Time, What's That?

I know, I know...I haven't been posting.  I just don't have the time right now between my teaching job, my wedding business and my new venture, my Jamberry nail business (which, by the way, I LOVE.  If you love pretty designs on your nails but don't have the tolerance or ability to do them yourself and wait for them to dry, these are for you.  I do all my parties via Facebook, so if you want me to do a party for you, sign up right on my website - click host at the top tabs).  Sorry, I know I went off on a tangent there, but I'm seriously obsessed with Jamberry now, lol.

So anyway, I wanted to drop in really quickly and pay a proper thank you to Emilie from Island Teaching Adventures who so graciously mentioned my Interactive Notebook Table of Contents in a blog post she contributed to for Teachers Pay Teachers.  Imagine my surprise when she emailed me.  I'm really grateful.  By the way, Emilie's products are awesome!!  I purchased these foldables for Spanish-speaking countries that I began using on Friday and LOVE.  I found that I always brush over the capitals of the countries because I more want them to know where they're located. This year I've focused more on the capitals thanks to these bad boys!  :)

I promise I will be back soon to post, once life settles down a bit.  In the mean time, if you have any questions for me, feel free to post a comment or send me an email at sra.szul@gmail.com.  Thanks!

Supply Bin Labels

After seeing this post, I've been asked to share the labels I made for my supply bins and I'm happy to do so...for a limited time.  :)  So, right now I'm offering the label set in both Spanish and English in my TPT shop for free!  I'm going to be changing it soon, so make sure you act quickly and download away.  

Interactive Notebooks Printables

Just in time for tomorrow's TPT sale, I have included two of the items I use in my Interactive Notebooks with my students.  These are a little more dressed up (with chevron) than I used last year, but they are still the same basic idea.  

The first file is a Table of Contents.  I have my students cut these out and paste to the inside cover of the notebook.  All students need to do is cut out along the outer solid line around the Table of Contents and then fold along the dotted line on all pages.  They then just glue each on top of the other only along the dotted line and above (except the back page which is glued the length of the page to the inside cover of the notebook), so it creates a sort of flip book with numbers 1-50 as the top page and 151-200 as the bottom page.  You can see this in use here.

The second file is a Verb Conjugation Foldable that I use when teaching verbs.  Remember, I teach Spanish so I use this with my classes when teaching important verb conjugations.  Students need to cut around the black border of each chart.  Then they need to fold along the dotted line and cut up the black lines of each chart to create flaps.  I have my students write the subject pronouns on the top of each flap, the meanings in English of each verb form using the chart verb on the underside of each flap and the conjugation on the lined paper below each flap.  You can see examples of that here, again without the dressed up chevron that you see in the TPT file.

I don't know how many more printables I'll be introducing because honestly, I don't use that many.  As I've said in all of my other posts regarding Interactive Notebooks, I don't follow the whole left/right method and we really just use our notebooks for notes and a few activities.  So, that being the case, I don't need a whole lot of printables.  This may change as I develop more with the notebooks, but for now, I'm satisfied with these two and maybe one or two others thrown in.  We'll see what this year brings.

TPT Sale 8/4 & 8/5

Are you liking the products I've been posting on Teachers Pay Teachers?  If so, you NEED to purchase on August 4th and 5th when everything is 20% off!!  

Storing My Interactive Notebooks

Just a quick follow up to my last post.  I was able to go to my classroom this week to get a few things done, one of which was making sure I had space to organize my interactive notebook bins.  This is how they're going to be starting out the year, but who knows if it will stay this way.  I plan to spruce it up a bit more, but not until the end of August or when I go back to school in early September.  But, this will give you an idea as to how it will look.   The white bins are where the students will place their notebooks at the end of each class period.  The rectangular trays house glue, scissors, white out, tape and erasers (students are responsible for their own colored pens).  The square containers will be where each group (of four desks) throws away their scraps.  For more information on the jobs this, please visit my previous post describing in detail how I will work the routines with the interactive notebooks.  Oh and please ignore the top of the shelves, I just put that stuff there to keep it somewhere until I come back at the end of the summer to put it away.

