Cheers to Beginnings!

I'm not sure where to start but here goes...

I am 10 days away from embarking on a new adventure as a teacher. While I have been a teacher for 6 years now, this year might as well be my first. I am starting over. I have completely redesigned not only what I will teach this year but the manner in which I will teach. With the new Common Core State Standards for Mathematics on the horizon I am taking the proverbial bull by the horns and getting started even though California will not implement them fully for a few years.

At the end of June I was privileged enough to attend an institute at UC Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science to learn about the CCSSM and since then I have been inspired to make big changes. The new standards call for a change in the way we teach mathematics--a needed change to get back to teaching students how to problem solve, how to be persistent and logical, and to see the value in math as it is used in real life. We are finally navigating away from multiple choice tests and I couldn't be happier!

Awhile back our school district sponsored a technology dinner series which exposed teachers to some of the amazing web 2.0 technologies available.  One of the nights featured a website called Collaborize Classroom and an amazing presenter named Catlin Tucker who is the authority on the blended learning philosophy. I left that night's presentation wondering how I could do a blended or flipped classroom with my own teaching practice. It wasn't until the conference in June that I realized I had to stop wondering and start making it a reality.

I have logged over 150 hours this summer creating video lessons of myself that will become my students' homework which frees up class time to engage in open-ended tasks, real-world applications, and discovery learning.  It took many days to find these type of tasks for all the lessons I will cover this year.  It took even more days to rework my entire textbook (2 textbooks actually!) to align with the Common Core.  And at the end of all this planning I find myself anxious to see how it will all play out.

For years I have been told to keep a teacher journal. At my previous school many of the elementary teachers kept journals or, at the very least, lists of the successes and challenges they had each day. In an effort to keep myself on track with this endeavor I figured making it a public journey couldn't hurt to help keep me motivated and honest with what I can only imagine will be a year filled with ups and downs.

So on to the wardrobe part...

My first teaching job out of college was at a pretty tough school in San Francisco. I showed up my first few days in cute outfits and heels, determined to keep the level of dress I had while I was student teaching (and desperately trying to impress all those around me to get great letters of recommendation).  I remember hearing people laugh about how it wouldn't take long for me to not be wearing heels anymore but I knew I wouldn't cave. Well, teaching on the top floor of a three story building and having to walk kids up and down the three flights of stairs eight times a day, I didn't last. It wasn't long before the heels became tennis shoes, my skirts and slacks became grungy uniform pants and my blouses were traded out for any t-shirt I could find for less than ten dollars.

But then something great happened...our school switched from being a dress code school to a uniform school! And I decided that in support of the kids (and out of sheer laziness) I would wear uniform too. So I bought a pair of tan pants from Target and navy pants from the Gap outlet, purchased a long sleeve and two short sleeve uniform tops from school and called it good.  By the end of my four years teaching at this school  I was not proud of how I presented myself in the classroom each day. It was apathetic and unprofessional.

When I left San Francisco and relocated to the North Bay Area I landed an amazing new teaching job in North Napa. I was determined that first year to dress professionally but there was a problem--none of my professional wardrobe fit. Being newly married and happy I had gained enough weight that before the school year started I had to go buy two pairs of slacks that would actually fit to get me through the year. I even had a conversation with my principal before the school year started to let her know about my predicament and that I would do my best to dress professionally with what I had. I didn't. I went back to wearing just those two pairs of slacks and t-shirts.

Over the last few years I have managed to lose those extra marriage pounds and I am proud to say that in January I reached my goal weight and have kept it off.  I wanted to reward myself with a new wardrobe but didn't know where to begin. In my 29 years on this planet I have rarely been fashionable and when I have been I can guarantee it was because I was wearing something my very stylish older sister picked out for me. She always dressed me for school, helped me pick out suits for job interviews, she even picked out my wedding dress!  So with all the other changes I am making in my professional life I have decided to put dressing professionally (and with style!) on the list too. With the help of my sister and my mom I got my new wardrobe started with some essential pieces and the rest I am filling in with the help of some amazing bloggers that have inspired me to mix colors, patterns, and start thrifting!

If you have made it to the end of this seemingly endless post, thank you. This has been a huge weight lifted from my shoulders to actually start something that I really want to do. I have many hopes for this blog but mainly I hope that it will give me a place to record how this year goes academically and wardrobe-ly. I hope that it will keep me on track and I hope that I will find like-minded people to inspire me and that can help encourage me to keep going when the going gets tough.

So cheers to beginnings and thank you again for reading!