Oh, hello.

Welcome to my reflections on teaching!

I've created this blog with a few intentions in mind:

I'm in my 5th year of teaching and have sporadically used reflective journal-writing to assess my practice, diagnose problems and celebrate (usually mini) triumphs. With this blog, I'd like to write reflectively MORE FREQUENTLY.  Perhaps everyday?

Journal-writing-on-the-bus-selfie.

Additionally, I'd like to make better use of my reflection.  Sometimes journal-writing is just blabbing out my thoughts.  This in itself can be incredibly helpful for me to work through emotions, see a situation from a different perspective and let some things go.  That is great.  What I'd like to do with this blog, is develop some of those "blabbings" into more coherent thoughts that might encapsulate my feelings or philosophy on a certain topic or a refined impression of an experience that hopefully produces a response or connection from others.  In addition to making my thoughts more readable for others, my hope is that through spending more time with my thoughts, I will be better able to use my reflective writing to actually STEER MY PRACTICE based on experience.

This year I am CO-TEACHING for the first time!  Co-teaching means 2 teachers (typically a General Education teacher and a Special Education) in one classroom sharing the planning and instruction responsibilities for the class.  This can be done in a variety of ways and this year I am co-teaching 2 different grade levels with 2 different teachers.  I did a bit of reading and research this summer trying to get ready for this new endeavor and thought the opportunity to read a teacher's thoughts on co-teaching from the beginning of their experience could be so informative.  So, another goal for this blog is to track my experience with co-teaching from that first conversation with my principal, to meeting and planning with my co-teachers, the ups and downs, (the occasional boredom for me at the side of the class...) and the successes of a good two-teacher flow in a classroom.

Lastly, I have a number of amazing educators in my life and the saddest part about that is that we don't get to sit down and discuss education nearly enough!  I hope that this blog with at minimum, be a place for others to know me as an educator better and, ideally, a place where a community of us will be free to share our ideas, explore our philosophy and ultimately improve the work we do with children!

I look forward to hearing from fellow educators!!