first day of school) I have started actually looking at what I want to do the First Day of School. It is such an important day and so much pressure is put on it, that I tend procrastinate my planning for it. I can have the first month of school planned out, but not that first day.

I work better under pressure anyways.

I'm not the only one who has nightmares, right? I think I have always just been so excited for the first day of school, my brain channels that excitement into crazy stories.

Bulletin Boards

 I think I am getting better at this bulletin board stuff.  I spent a part of my Saturday making these because I was so excited about them. I only live 5 minutes from my school, so it is easy for me to run up and do something.

This is the board outside of my classroom. I cut out all those letters by hand. It says "Let's Shine This Year." (Because I was working on a Saturday, the hallway lights were not on. So the only light is from the sun.) I went a baby shower recently and my friend mentioned she felt bad wasting all the tissue paper from the bags. Well, I told her I would take it all and use it for my classroom somehow. Which is what I did for the sun here. 

I saw this tutorial on Pinterest for a Ruffle Border and loved it. At first, I was really unsure of how it was going to look, but as a finished product I love it.

The only supplies you need are butcher paper, scissors and staples. And the more staple you use, I think the better. Now I need to find something extra special to put inside this border.


I am putting off the really hard stuff on my to-do list, the stuff that requires a lot of thinking. My brain is not just ready for summer to be over quite yet.

My New Classroom

This is my new classroom. I volunteered to move rooms so that everyone could be near their partner teachers in our 5th grade hallway.

But also because I wanted that awesome new smartboard and a window not blocked by a bush. (Amazing what I get excited about)

So I have three weeks to make this classroom my own. We are playing musical classrooms at our school and everyone has to wait for the last person to move out of the room. So I really can't start moving in until next week.

Which is buying me time because I have no idea what to do. This is a chance to start fresh!

I am going to buy new sheets, which I use to cover the bulletin boards. It is cheaper than fabric and comes in so many colors. But that's all I've got. I am going to spend some time today doing something, but I don't know yet.

Does anyone see this room and think, "If I had that room I would..." Tell me what you would do, please? I am pitiful when it comes to this stuff.

Top of My List

School starts this month! I have realized the my to-do list will probably not get finished by the time school starts, so I am prioritizing this morning.

First up, new clothes.

My husband and I have decided to use our extra money from summer school to buy new clothes. So I have been scouring Pinterest for my new wardrobe. I am not a shopper. I go straight to the clearance rack and pick something that mostly fits.

But I have recently decided that I have a real career now and I should get to buy clothes that are awesome.

Based on what I have been pinning, I love cardigans, belts and ruffles.

I know that Ann Taylor and J.Crew give teacher discounts, although I haven't tried them out yet. Does anyone know of other stores with great deals?