I hope you all had a wonderful holiday season and are enjoying your last few days of break. I know that I am! I took time off from everything over the last week – school work, blogging, writing - the whole thing. I’ve had lots of fun playing trucks and Lego’s with my boys, curling up to watch movies with [...]

Wow! I just realized I have not blogged since September 3rd! Where does the time go? As many of you are in the same boat, no doubt, I'm sure you can relate to the feelings of being overwhelmed, tired from the school day-week-month, attending extra-curricular activities, and of course planning, teaching, meetings, etc. etc. etc. Having said that, I ...

Teaching my students all about nature! Many kids today don't get to go out into nature much.  It is too bad, because when I was growing up, I remember running around outside from after breakfast till the streetlights came on!  We caught crayfish and minnows from ponds, went exploring in the woods, tried to catch birds, picked berries, built tree ...

I have a student in my class who should probably be the one teaching instead of me.   Let me explain.  I have been teaching science and math for 13 years.  All of a sudden, I have this geography class on my schedule this year.  I have only taught geography once and I co-taught, which means that the other teacher covered for my sorry butt since I ...

 You always hear the funniest things from middle school kids.  They are seriously capable of keeping a person laughing all day long.  Today I only had a few kids working on a lab together and they were chatting about facial hair.  They were saying that one of the boys in our class started getting a mustache last year in elementary school and had ...

It's Mystery Monday! There is only one more Monday for the kids this school year!  Can you believe it?  It is a mystery to me how fast the school year passes by!  It seems like one minute I am setting up my classroom and having an open house and the next minute I am taking down all the posters and counting textbooks!  It is a mystery how at the ...

When I was in my 20's I loved staying out late, playing spades, dancing, smoking and drinking.  Now that I am in my 30's, I have forgotten how to play spades and quit smoking (bad for kids and my asthma).  You could not pay me to get dolled up and go out to the club.  My moves are circa 1997 and I get a splitting headache if I have more than 2 ...

It is a mystery to me how kids can talk so much.  My daughter does not ever stop talking.  Sometimes she talks the entire way home from school in the car without even stopping to take a breath!  She even talks in her sleep.  The kids in my class would talk non-stop if I didn't make them be quiet and do some work.  They will talk to me, the kid ...

Every day this week during one of my classes, some kid has been jiggling our classroom door handle several times and running off.  Each time it would happen, the kids would get all riled up about it and take forever to settle down to work again. So, we discussed the ding dong and ditch issue together as a class and came up with a plan.  Talk about ...

Remember when you were in middle school and you (finally!) got to hear the birds and the bees human growth and development talk?!  Well, I don't.  It must have been just that bad for me! Today, I had my students begin by reading the information in the textbook and writing down 10 facts they learned on a piece of paper.  I also had them write down ...