Happy Wednesday!

Happy Wednesday everyone! I hope you are having a great week so far! I substituted yesterday and Monday and now have today and tomorrow off, then I have another job on Friday. I'm really enjoying being back in the classroom. It is making me remember why I went into teaching in the first place. I just really enjoy seeing students learn and understand the concept you are teaching them. When they reach that "Ah-ha" moment and it finally "clicks", that's what is really great about the profession!

So getting to be back in the classroom, even if it is a different classroom each time I go into a school, it is great because I still feel like I'm helping students learn. I also feel like I'm learning because it is getting me back into the education field, which has changed so much since I've graduated. And it's only going to continue to change with all the new technology that we have and will come out in the future.

Now I am off to do some of the housework that I haven't been able to do the past 2 days! Good thing I have my cleaning schedule to help me stay on track!! Have a great day everyone!!!

Why teach?

I was just reading through a magazine that I get from my alma mater and it had an article about being an education school. The most popular major at Millersville University is education and it's what I went there for. The dean of College of Education said that he still thinks that their reputation as a teacher's college still stands. But he did note that there has been a decrease in enrollment of the education programs and certifications are also down. He contributes that to the fact that "teaching is not viewed as positively as it once was. A lot of kids today seem to be turned off by the idea of being teachers. Had they been born 20 or 25 years ago, they might be [more willing]."

He has a really great point because teachers are paid poorly for the amount of work they are required to do. A lot of people think teaching is great because they have their summers off but what they don't realize is that teaching is more than an 8 hour a day job. You can't just go to school at 7:30 am and leave at 3:30 pm and think you are done for the day. There's a lot of paperwork to grade and you more often than not are bringing your work home with you.

So do I regret getting a teaching degree? Nope. If I could go back in time and reselect my major it would still be education. I love working with children and don't know what else I would do with my life. Yes it is true that I haven't had a full-time teaching position yet, I have just been substitute teaching. I substitute taught for about a year and then took 3 years off when I had my first born and my second. As I posted recently, I just started subbing again and I'm so glad I did. It's giving me a chance to get back into the education world because I'm hoping to eventually get a full-time teaching job once my kiddos are older.

If you are reading this and have ever considered pursuing education as a career, I highly encourage you to go through with it. We're at a time in education right now where there is a shortage of teachers and even substitute teachers. As the dean of the College of Education and Human Services at MU said "Teachers prepare the next generation of students to participate in our democracy, in our society, and in life." Teaching is so important and if we have no one pursuing teaching degrees, who is going to teach our next generation? Because of all the events going on in this world today, I think there is no better time that we need qualified teachers so that our next generation can be taught properly.

Getting ready for learning...

I just finished planning my first week of learning activities with Big E!! We are going to start a little later than most kids go back to school, the week of September 11th. Our focus for the first week will be the letter A, red, and circles. She already does pretty good with her colors and shapes so the activities we do surrounding those will just be a reinforcement for her. As for the letters, she can say the alphabet so now we need to focus on recognition. I'm not sure at her age (3) that she will be able to write the letters, but we'll never know unless we try. I'm also going to work each week on number recognition. She can count from 1-10 but she doesn't know what the numbers look like yet.

Week 1 will be my trial week with Big E. I'm not too sure how she's going to do with all the workbook pages I want her to do so we may have to save them for later if she doesn't do too well the first week. The one book of pages is for ages 3-5 and the other is for ages 3 and 4. So there will be a ton of things that she definitely won't be able to do. But I think she should be able to handle some of it. Part of being a teacher is being flexible. I want to make sure that I'm not making her frustrated so if she isn't ready now, we can always come back to it later when she is ready.

I'm also going to start incorporating learning into every day situations. It's all about making any moment a teachable moment! Kids learn every single day and they absorb so much more than you realize!! What is something that your child knows that you didn't realize they knew?

Home again!

We got home from our 3 day weekend trip yesterday and it's back to reality! We all had a great time this past weekend and it was great to get away and spend more time with my aunt and cousin that we don't see too often. But as I mentioned in my last post, we have now seen her 4 times this year and we will see her once more at the end of the month! Usually we only see her twice a  year, so we've been pretty lucky this year!!!

This morning we made a quick trip to Target so I could find a planner to use to start planning preschool activities for Big E. My hubby and I decided that next year when Big E is 4, we will put her in a preschool. But I'm going to just do some activities with her this school year and help prepare her for an actual preschool next year.

Last year I tried to do this but it didn't go as planned. I had a ton of activities planned for Big E but because Little E was so little at the time, we didn't get to do much. Plus, the activities I had planned were a little too difficult for Big E. She knows a lot more now that she did a year ago so I'm excited to get started next month!

Since I'm only going to be subbing 2 days a week that gives me 3 days each week to work with Big E on these activities. I'm going to focus on one letter a week starting with A and going in order all the way to Z. Big E is pretty good at singing the ABC's so I'm hoping that from this, she starts recognizing the letters. We'll also work with numbers, colors, and shapes, all of which she already knows a little bit of.

So be on the look out for a recap post each week (or when I get time to write them) of what activities we've been working on!