Teachers Inky Linky!!

This post might push the envelope a little bit, but Laurie from Chickadee Jubilee inspired me to host my very first linky party about... teacher tattoos! <gasp!> I know it's not a professional post, but we are on summer break after all. We're allowed a few posts on other subjects, right?! I've appropriately named this linky party the Teachers Inky Linky!

One of my guilty pleasures is watching shows like Miami Ink or LA Ink. I love hearing the stories and the meanings behind their tattoos. Most are truly a work of art, others... I'm not so sure. My tattoo is very special to me, because it was a present to myself on my 30th birthday. It represents my faith and my love of music. The lyrics in the banner are from a song called Lifesong by Casting Crowns.

Ok, now that I have shown you mine, you show me yours. BUT!! I do have a few ground rules for this linky:

1. Please use good judgment when posting pictures of your tat. If it's in a place where we have no business looking at it, then please don't. If it contains profanity or other vulgarities, please do not post it. You'd think I wouldn't have to have a disclaimer like this, but one can never guess. I'm covering my bases! :: smiles ::

2. Please DO share your pic and story as to why you got it and what it symbolizes.

Allrighty - let the inky linky fun begin! Please help me out by blogging about this linky party. Here's a fun badge created by Dana at Fun in 1st Grade. Be sure to stop by her blog and show some love! :)

Thanks for a great badge, Dana!! Fun in 1st Grade

Work Smarter, Not Harder

Have you been following the yellow brick road through TBA's International Blog Hopping Day? I guess for me it's been blog hopping weekend! There are so many great blogs out there to read - you can easily spend the weekend reading and still not get through them all!

In keeping with TBA's theme, I'm dedicating today's post about teaching smart! There are so many "smart" ideas out there

 Visit Live, Love, Laugh Everyday in Kindergarten's linky!

I've made a simple phrase my mantra... "Work smarter, not harder." This is something I learned mid-way through the last school year after attending a workshop on differentiated instruction. I think we all get wrapped up in our school life that a lot of times we make things a little too hard on ourselves. With this in mind, I've listed a few tidbits of wisdom I've learned over the years.

1. Prioritize- There are so many day-to-day tasks that can easily overwhelm us if we don't take a few minutes to evaluate what's important to get done right away and what can wait. I was the #1 offender of this rule. I would try to get so much done during my plan time that I neglected to get any planning done! This hurt my students in the long run. Intentionally modeling this will help your students learn how to prioritize and more efficient with their time as well. It's a win-win!

2. Student Ownership of Space & Learning - There are a lot of times where students can help the teacher with day-to-day upkeep of the classroom and they are eager to help, so why not let them?! The concept of classroom responsibilities is not foreign to teachers, but many do not do it because they don't want to give up control of the classroom space. Just like we're supposed to let students take responsibility for their learning, we can also let them take responsibility for the space. It's their classroom after all.  Use classroom jobs to help your students develop responsibility or immerse them in a real-world situation in a classroom economy. I hope to post my adaptation of another teacher's classroom economy in the not-so-distant future so you can see what it looks like in my classroom.

3. Community Building - Reduce negative behaviors and bullying by taking time each day to help your class build and maintain a learning community. There are many ways to do this, but my favorite is utilizing morning meetings. I learned this structure from a teacher friend who was trained in the Responsive Classroom. Morning meeting is a great way to learn respect for others, to work/play together, and appreciate each other as individuals -- plus, it's FUN! Yes, take time to have fun with your students! Visit Mrs. Gold's Website to learn more about launching your own morning meetings.

4. Brain Breaks - We drill a lot of content and process into our kids on a daily basis. We need to give them a short rest throughout the day. I'm not going to say much other than JUST DANCE! :) Here's a previous blog post of mine on the same subject.

By no means do I have the market cornered on smart teaching. In fact, I have so much more to learn and I cannot wait to share more of the smarts I'll be learning on this blog. I hope you come back and join me on this journey to becoming a smarter teacher!

Heart to Heart

You've probably seen the latest in linky parties with...




The cool thing about this linky series is that there are several different topics and opportunities to network with other bloggers. Very cool, indeed! My last post was about walking a day in my shoes, and this post is dedicated to...

