Goodbye, Ms. Stogner...

As of December 31, 2013, I will no longer be teaching.

It kills me to say this after working so hard to be where I am, but during my time teaching I have found it impossible to be happy. Many people like to contribute the hard times to the fact that this is my first year teaching, and while I know that the first year is always the hardest, I firmly believe that I would be unhappy in this profession no matter how long my tenure lasted.

Teaching is HARD. It's a lot of work. If you are even the slightest bit of a lazy person, this job is not for you. The job is never-ending. I wake up in the morning thinking about what I need to do when I get to school. I leave my house by 6:00 every morning to make sure that I arrive early enough to be the first to the copy machine, get my bell work on the board, prepare any worksheets/tests that must be given that day (and sometimes the next day), organize the desks back into place since they have been moved around so much the day before, file graded papers, and if I have any time left, eat breakfast. Then, I must stand on duty in the hall as the students arrive. Once the school day has begun, I teach from 7:40-2:25 with a 10 minute break and a 25 minute lunch break. My planning period is from 2:25 to 3:15, but by the time it comes around I am too exhausted to get anything done so I just sit at my desk in silence. I do normally leave school as soon as the students have left, but when I get home I work on lesson plans, research activities, and constantly think about my students and the issues they may be facing when they leave school. When I finally get to go to sleep, I dream about my students.

Being a teacher has consumed my life.

Do not get me wrong, I absolutely adore and love each and every one of my students and love to see them achieve their goals. However, the pressure put on me by the responsibilities of this job have drained me of my desire to make this profession my lifelong career.

Teachers will always have a special place in my heart, especially now that I know what they have been experiencing, some of them for over 20 years. I will always have respect for them and what they do, I just don't think I can keep doing this and living such a miserable life.

Just so you all know, I do not post this to say woe is me and talk about how horrible my life is. I do post this so that maybe others will realize that teachers have one of the hardest jobs out there. If you think you can do better than your child's teacher, I encourage you to try it. Only then will you ever understand the frustrations that we endure every day.

On a more happy note, I have decided that I would like to pursue another degree in Accounting. I feel like this is another career that I can use my talents in math and will be better suited to my personal needs. I am excited about this decision and pray that I am following God's will. Please pray with me that I am heading in the right direction.

1 Month Down

When I first started this blog, I thought it would be pretty easy to write a post here and there about how my first year of teaching was going.... Now here I am two months after my last post about my curtains and I have been teaching for a little over a month. I quickly realized within my first few days with students that being in a classroom teaching every day is nothing like what they teach you about in college. I have never felt so unprepared in my life. Now I'm not saying that my professors didn't do a good job of preparing me for some things that I would face inside a real school, but what I am saying is that nothing they could have done would have readied me for the day I met my first class of high school students. NOTHING. 

The first two to three weeks of school, I cried nearly every single day, whether it be from doubting myself to my legs hurting so bad I thought they might fall off (that last one hasn't gotten any better even a month later). Even to this day I still wake up with nervous jitters that I might mess up, do something wrong, or say something wrong. I firmly believe now that the saying "You are your own worst critic" is true. I have yet to have confidence in my ability to teach my students math, even though deep down somewhere I know that I can do it. There is some good news though. I am slowly but surely gaining my footing and starting to develop a routine for myself. I still struggle with making sure my lesson plans are up to par and that I submit them in time, but I'm learning. I've begun to see that completing what would normally be morning tasks the afternoon before makes for much more time to do nonroutine tasks in the morning times. This year is going to mean a lot of learning for me...... and hopefully my students :)

I originally made this blog to write about my "realizations" during my first year of teaching, and now that I have been in my classroom with my kids every day for about a month, I feel like I can give an accurate list of some things that I have realized. So here goes.............. :)

1. Even high schoolers like getting graded papers back with stickers on them. 

2. Dum Dum suckers are an EXCELLENT way to get all students involved in the learning process. ALL of my students have become more eager to answer questions since I brought Dum Dums into my classroom. 

3. Make sure you have a friendly relationship with the school custodians. They will get tired of sweeping up the trash your students leave on the floor from their Dum Dums. 

4. Follow all the school rules. If you don't follow the rules, how can you expect your students to?

5. Care about your students. I truly feel that all of my students know that I genuinely care about their well being and their activities outside of my classroom. I try every day to find out something new about my students. I want to know who they are and watch them grow into young adults. 

6. Take advice from others as "constructive criticism". When others say they are just trying to help, thy really are. 

7. Let your students have some fun in your class. If they don't enjoy being with you, they are not going to work for you.