Setting up the Classroom for Interactive Notebooks: Routines

Now that you know how last year worked for me, I think it's time to talk about how I'm going to be working this year with the Interactive Notebooks.  Though the start of school is still a month away for me (thankfully, I still have so much to do!), I have been planning out the first couple of weeks of school, namely the Interactive Notebook introduction.

Last year I didn't really discover the concept of Interactive Notebooks until the third marking period (over halfway through the year) but I implemented them right away.  I knew I was treading dangerous ground not really focusing on the routine establishment, but I didn't have a lot of time and wanted to jump right in.  Would I change that?  Not a chance.  Did I learn from it?  You betcha.

This year I am going to work hard on establishing routines.  Last year I used one basket/bucket per set of 4-5 students and those buckets housed colored pens, pencils, erasers, hi lighters, glue, tape, scissors and white out.  I wish I could say that everything stayed as it should and all of my students took good care of the items I spent {lots} of money on, but I can't.  They had very little respect for what was provided to them.  Many of them even used those buckets to throw their scraps of trash in.  There was no organization.  Students just grabbed whatever bucket they could when told - some didn't even grab the whole bucket, just pulled stuff from them.  Needless to say, I was less than pleased.  

That forced me to wise up.  Today I visited one of my favorite haunts, Dollar Tree (lol) and picked up some more baskets for my classroom.  I now am going to have those same buckets from last year in addition to what you see below.   I'm also going to be assigning numbers to each group.  This way if something goes missing, I can easily determine which group had it last.  This really is common sense and I'm slapping myself for not doing that last year, but like I said, I just wanted to jump in and see if it worked.  So, my students will now be assigned a school supply bucket where they will keep the scissors and glue that I provide for them.  This year they are responsible for pens, colored pencils, white out, hi lighters, etc.  They will also be assigned a small bucket for trash.  Each group will be responsible for throwing the small bucket of trash into the larger bucket.  We really only cut a few things per class period (if that), so small buckets will work for us.  Finally, last year I put my students' notebooks in a rolling drawer cart.  I wasn't too pleased with how it worked because the students seemed to never know which drawer was theirs (again, routines).  So this year I'm going to use tubs broken down into class periods.  Each group within the class period is going to have a different pattern of masking tape to put around the binding of their notebooks and then each class will put them into the tubs.  It's basically a combination of this idea and this idea.  Here's what some of my buckets/tubs will look like (I made the labels and used my Xyron machine to stick them on - the trash and supply bins both have group numbers on them for the kids to recognize).

Now that I have the structure, I need to assign roles to the kids.  I don't want a mad dash for the supply area every time we have class.  I'm thinking I want to set up something like this in my classroom but instead of having papers there, I want to put the class' tub there for the notebooks.  I generally do not let my students take them home because they lose them or they leave them in their lockers.  So, unless they need them to finish up an assignment or to study from, they stay in the classroom.  I'm always standing at my door to greet my kids before class starts, so I may even just ask a student to put the bin on the table at the start of class.  Then I need to assign students to be responsible for picking up the notebooks out of the tub (because otherwise I'll have mad chaos like I did last year and I do NOT want to go through that again).  This person will also be responsible for putting them back at the end of class.   I also plan on assigning a student to be responsible for picking up the supply basket, another for picking up any worksheets, another for emptying the trash bin and putting that along with the basket back on the shelf at the end of class.  Of course when they put materials back at the end of the period, I expect that they will organize everything prior to putting it back.  I do not anticipate having groups larger than 4, but I may need to make adjustments once I actually see my rosters for this coming year.  

I do want to note that this post was instrumental in helping me really narrow down the routines.  I knew I needed them, but wasn't quite sure how.  Now I'm excited to start establishing these routines.  

Keep posted as I go over more ideas and and how I plan on implementing Interactive Notebooks this coming year.  As always, comment if you have a question or leave me a comment telling me how you're implementing Interactive Notebooks in your classroom.

The Big Interactive Notebook Post...Finally!

So, it's about time I did a follow up post to my Interactive Notebook post here and here.  I know, I'm a slacker.  

