This Teacher Life

As the week of testing approaches for my students, I had a fellow teacher come up to me and ask "What do you wish someone had said to you about the SOL's."  I gave some quick and true responses, but now that I have had a chance to digest it all, here are my more detailed answers to that question I wish someone had told me.... that I would feel every emotion I ever had, in just one day. it's okay to cry it's also okay to celebrate there is nothing else you can do at this point.   your heart rate will return to a normal level in about three days in the mean time, try to do some yoga.   watching student reactions is funny/entertaining/sad/painful this whole process is really jacked up The list could go on and on, but these were the ones I felt the strongest about.  I want to elaborate on a few; I imagine my teacher friends will fully understand these but I want the non-teacher people reading this to get a sense of the statement. "...that I woul...

Organization is not my strong trait.  Well, let me rephrase that.....organization in a physical sense is not my strong trait.  Digital organization, however, is my jam.  I love keeping files neat and orderly throughout my devices and clouds.  Sometimes I even, gasp, delete emails from long ago!  One thing that always scares me though is seeing the state of someone else's organization.  It can be utterly terrifying, and more importantly, a time-suck to find something. Most people do not have some sort of system they use to keep things organized, which leads to loss in productivity in finding their files.  I know a lot of people that their desktop looks like a minefield, similar to the picture below this scares the teacher.... Too much going on is not only disorganized, but it can be a sign of too many applications on your computer , thus slowing it down.  Please note: just having a lot of documents and icons on your desktop does not ...

Stress = rain I was not planning a two-week hiatus from this blog, but my personal life did one helluva job dominating any plans I had of being a productive digital member of society.  Recently I was attending the SOL Academy as part of my 11-month contract, our family dog died, and then I got sick.  Not the greatest combination of things to happen, so the blog had to be put to the wayside.   It is, however, a story that any educator can relate to.....because it happens to them as well!  Teaching is this weird enigma.  The highs of watching students succeed, seeing awesomely planned lessons be well executed, and schools improving is incomparable to any drug available.  The lows?  Bone-crushing, and often take a toll on the teacher physically and mentally.  I think it is important then to remind all of my teaching friends, and anyone that is dealing with a tremendous amount of stress, to R E L A X We are human.  We need to be rese...