What does being a teacher mean to me? At first, I really didn't want to be a teacher. I wanted to be a Spanish interpreter, and then I wanted to become a youth minister. I felt God was calling me to work with teens, so I attended a local Baptist university and started all the necessary classes. I was excited at first, then after a few outings with the teens from my church, I decided youth ministry wasn't my calling. Don't get me wrong - I had a blast hanging out with the teens from our church and we developed really strong friendships, but that's as far as it went. I wasn't prepared to help teens deal with teen issues, and I realized my calling was to work with younger children, only not in the church setting. I noticed there was a bigger mission field available to me, and that was the public school system. 
After student teaching and graduation, there was a hiring freeze in many of the school districts in my area (lovely budget issues!), so I tried several different jobs thinking I was misguided in my thinking and calling. I worked for America Online for 4 years and was going to make that my career until I was a part of a huge lay off. I worked in a travel agency's call center, I worked for a credit card company, and while the money was great, I was miserable because I hated those jobs. I made one big circle in this journey of life, and I ended up right back where I started... the public school! I may not be rich, but I've found the most rewarding job ever -- teaching!


While my faith plays a big role in my decision to become a teacher, I realize I cannot share my faith directly with my students, but my faith is shared through being a positive, male role model to those that may not have one. I lost my father when I was in fourth grade and unfortunately, didn't have a good male role model in my life. I want my students to have what I didn't have - a guy who will challenge, push them because he cares about them and their future. 
Thanks for reading and make sure you head over to TBA and Journey of a Substitute Teacher to link up!!

Check Out My Kicks!

Hmm... what do you think of me and my ruby slippers? Are they me?! <wink> I was reading blogstalking the Lifelong learning blog and came across another great blog to stalk... err... read: Ingles360. Here's another random fact about Mr. B... Yo hablo un poquito de español. Back when I was using the language on a regular basis, I could actually hold a decent conversation, but alas... over the years my conversational skills have atrophied and I can stumble my way through a conversation here or there. Anyway, I digress... Ana at Ingles360 (also with Teaching Blog Addict) has this linky party going on where you share what a "normal" day looks like. 








 For starters, I'm in desperate need of new shoes. I'm sporting flip flops right now, but now that I'm wanting to go back to the gym and school is starting back up, I need some new kicks. I was looking around online and found a pair of Nike tennis shoes from Lance Armstrong's LIVESTRONG collection.

 Nice, right?! I wish I had the $$ to buy these, but I'm sure I can find something like it at Shoe Carnival or something. Anyhoot... on to the meat & potatoes of the linky. Here's what a day looked like for me last school year:

5:30am - Alarm goes off and I hit snooze.

5:45am - Alarm goes off again, and... I hit snooze again.

6:00am - Alarm goes off and I drag my lazy rear to the kitchen, turn on the Keurig, and stumble my way back to the bedroom to get ready for the day.

6:20am - Make my coffee, gather my things, and meet up with the carpool by 6:35am.

7:00am - The carpool makes it to school and we head to our classrooms to get prepped for the day.

7:30am - Students arrive. Most of them will go eat breakfast in the cafeteria, but some will stick around the classroom to get started on morning work, or head to the library to check out books.

8:05am - Tardy bell rings and we start our day with Morning Meeting. Check out the link to Morning Meeting if you don't know what this is. It's a great way to start the day! You can also look at the Responsive Classroom website for more information.

8:30am - Spelling/Word Work - The school district I worked for had us to a spelling list out of our basal series. I taught the spelling pattern, the kids studied, and we had a test on Friday. I really didn't enjoy this part of the day, but we got it done.

8:45am - Writer's Workshop: mini-lesson, independent work, and sharing, if we had time. Also threw some grammar in here for some good measure.

9:15am - Guided Reading/Daily 5 Block - I started with a strategy mini-lesson and then went into guided reading/D5 choices (Word Work [spelling], Work on Writing, Read to Self, Meet with Teacher). This changed a lot over the course of the school year because we just started this, but I am excited to work with experienced D5 teachers next year. 

10:30am - Science - I have to admit a lot of times reading spilled into our science time. We were lucky to get 15-20 minutes of science in each day. Wednesdays were a little different because we had an extension program come in and do some science enrichment with our kids.

11:00am - Specials - Break/Plan Time for Mr. B! Each Tuesday our team meets with our principal and instructional coaches to collaboratively plan and go over assessment data.