8. Don't be to relaxed and laid back. If students think you are a push over, again, they will not work for you.

9. Have school spirit. Students these days could care less about their schools. If you show that you care for your school and are supportive, your students will follow in your foot steps. 

10. Treat yourself to that shirt you've been wanting, or those shoes, that purse, or that watch. You are a hard worker and deserve to splurge on yourself every now and then. Plus, it gives you something to be excited about when all you really want to do is scream because your students bombed a test that you were sure they would pass. 

11. Make time for your loved ones. They will be the most important people to help you forget about all the stress you are bringing home from school.

12. Get plenty of sleep. I used to be a night owl. I would stay up until all hours of the night just cleaning or doing random organizing of my closet. As a teacher, I have realized that sleep is hard to come by, so try to make an effort to get good rest. I am ALWAYS in bed by 10, and usually asleep by 9:30. :)

13. Every Monday you will be sore from being on your feet after spending the entire weekend sitting down. Go buy you some IcyHot, a heating pad, ice packs, or whatever it is that works for you to get your aching legs ready to go for the next day. 

14. Take bubble baths. I used to be the type that just went to bed after a long, hard day, but now it is absolutely mandatory that I take a bath, not just to be clean but to have some peace and quiet. 

I guess I'll stop there for this post... lol It is starting to get kind of long. I hope you all enjoy reading about my thoughts during my first year of teaching. It has been an adventure to say the least! I can only hope and pray that by the end of the year I will have become a better teacher than the day I started and that my students will have become more knowledgable about math than they were when they first stepped foot into my room. 

God Bless :)

Lindsay <3

DIY Curtains!

While student teaching, I fell in love with one of my teacher's curtains in her classroom. They were simple really. Just a solid lime green fabric with a cute multicolored polka dot ribbon at the bottom for some trim. Seeing the room with the curtains versus without the curtains was like the difference between night and day. It was quite shocking how something as simple as curtains can really change the look and feel of a classroom.

SOOOOO I decided I would tackle the task of making curtains for my classroom. Now I must admit, I would probably sew my fingers together if I had to use a sewing machine. Lucky for me, my grandma does a lot of sewing and is basically an expert, so I looked to her to help me out.

To make the curtains, all I bought was some fabric and some ribbon. Simple. I have two windows in my classroom, each being 45 inches wide so I got twice the amount fabric for each window, 90 inches per window for those that struggle with math ;) I did this so that I would be able to gather the curtains to make them look more full rather than just having a piece of fabric laying over the window.

Now here is where we get down to business....

• The first step in sewing was to hem the sides of the curtains. Gran hemmed them in a single layer on the sides instead of folding the fabric and then hemming two layers together.
• Next she sewed the ribbon into place. At this point the fabric was folded top to bottom so that the curtains would be thicker. The ribbon was placed about two inches from the bottom of the curtain and sewn on. 
• I wanted to have a little ruffle at the top of the curtain so she sewed along the top of the curtain about an inch down.
• The last step was to sew another line about 1.5 inches from the top line so that it would make a pocket where you would put the curtain rod in. 

I bet you never knew that making curtains could be so simple!! 

Most of you would probably be able to just screw in a regular curtain rod or even use a tension rod, but I had to get creative with how I was going to hang up my curtains because my window is flush with the wall and there is no place to screw in a curtain rod on the side of the window. I got the bright idea to use some large Command Hooks to attach to the wall, then I put the curtains on a thin tension rod that was just small enough to fit in the hooks. 

I mean, I haven't actually hung the curtains in my classroom yet, but I couldn't resist putting them on the curtain rods. Without further ado, here are my curtains!! 

I love the leopard trim!!!

Here is a list of MY materials and cost! Yours will be different depending on your preferences and how you decide to hang your curtains! 

1. Teal Skin Patterned Fabric- $27.34- I got my fabric at Wal-mart for $4.97 a yard... a little pricey. Try to check out their clearance fabric or even go to Hobby Lobby where you can use a 40% coupon that they put out on their Facebook page every Sunday!
2. Leopard Ribbon- I got two spools of ribbon with 9 ft. each for $1.97 per spool.
3. Tension Rods- I got two for $2.17 each. 
4. Command Hooks- I got two packs with 3 large hooks for $5.88 each.

Total cost per curtain is less than $25! You would never find curtains that were exactly the way you wanted them for any less than that! 

I hope this inspires you to make curtains for your classroom! 

Teacher Binder

With this year being my first year teaching, I really want to start out on the right foot and try to keep myself as organized as possible. In previous posts I discussed some ways that I am trying to do that such as creating my teacher toolbox. Today's post is going to be dedicated to showing you all how I created my teacher binder for the upcoming year.

