Warring Hearts
Join me in a teacher’s journey that will hopefully make you laugh and inspire you. This journey is not only mine, however—it’s yours, your students’, and every teacher you may have worked with. So, grab a cup of coffee, pull up a chair, and get comfortable. Join me on this journey of the warrior’s heart within the educator. This story belongs to you.
Blog 1
Warring Heats: Loggers or Miners
Let the Journey begin!
I’ve always said that if teachers were to write all their stories down and publish them, they would be rich. Of all the things I’ve seen and heard and all the teachers I’ve worked alongside, one thing rings true: teachers are the most amazing breed of humans on the planet.
I want to invite you to join me in a teacher’s journey that will hopefully make you laugh and inspire you.
Blog 2
The Foreman Effect
Like Ripples in a Pond
When working with middle schoolers, it can feel like nothing you do matters or has any effect at all. “Homework? What homework?”
“Test? What test? When did you say we had a test?”
“Nouns? When did we learn about nouns?”
So much of what we say and what we teach goes in one ear and out the other. But wait there’s more… You spend hours prepping, teaching, grading, and reteaching concepts. Most of the time you feel like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day . . . stuck in a bad day, FOREVER.
Blog 3
The Small Things
All in a Days Work…
One of the dreaded duties of the teacher is the lunch duty. While it’s something that needs to be done, it’s not always the family favorite. It’s loud, crowded, and oh yeah LOUD! Kids take this lunch time and free socialization seriously. What table you sit at determines everything. At a certain point in middle school, they are learning how to manage the freedom they are given during their lunch time. They get a taste of freedom and begin to run with it. Inevitably they have to be reined in.
Blog 4
Game Face
The Journey continues…
Looking back on my first year of teaching, it was the greatest learning experience of my young life. I was a naïve girl with lofty dreams of saving the world. A recent graduate from Fairmont State, I moved to a very rural area. I didn’t know the town of Cowen existed and I didn’t know a living soul. Not the principal the secretary or the superintendent. As it was mentioned previously, I was hired the day before school started, and then was given a week to find a place, pack, move, get settled and start a professional career as an educator.
