Blessed to Teach and Read

This January kicked off with one of the best birthdays - ever!  Lots of students gave me cards and birthday posters.  Several classes sang to me.  Had a blast!  January also brought the start of an Educational Specialist degree in Instructional Technology, completely online, through The University of West Georgia.  And now that it's UWG's spring break, I am finally making time to update my blog.  ('Cause updating my blog is much  better than doing our taxes!)  In Issues in Instructional Technology, one of the assigned texts is Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns  by Clayton M. Christensen, Michael B. Horn, and Curtis W. Johnson.  It was first written in 2008, but my copy is an expanded edition from 2017.  I LOVE reading current texts, especially since technology has changed so much year to year.  We just got to chapter four, "Disruptively Deploying Computers" about how there are ...

At the end of the first, full week of school, I was feeling on 'empty' in the emotional and physiological tank.  I was stressed, and I was completely exhausted, despite getting more sleep than usual.  Driving home after 5 p.m. on a Friday, I saw a man riding a bicycle toward oncoming traffic, on the sidewalk, though.  My mind did that, "Is that a baby on the front of his bike?!?" right as he came into focus and my brain realized it was, in fact, a toddler, and she was adorable and waving at every car as her dad biked her down the road.  I wish I had a picture.  She was the cutest!  I immediately waved back, and the man's face smiled, big, and he waved back, too.  My heart just melted.  And I was restored. Our school year started very early, on Wednesday, July 24th.  Our first day back was a district-wide look at our county's new Instructional Framework infographic.  From all that I've read about the messages companies' send to their e...

No need to have watched or read Marie Kondo's "Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up".  I have a hoarder for a husband, and I LOVE to purge stuff.  I've begun weeding our "E" for everybody picture book section. It's astonishing how many of our books from 2002-2003 are still on the shelves, having never been checked out, even once, or less than once a year over the past 16 years our school has been open. Our County Head of Media Specialists, Kristen Deuschle, shared about a local charity, Reaping Nature , which will donate our weeded materials to needy schools in our county.  Perfect! As I've been consulting the Historical Report and looking through each story to decide its fate, I've had more ideas churn up.  Definitely planning on beginning to genrify the fiction section next year, but WHAT IF I also made an "Upper Elementary" picture book section???  I already started the "ECH" Early Chapter books section and "Easy Reader...