I have seen several examples of teacher organization binders all over Pinterest and Teachers Pay Teachers, but I could never find one that fit my needs perfectly. Basically, I took some ideas that I loved from a few places and made my own binder from the things that I found.

To get started, I bought a 1 inch 3-ring binder. I knew that I wouldn't be filling a huge binder so I chose to go with a small size and if I need to I can always get a bigger binder. Next, I made a list of some sections that I wanted to include in my binder such as passwords, calendar, lesson plans, grades, attendance, and parent information. Through teacherspayteachers.com I found the following editable teacher binder that included most of the sections that I was looking for: The Ultimate Teacher Organizer. Lucky enough for me it was also decorated with my school's colors. If you are not a fan of this color scheme, I believe the seller of this item will create it in the colors of your choosing if you simply ask her!

Now getting down to business.... There were several things in this organizer that I knew that I would not use (or didn't know how to use), so I started editing a lot of things to make them my own. Below I will include the pictures of my binder and the sections.

Front Cover

First Section

Second Section

Student Birthdays (in calendar section)

 Academic Calendar (in calendar section)

I tabbed each month with Post-it tabs.

Third Section

Fourth Section

Fifth Section

Sixth Section

Seventh Section

I wanted to be able to flip to each section easily so I decided to put the section label pages in sheet protectors to easily flip back and forth.

The next picture is of a blank checklist that I found on Clutter-Free Classroom's blog. The following link will take you to her Teachers Pay Teachers site where you too can download these incredible blank checklists that come in a variety of prints and patterns and are also available with not only blanks for student names but come with student numbers also: Multipurpose Checklists.

The most fantastic attribute of these checklists is that they can be used for such a variety of things. With these checklists there is no longer a need to buy a gradebook! Simply print them and you are ready to write in student names and assignments and begin giving grades. You can also use them to keep up with student attendance and absences. Even better, you can use them to track discipline. All you need to do is develop codes for student misbehavior and next to the students names you can write in the code of their behavior. These checklists are a priceless tool to have for classroom management and organization.

I hope you all enjoyed seeing how I organized my teacher binder and that you all have been inspired to make your own! Have a blessed last few weeks of summer!

Blessed.

I will never understand why it takes such a horrible tragedy to make us realize how blessed we are. My heart aches for those who have lost loved ones in the Oklahoma tornado yesterday, but especially those families that lost their children. I guess being a teacher makes me especially tender hearted towards children. I had been avoiding the news all afternoon after the tornado because I didn't think I could take hearing about those poor innocent children. Finally, I turned on the Weather Channel and the very first thing I heard was that 7 children had been confirmed dead due to drowning in the school's basement. I lost it.

The most amazing part of it all is that even after loosing everything they owned, the people of Moore, Oklahoma were still thanking God for sparing their lives. Here I am with just a few days left of student teaching and I don't even have as positive of an attitude as these people. All I know is that I am glad student teaching is almost over and I ask that each of you reading this will say a quick prayer for the people of Oklahoma.

On a more positive note, I met the absolute nicest family yesterday. I contacted a woman about a printer that I saw for sale on Craiglist. Lately I have been searching for some items that I need for my classroom and this printer sounded perfect- it has a scanner, copier, printer, and can fax (although I don't plan on using that function) but my most favorite part is that it has wireless connectivity.... that means less wires which means less mess! After some bargaining with the lady we settled on a price of $25 for the printer since I would have to buy new ink which is very costly. I'm the type of person that if I wait too long to buy an item I will wind up changing my mind and not purchasing the item. Well of course this was the case with the printer and I contacted her again and told her I had changed my mind. I was not expecting her reply. She told me that if I would just meet up with her in town that she would just give me the printer. I was thrilled!

Fast forward a few hours and I'm finally home and ready to try out my new printer. Lo and behold, I open the box and the power cord is missing. I text her to see if she still had it and she did so at 8:30 at night I drove to her house to pick it up. She and her husband just recently moved here so they were outside in their garage cleaning up when I arrived. After much apologizing, she gave me the cord and I was about to be on my merry way when she stopped me and asked would I be interested in a lamp for my classroom. She showed me the lamp and it was so adorable. I had to have it! She handed it to me and told me to just take it. As I thanked her and turned to leave, her husband stops me and asks would I like to have a microwave too. I couldn't believe it! I had literally just been looking online at microwaves earlier that day. As I drove away, I felt so thankful for these strangers that had helped me more than they knew.

