National Boards

So yeah, I’m thinking of getting my National Boards this fall and I was a little uncertain of what to expect. I recently went to a meeting they had a couple of weeks ago just to get some information. For those of you that have not heard of National Boards, it is basically a way for teachers to further their education and professional development as a teacher. It is a very difficult process in which over the course of a year you have to develop a portfolio that will soon be turned in and graded. I also think at the end we will have to take several assessments to complete the Nation Boards process. Anyways, I think after the meeting I left a little more confused than when I went in. At the end of the meeting she gave us some homework to begin working on over the summer to get prepared. She told us to go to the website and print out our standards and Portfolio instructions to basically begin working on and memorizing over the summer. Little did I know this is what it would all look like………

*500+ pages at least! Needless to say I’m a little nervous of what next year will entail…..

Remember when….

The other day I was playing games with my classroom students. We always have what we call “May Days” in which each day of May is a special day in our classroom. We have days such as Book Day, I am Special Day, Bug Day, Dental Health Day, Rainbow Day,etc and one of them is Game Day which is always one of the kids favorites because they all get to bring their favorite game to share with the class and the last part of our afternoon I set out the games all around the room and they get to share their games with one another. I usually don’t know very many of the games because they are all the new and latest games like Mini Air Hockey or some sort of electronic game. However, I was ecstatic when I saw one of my students walk in with something quite familiar……OPERATION!!! I LOVED THAT GAME! Man it brought back so many memories and I believe I was more excited to play that game than my students. I remember loving that game as a kid and I even remember loving it in college-sidenote story: Phillip always loved to make our college dates creative so one night for our college date night he went and bought a few games from our childhood and we played them out on the front steps of our college and had an absolute blast…my husband is so wonderful!-Anyways, I just loved playing that game with my kids that brought back so many memories. What would be one of your childhood game favorites? Leave a comment to share with everyone and maybe we’ll all take a few moments to stop and remember when we were kids!

Getting ready for Summer

Well school is starting to come to a close and I’m wrapping up things in my classroom. I’m always excited and sad at the end of school for several reasons: one because I always hate to see my kids go but in the same light I’m excited to see them continue moving along to the next grade because they mature and grow up so much in one year, two I’m always excited for the summer for vacations, relaxation, family time, spring cleaning (more like summer cleaning) of the house, etc and three I always look forward to cleaning out and reorganizing for a new school year in the Fall (yes I know that’s my OCD coming out in me and Phillip would definitely say that its sickening I get excited about cleaning!). I’m also excited this summer because we are definitely going to be getting things rolling for 704 with Paul and Wendy and I’m even going to be helping Wendy  out at the bookstore some. As far as 704 goes, this summer we will spend most of our time traveling to different churches to speak about the dream of 704 and praying for churches to jump on board with us so please be in prayer for that. So many wonderful things to look forward to…..