Teaching days can feel quite looooong, especially when I have early or late meetings and parent conferences. I keep a few essentials in my desk to ‘brighten up’ at work.
Of course, I don’t know a single teacher who doesn’t keep a toothbrush and toothpaste in their desks as well. A few other suggestions for emergency items to keep on hand:
Stain remover
Nail file
Comb or Brush
Contact Solution / Eye Drops
Can of soup, granola bars
So what are the essential or emergency items you keep in your desk? Let me know what I forgot!
You know what happens when you’ve worked at a school for 7 years? You realize you’ve collected a looooooot of T-shirts. It makes me so happy when I look at them! Each is a unique and fond memory. Many are signed on the back in Sharpie.
Some of the wonderful T-shirts in the above collage are collected from:
* Our annual school Walkathon
* School musicals
* Foreign Language Week
* PBIS Shirts
* Volleyball T Shirts
* Jump Rope For Heart
I plan to always save every – shirt so that someday, I can make a quilt full of my favorite memories of teaching 8th grade!
P.S. How great is it to have a job where you are (occasionally) encouraged to wear a T-shirt to work!
P.P.S. Don’t even ask me how much I’ve spent on T-shirts. Yes I realize how easy it would be to figure out but I refuse to calculate the total!
Exciting news, people! To celebrate reaching 3 Million Registered Teachers, Teachers Pay Teachers is throwing a rare site-wide sale! This means everything on the site will be up to 28% off! TPT gives all customers 10% off with promo code TPT3, plus many sellers (including yours truly) will knock of another 20%. For you math whizzes, that’s 28% total. A HUGE deal!
The sale will be this Thursday and Friday, February 27th and 28th. It’s a great idea to figure out what you’d like now and add it to your wish list or cart. I know I have my eye on a ton of lessons and clip art. And remember, you can deduct your purchases on your taxes!
My top selling item, The Argumentative Writing Instruction Workbook, will be a real bargain during this sale. The price for the digital download will drop from $15 to only $12! It is also available in hard copy for $25, and that will drop to $20 during the sale.
Do you have a business card? In my 7 years of teaching, I’ve never thought I’d need one. I’m an educator, after all, not a business person. However, I have been attending many events lately (i.e. WSRA) and meeting many amazing educators and truly inspiring people. I really want to keep in touch with them, so I realize… I probably need to get a business card already! I just hope more people have cards to exchange so I can expand my network of resourceful and inspiring people.
I went on Zazzle and designed my new business card this weekend. What’dya think?
(clockwise from the top: Lingonberry sauce, candied apples, Lefse,
carrots, meatballs, Lutefisk, and some potatoes in the center)
This weekend, I attended our annual Lutefisk Dinner at the Church of Norway. My extended family – usually about 20 people – has made this a family tradition of about 10 years. We are Norwegian (I’m 3rd generation), and it doesn’t get more Norwegian than Lutefisk!
If you’re unfamiliar with the dish, lemme explain. Lutefisk is dried cod that is soaked in a vat of lye, skinned, boned, boiled, and served with melted butter or cream sauce. Aren’t you salivating already? It is stinky, gelatinous, clear, jiggly, and entirely unappetizing – yet we eat it by the pound! Oh those silly Norwegians. I go for the meatballs.
My sister and I have been attending Lutefisk dinners for as long as I can remember – back when we used to host them at our own church. Can you tell we are Norwegian? Uff da!
And your prize for ingesting a spoonful (minimum) of Lutefisk is a tray of delicious Norwegian delicacies. Pictured here are my favorite desserts. Clockwise from the top: Fruit Soup, Krumkake, and Sandbakkel. Also served are Fattigman and Rosettes.
Krumkake are a particularly coveted treat in my family. If you’ve ever made them, you know what a pain in the rear they can be – so fragile and temperamental. They are delicate cookies that are delicious served as is, or filled with whipping cream. My grandma and my mother would make dozens of them, and they would disappear if you blinked.
Every year we hear about Great Grandma Marie – first generation immigrant from Norway – who would make Krumkake for weeks leading up to Christmas. She would store them in a tin in the back bedroom, which was kept near freezing temperatures, so they would last. Woe to the misguided soul who was caught snitching before Christmas!
