Welcome Back

We hope you all had a wonderful summer! We are excited to get back into the blogging world and our plan is to blog a little more regularly this year. You can expect our regular Teach it Tuesday posts, as those have been very popular! Also, expect some more general posts to let you know about our students, schools, good reads, and more travel tales. We are always looking for post ideas and guest posters so feel free to comment or email us with ideas – taleoftwoteachers@gmail.com

Like every Back to School season, we have spent some time thinking about what we want our respective classrooms, lessons and teaching/learning experiences to look like.  We decided to come up with three goals (or intentions, if you will) to help guide our planning and preparation for the upcoming school year.  Here is what we have in mind:

Karley

With the end of my maternity leave just around the corner, I am excited to announce that for the first time ever (in my three short years of teaching) I know where and what I will be teaching before the start of September!  I’m very excited to be teaching two grades this year: a grade 8 class at one middle school (job-sharing with a good friend of mine) and a grade 7 class at my 2013/2014 middle school (job-sharing with a very lovely teacher; we are already becoming fast friends).  I will be working three days a week, or .6 in teacher-speak.  I feel like this part-time return to teaching will be the perfect blend of time well spent in the education world and time well spent at home with my family.  I won’t be returning to work until November, but I plan to be active on our blog for the remainder of my maternity leave.  Here are a few intentions I have for this school year:

1. Look good at school.  I know, shallow.  But hear me out…I’m just finishing a year of maternity leave and for the majority of this year my “real clothes” haven’t fit.  I’m very much looking forward to getting out of my lululemon and into my teacher apparel, just for the sake of feeling professional.  It’s okay if your jaw just hit the floor…I also never thought I’d be the one to admit that my lululemon closet needs a break.  Note: this intention is allowed to be up for alteration after my first week back to school.
2. Maximize my focus/time at school.  This might sound obvious, but I really need to develop or adopt a few systems to help me stay focused and organized this school year.  I am the kind of teacher who works/plans/marks/preps better at home.  For some, getting this work done at school is preferable, but I’ve never been able to master this part of teaching.  I’d like to keep my work at work if I can this year so that my family time is rich and plentiful at home.  Also, sometimes I can get easily overwhelmed due to the amount of paper I carry around in a day…tack on a twenty pound baby to that load and I’ll be able to skip my strength and conditioning workouts!  Mama needs an action plan.
3. Go with the flow a bit more.  My daughter has taught me lots this year, but one of her most valuable lessons is to occasionally ditch the plan and go with the flow.  I am a control freak.  I love to be in control of everything.  Job sharing will be a completely new experience for me in which I will not be in control of everything.  I am feeling open and welcome to change, thanks to Charlee’s teachings.

Meaghan

This year will be looking a bit different for me as I’m starting this year off as a TOC (substitute teacher) and I am looking forward to a bit of a change in pace from the full time scene. I have really enjoyed taking some time this summer to find that place of balance again in my life and I’m hoping to extend this feeling into the fall. Here are a few of my intentions for the fall:

1. Be happy in the moment. Like Karley, I like it when I am in control of how things go and sometimes with substitute teaching I get caught up in trying to change things that I have no control over. If I don’t get work every day I will still be okay, if I miss a callout it’s not the end of the world… I have a lot of really great things going on in my life right now, I’m very fortunate, and I am going to try to remind myself to be happy with all of these great things!
2. Allow my creativity to shine. One of the things that I really lost a bit in the full time job spiral was my creativity – in previous years I have found that I am most creative when I’m part time or substitute teaching because I’m in the schools but I don’t have quite as much responsibility. I’m hoping to really embrace this time right now and use it to be creative and daydream about future teaching plans.
3. Balance, and re-balance. Why is balance always on my goals/intentions? Because it will constantly be something to work towards. The biggest piece of this for me is fitness – I need to find a place where I’m active and healthy but not fully dedicating myself to a training program. I find that I have been bouncing back and forth between training hard and doing nothing which really isn’t the best for any aspect of my life. Along with that and coursework, blogging, and teaching, I want to make sure I’m spending lots of time with friends and family.

Please let us know if you have any suggestions or ideas for blog posts!