11:55am - Rush to get the kids from specials and take them to LUNCH!

12:30pm - Math - I tried a guided math approach with my 4th graders last year, and I'm hoping I can do this next year in my new school. We did a mini-lesson on the concept, then broke off into math stations: Independent Work, Rocket Math (math facts), Computers (math games), and Work with the Teacher.

2:00pm - Recess - I had duty 3 out of 5 days, but on my off days, I tried to get as much grading, planning, and communicating done.

2:30pm - Social Studies - A quick Missouri History lesson and activity.

3:00pm - Get ready to go home! Take bus riders to their lines, make sure car riders are where they should be, and get my tutoring kids for tutoring on Tuesdays and Thursdays.

3:30pm - Pack up and head home with the carpool!

4:15pm - Honey, I'm home! Wait, she's not home yet. Let the dogs out and time for a nap!

4:30pm - Ok, I really should think about getting dinner started.

5:30pm - The wife enters... Honey, I'm home! We eat dinner and spend the rest of our night working on our Pampered Chef business, grading papers, and catching up on a few of our favorite shows.

10:00pm - Mr. B is ready for bed!

Hopefully by this time next year, my wife and I will have our own little one to add to the schedule, but this was a typical day for me as a teacher. Share your craziness with the rest of the world by linking up at Ingles360 and show some "cowabunga" (comment) love down below! :)

NBK Chapter 2 (part 2)

In my last post, I wrote about my personal learning as I was reading about strategies to help in launching the writer's notebook. There was so much "meat" in this chapter, I decided to break it up into two parts. The first section helps teachers get their notebooks going in the classroom as well as equips students with strategies to keep them writing.

The second section of chapter 2 is dedicated to establishing student expectations with the notebook and how to help students build writing stamina & fluency. The first strategy Aimee Buckner gives us is something she calls Daily Pages. Daily Pages are done before writing workshop even begins and is oftentimes done as morning work. Students are required to write a full page about anything they want, but cannot skip lines, write with huge letters, and must contain at least 100 words. When I read this, I thought she had to be kdding, but she doesn't count the words and uses it to "impress" the kids. Inevitably, they deliver! I love this strategy because it allows students to just write about whatever and allows them to "take the trash out, to clear their minds. It's okay to spend the morning writing about nothing on the daily page, as long as you are ready to write during writing workshop (pg. 23)." I had to use this quote because I could not do it any better justice.

Another strategy we are not unfamiliar with is writing off literature. It goes without saying that writers need to be readers, and a lot of our inspiration for writing comes from reading literature. The next strategy is also familiar to us teachers: using observations. We all want our students to become exceptional writers and exceptional writers create vivid mind movies (my term for visualizations) by using our senses and painting those pictures for their audience. In short... show, don't tell. Other strategies include writing from a word and lifting a line. Writing from a word can be a fun activity because students (at first) choose any noun and just start writing about it. Lifting a line requires students go reread their notebooks and find a line from another piece of writing that can be used to generate a new piece of text. This leads me to the final strategy: Reread & Highlight.

This strategy is so simple, yet I think it's often overlooked. The students simply look and reread through their writer's notebook looking for things they think are interesting or noteworthy. If they find something, they highlight it and notate off to the side why they like it or why it is interesting. This becomes a launching point for a new piece of writing. They also reread their notebook in search of patterns and as a way to reflect on their learning and writing. This isn't something that can be done just once, but it must be reread often as "seed ideas tend to hide (pg. 29)".

Aimee also goes on to discuss setting expectations and procedures for their notebooks. She outlines what she expects from her students and what the students can expect from her during writer's workshop. One great idea I got from this was to have students fold over any entries they may not want me to read. It could be that it's too personal or maybe they had a bad morning and needed to vent in their notebook. Students are not penalized for this because she makes it clear that action will be taken if she thinks the student is being hurt by someone, will hurt someone else, or will hurt themselves. Folded entries also do not count toward their required weekly entries.

I'm only finishing the second chapter of the book and I'm already walking away with new knowledge and wisdom for my own writing instruction. I'm excited to try out these strategies and I love the way they are mapped out for you in the book. It's almost like I'm observing in her own classroom, and I love that about Aimee's writing.

Stay tuned for Chapter 3 - Kneading the Notebook. I wonder what I will learn next?!