As they say at the Lutefisk dinner, if you leave hungry, it’s your own fault. Seriously, it’s just like going to Grandma’s house. The dishes keep getting passed and passed until you’re about ready to burst. It’s such a good time, seeing all of my family seated together at the same table, sharing stories, and eating food that makes you feel like you’re ‘home.’ I look forward to it every year.
Valentine’s Day is almost here – only 6 days away. My husband and I have a pact to only give handmade gifts, heartfelt gestures, and other gifts from the heart – no lavish dinners or extravagant nonsense. After all, we have birthdays, Christmas, and anniversaries for gift giving.
As a child, my mother always made Valentine’s Day special. She would buy us (me, my sister, and my brother) something special to wear or enjoy on that day. I remember a gorgeous pink sweater, red heart earrings, a new book, a pink jewelry case, candy, chocolate, and a fresh rose picked from her garden. My mom taught me that Valentine’s Day is about all kinds of love, especially love for your friends and family. It’s never been an exclusively ‘romantic’ holiday for me.
On Valentine’s Day, I like to remind everyone in my life how much I love and need them. It feels so good, and I certainly don’t think I should need a holiday to remind me to do it!
I created some Valentine’s Day cards on TinyPrints and had them sent directly to my favorites. Here are my designs below:
Week 22 was a long, cold one. Here are the highlights!
1. Amazon! – I am SUPER excited to announce that my book is up on Amazon. I have to pinch myself sometimes. I did it!! Wahoo!!
2. Stephen King – I introduced my students to the prolific Stephen King this week. At first, they were all, “Who?!?” but when we began listing off his many accomplishments and famous works, they were all, “OOOoooOooh.” In true middle school fashion, they describe this incredibly influential and important American author as a “creeper dude.”
3. The Boy Who Dared – I finished reading this book in about 2 days. Wow, very powerful. It is a story about a Hitler Youth who dares to stand up for his morals and convictions. As you can imagine, it does not have a happy ending. The reading level is 5th – 6th grade, but I could see this being used in a much higher level Social Studies class for perspective and analytic purposes. It was such a unique perspective on this time period – we don’t often empathize or appreciate the plight of the ‘villainous’ Germans who disagreed with Hitler and fought the status quo. A powerful story for sure!
4. More Sun – Have you noticed the longer days? I’m loving watching the sun rise on my drive into work. We had a full 9 hours of sunlight yesterday! The sun has been setting later and later, and I will have to adjust when our automatic lights turn on outside. I just love the eager anticipation of Spring!
5. Study Buddies – I have been working so very hard on my dissertation these past few weeks. I feel like I want to focus on it now while the weather is crummy and there aren’t as many social distractions. Well I have the 2 best study buddies in the world! They will snuggle and keep you warm, drifting in and out of doggy naps, and only interrupt your train of thought when they need a nuzzle or a belly rub.
I took a study break to go shovel, and suddenly I had this strange sensation of being watched…. My guys are such wierdos! They are definitely in the right family 🙂
This weekend, Ryan and I visited some friends who own a Lake House in Wisconsin. I hate winter, you know, and I find absolutely no redeeming qualities that make winter even slightly palatable. Basically, winter is what we put up with while we wait for, oh, ANY OTHER SEASON. Except then we do something new like hang out on a frozen lake with great friends, and suddenly it doesn’t seem so bad. In fact, we had…. fun. It was beautiful! I mean, just look at these photographs. It was quiet, peaceful, pure white and lovely.
We walked around on the frozen lake, making snow angels, having snowball fights, trying not to slip and fall on the ice (but laughing when we actually do), and realizing just how cool it was that we were standing on FROZEN water! It was a new experience and new perspective, to view the sky and shore from the treacherous center of a frozen lake.
After an hour or so of sledding and playing in the snow, your reward is of course hot apple cider or hot cocoa and a long sit in front of the fireplace to enjoy warming up your toes. We ate dinner and played board games well into the night. It was a lovely weekend, and I only hate winter at about 90% capacity now 🙂
I have this giant STOP sign that I put in the hallway when we have important announcements or schedule changes to communicate with the students. I found my sign slightly…. altered this morning. Goofballs! Gotta love 8th grade! Bonus points for spelling.
It was 30 degrees today, which is a wonderful break from the bitter temperatures of the last few weeks. I took a long walk in the afternoon sunlight – the first in a long, long time. It felt glorious!
