It Takes Class and Sass

Many thanks to Ms. Orozco for her willingness to be a guest blogger on our blog. We truly appreciate it and can't wait to try out our own class blogs! ~Maggie and Laura Class blogs can be of great use in engaging students, and fueling their success in and out of the classroom.  I personally first started using a class blog in 2014 with my Geography students.  I had already tried several blogging platforms for personal use, such as Tumblr, Blogger, and LiveJournal, but while initially impressed with their features and overall look, had since become disenchanted, when I stumbled upon WordPress.  WordPress did have a learning curve, and I continue to learn new ways of interacting with it, and leveraging its tools, but it is well worth the time and effort because of all the customization you can do with it, and all the features available. I created a class blog with the following features that I used and absolutely recommend to anyone just starting out with a blog: ...

Click the link below to grab yourself a copy of our fun kindness sign. It's perfect for your classroom, office, or even playroom at home. (Different color options available in download.) https://drive.google.com/open?id=0B8La3TeQ3JwqcFlUZ3Myd3JxUjg

Teacher lunch ideas- quick, cheap, healthy We can't possibly be the only teachers in America who laugh when people mention eating lunch during the week. Maybe it's more envy than laughter. Who knows. What I do know is that it's a joke among teachers that we can eat full meals while walking around the cafeteria opening Ketchup packets, telling kids to use their manners, and we don't even get sick when we see milk come out of someone's nose. Now, that's talent! We make wishes about eating with other adults or having a moment of peace during the day, but the honest truth there isn't anywhere we'd rather be. Lunch is a time to get to know our kids. We get to have conversations with them, find out about the latest craze to hit elementary school, and die laughing at some of their antics. But, where does this leave teachers at the end of the day? STARVING! Running to the vending machine and scarfing down anything that comes out of that machine like a Hoov...

Ask any teacher you ever meet- seriously- ANY. They've got a favorite school supply. One that makes their heart skip a beat and causes random outbursts of happy dances in the Target isle when they see that their prized possession is on SALE! I know, you think I'm exaggerating. I'm totally not. You can ask my daughter. She's witnessed it... and even joined in on the dance. (I'm waiting for the day she tells me I'm embarrassing her... probably soon since I already get, "no no Mommy" multiple times a day. LOL) For me, my obsession is PaperMate Flair Tip Pens. Yall. There is absolutely no way on God's green earth that I could make it through a school day without one of these bad boys.  What about you? What is the school supply that you can't live without? 

Our guest blogger tonight is Lisa Langley. Lisa is an amazing person. She is kind, caring, hilarious, and so eager to learn. I’ve had the pleasure of working with Lisa for a few years. She has been a substitute teacher and vital member of my school community. Sadly for us, she is moving on to better things. Tonight, Lisa brings you her thoughts on something we all dread … failure. Failure Failing is never easy. Sometimes we want something to work so badly that we get tunnel vision. We just keep moving in the same direction, expecting different results, but we are not doing anything differently. My most recent experience of this was nursing school. To make this short, my family had experienced a life altering medical emergency and I found myself not just a stay at home mom to a 3 year old, a 7 year old, and 9 year old, but also caretaker to my husband. And, I had to make some hard decisions on what my family’s future was going to look like. After the initial shock, I dec...