Even when we think this world is only full of evil, there are angels among us.

Teacher Appreciation

Just thought I would make a fun post to give all you teachers a good laugh for teacher appreciation week :) Hope you enjoy these ecards!

On a more serious note, THANK YOU to all teachers all over the world for doing what you do. Teachers are the foundation of all other jobs and careers! It takes a special person to love 25+ kids as their own, year after year after year. I will never forget all of the incredible teachers that taught me and I hope to leave a lasting impression on all of my own students! 

I have a job!!!

Many student teachers dream of being hired right out of college, but for many that dream does not become a reality and they spend all summer worrying about what they will be doing when August rolls around. For some reason, the Lord saw fit that I need not spend my summer worrying about a job and instead he handed it to me on a silver platter. I filled out countless job applications in hopes that someone would see me as a diamond in the rough and hire me so that I could put to good use all of the training that I have received while in school. In what was supposed to be a casual meeting with the new principal of my old high school, I was hired on the spot to become a teacher at West Marion High School. This woman had never met me before and knew nothing about me, yet she saw the hard work and passion I put into lessons and schoolwork and felt like she just had to have me as a part of her staff. I have no doubt in my mind that God wanted me to be a teacher at West Marion, no matter how much I wanted to teach elsewhere.

Many friends of mine always said how much they wanted to leave West Marion and the Columbia area, but to me there is no other place that I'd rather call home. It feels so good to go back to the school that put so much hard work and love into me and to be able to do the same thing to the kids that are there now.

Remind101

Tired of your students telling you that they "forgot" their homework, project, graded papers, field trip forms, etc.?? Well worry no more! Remind101 is a FREE messaging system designed for teachers to send out mass text messages to the parents of every student in your class. Do your students seem to forget every week to bring back their signed graded papers? Just send out a text to a selected group and each and every person that has subscribed to receive these text messages will get any that alert to remind them that their child has papers that need to be signed! Amazing, right??

To sign up, go to www.remind101.com. As I said before, it is completely FREE to use. To begin, you will create a class (more can be added later). After creating a class, you will be instructed to text a certain number with a specific message. Once this is done, it will ask for your full name. When these steps are completed, you are ready to let the parents have their turn at signing up! They will also text that same number with the same message and will then also have to send their full name. Once the parents have completed the sign up process to receive the alerts, you will see their names show up in the subscriber section of your account.

Now you are ready to send the alerts! Type the message in the text box provided and click send! That's it! All your messages will show in your message history, providing documentation of the messages that you have sent so that no one can argue that you sent something that you really did not send. As we all know, documentation is about the most important job a teacher has (besides teaching of course).

My hope in posting about this service is to help teachers in making sure that parents are aware of classroom assignments as well as any other important notices. I think that Remind101 is an invaluable tool and I know without a doubt that I will be using it!

Class Dojo: Behavior Management System

While student teaching I have encountered many classroom management programs. I have seen clipboards with about a million behavior codes, ticket reward systems, pink slips, etc., but my favorite by far has been an online behavior management system called Class Dojo (www.classdojo.com). This website allows teachers to create multiple classes in order to keep up with the behavior of allll of your students. It is FREE to use and allows students and parents to keep up with individual students' behavior.

When you get signed up, you will get a tutorial of how to use the program. It is very helpful to go through the entire tutorial so that you can better understand each feature of the program. Once you have completed the tutorial, you may create your own class. All you have to do is name your class, put in a list of all of your students (you can even copy and paste a student list), and then you are ready to go! To give a student a positive or negative mark, you click on the student's name and the positive or negative tab. Each tab lists some behaviors pertaining to being on/off task, teamwork, materials, etc. The BEST part is that you can customize the behaviors to fit the needs of your classroom! INCREDIBLEEEE!

Whether you view the next part as a pro or a con is your own decision. Class Dojo offers signups for parents and students. You can either invite the parents by entering their email in the program OR you can print out a list of parent codes and send them home with the students and the parents can go to the site and put the code in to automatically view their child's behavior for the day, week, month, etc. Some teachers may view this is a problem because parents will constantly be asking why their child received the marks they received. It's really up to you if you want to use this feature.

The idea of using Class Dojo is to keep it pulled up on your Promethean board, or just on your computer screen, with speakers also attached to your computer. Having the speakers is essential if you want the students to know when someone receives a mark, whether it be positive or negative. The reason for this is that when you assign a student (or students) a positive or negative mark, a sound is played to indicate the type of mark. When students hear this they can be assured that at least someone, if not multiple students, is doing good and that motivates them to do good as well. The same can be said if a negative mark is given to someone. The students hear that someone got a negative mark and this may influence the students to change their behavior if they know they are doing something wrong. If at all possible, I would keep the program pulled up on the Promethean board, though, so that students can see their names and know when and what kind of mark they receive and can also know the reason they received that mark.

All I know is I absolutely plan to use this system one way or another when I begin teaching next year. I think it is absolutely awesome! I hope you all check it out! If you love the online version, check out the app for teachers by clicking on one of these links: ClassDojo for iPhone or ClassDojo for Android.

Teacher Toolbox

I want to go ahead and throw this out there..... This project was NOT my idea, and YES it did come from Pinterest. Thank you to whoever thought up this idea and also to the person who thought it was incredible enough to pin. The OCD in me truly appreciates it.

When I first saw this teacher toolbox on Pinterest, I thought I would have a coronary. I LOVED it. Anyone that knows me can tell you how much I love to organize things and I knew instantly that I wanted to make one of these.

The storage box itself came from Lowe's and was only $16.47. This particular box has 22 drawers, 8 large and 14 small. There are other variations of this storage box that offer 18 or 39 drawers, but I felt that 22 would be just perfect for me. Here is a link to the storage box: Stack-On 22 Drawer Storage Cabinet.

If you haven't discovered teacherspayteachers.com yet, then I really don't know what you have been doing on the internet. This site offers some INCREDIBLE resources for teachers of all grades and subjects. The premise of this site is for teachers to offer up their original lessons and other creations to other teachers for pretty small prices and sometimes even for FREE. I am pretty positive that I have downloaded every free item on the website. PLEASE, go check it out. With that being said, I found the labels to fit this teacher toolbox on Teachers Pay Teachers. Here is the link to the labels: Teacher Toolbox Labels- Dot Theme.

The labels are done in PowerPoint meaning that they can be personalized to fit your individual needs. I changed up some of the labels because I knew that I would never use some of them. All you have to do is print them, cut them out, and use some double sided tape to attach the labels to the inside of the drawers. An incredibly cheap and easy way to organize these small materials and keep them from cluttering up your desk.

I hope you all enjoy your teacher toolboxes! :)

Am I really about to GRADUATE??

It seems like just yesterday that I was crawling around in diapers, and just this morning that I was graduating from high school, yet in only 20 days I will be a college graduate. The past 4 years have been a whirlwind to say the least. People always told me that my college years would be the best years of my life, but I certainly hope not. If the best years of my life include being so stressed out about getting papers and projects done that I could pull my hair out, I think I got ripped off a little bit. But the truth is that I wouldn't trade my time in college for anything. I have proved to myself that hard work and dedication do pay off, for me being in the form of a degree. When I walk across that stage to receive my diploma, all of the late nights and weight that I've gained from midnight trips to Taco Bell will be worth it. :)

Honestly, though, I wouldn't have been able to survive these 4 years of college without some very important people who have always believed in me and supported me when I didn't think that I would make it through. The first of these people would be my boyfriend, A.J. When he came into my life, I'm sure he could never have imagined the role he would play. He has been my shoulder to cry on when I was sure that I would never get an assignment turned in on time. He was there for me through the loss of a family member in my junior year. He continues to treat me like a queen and make sure that the weekends are used for relaxing and escaping the difficulties that I face at school during the week. I could never thank him enough for everything that he has done for me. I love you, A.J.

The next few people have been there for me through thick and thin, disagreements and happy times. Tiffany, Jera, and Macy, each of you have such a special place in my heart. Not all girls are blessed with some amazing friends and sisters, but I guess God saw fit for each of you to be in my life and part of my family, whether it be by blood or by friendship. Thank you all for the uplifting words, prayers, and Mexican dinner dates. I love you girls!!

Lastly, I want to tell my mom how much I appreciate and love her for always putting my needs ahead of her own and for being as close to a perfect parent as one could get. In my entire life I have never gone without anything I have needed or wanted and that's all thanks to my mom. She has invested a lot of time and money to put me through college and I think that walking across the stage at graduation is just as much an accomplishment for her as it is for me. All I want in life is to get married, have kids, and make my mom proud. I hope that one day I can be half the mom that mine has been. Thank you for the daily phone calls, reminding me of how proud you are of me, supporting me in everything I do, and for buying my groceries while I've been student teaching. :)

In 20 days, I will be entering the work force as a teacher. Only God knew that this is what I would spend the rest of my life doing and I'm beyond thankful for him placing these people in my life to help me on this long and hard journey.