I think it's very important to start off by saying I DO NOT follow the traditional method of using Interactive Notebooks.  I see nothing wrong with the methodology of the left and right pages, I just don't do it.  I teach high school and a lot of the posts and pins I've seen about Interactive Notebooks are for elementary or middle school students.  There are very few Spanish teachers I've come across that use Interactive Notebooks, though I have found a few.  What I have found are tons of great ideas on Pinterest that have led me to some real gems that I'm happy to share with you on my Interactive Notebook Pinterest board.  I am incorporating a lot of Sarah's ideas this year for setting up the notebooks.

Back to mine.  I think it's important to emphasize I do treat these Interactive Notebooks a lot less like Interactive Notebooks than elementary teachers do.  Mine do consist of notes (and lots of them), vocabulary lists, etc.  But, I do use foldables, color coding and a huge reliance on organization (numbering, titling, table of contents, etc.).  Since I rarely use my textbook, this is the next best thing my students have to study from, so it needs to be the same for everyone.  I am not going to say I don't get questioned every day about the correct page to be on, what if my notes aren't as long as yours or mine are too long, etc.  It's really hard to keep them all where they're supposed to be, but I make all attempts necessary to do so because it's that important to me.  What I have found helps them to stay with me is giving them the number of pages they will be working with on a given day.  For example, if we're covering vocabulary, they know what page we'll be starting on, but I also tell them what page we'll be ending on.  I do the same with Grammar notes or practice activities we do.  If they write smaller than me (which most do), they usually don't take up as many pages as I do and that's fine.  I tell them to intentionally leave the pages blank.  If they write larger than me, they have to try to cram it all onto the proper pages.  Again, I write pretty large so this generally is not a problem for me. 

Now, let's talk about the ways I use the notebooks.  As I've said, I put everything in them in terms of vocabulary and grammar notes.  On rare occasions I will have my students complete a homework assignment or in class assignment in them, but for the most part they're really used as a resource rather than for practice (hence the fact that I do not do the left/right notebook method).  Here you can see some pictures of what I mean...

Sometimes I run out of space or have a grammar concept that I know is going to be A LOT of notes (Asking and Answering Questions is a HUGE topic for example).  When that happens, I tend to give the students more of a fill-in-the-blank type notes page and then just have them write examples on the notebook pages and just fill in key components on the worksheet notes.  The worksheet is then taped into the notebook and folded in half so they can close up the notebook and not lose the sheet.  Sometimes I have the students fill in charts that are just taped into the books and other times we complete cloze type activities with songs that help reinforce the information we've covered that day (this page is showing Reflex Your Verby - if you haven't checked this one out, you HAVE to!) 

Though I really don't use textbooks, I am still tied to the vocabulary and grammar structures covered within the book, so my vocabulary lists are incredibly long.  The way I tackle them is to break them into sections and give each section a title (it may be the same as what the book uses or it may be something more updated).  I have the students write the section title in the margin and then the words for that section go next to the title.  Once we've reached the end of the section, they draw a line.  It's simple but helps keep them organized.  We keep the Spanish words/phrases on the left and the English on the right. 

I found it easiest to print out the table of contents over four pages and then have them glue/tape the pages onto the inside cover of the notebook.  I wish I could say all of my students kept up with the table of contents, but some didn't (and their grades reflected that).  But, those that did were able to easily follow and utilize their notebooks.  

I hope this helps you to figure out how to make Interactive Notebooks work for you.  The key thing is to realize that what someone else does may or may not work for you.  It's taken me 14 years of teaching to realize it, but things that work in other classes just may not work in mine, no matter how hard I try or how much better for my students it may be.  You ultimately have to do what will enable your students to learn.  Maintaining our Interactive Notebooks this way has worked for me and my students so far.  That could all change in September, but I'm still going to give it my all because I haven't felt the sense of achievement that I felt with my kids last year in a long time.

Comment and tell me what you do with Interactive Notebooks and how you do it.  If you don't use them yet, can I answer any questions for you?

Spanish Classroom Decor

Between my wedding business, teaching and daily life, I really never have the time to work on this blog or my Teachers Pay Teachers store.  I'm trying though.  So, yesterday I finally put together some revisions of either products that I posted or have just used.  Take a look...

One of the classes I teach is a self-contained Spanish class which is more vocabulary driven, so I took the time to create these number posters that help not only the self-contained class but my level 1 and 2 classes as well.  

This is something new that I came up with for next year, my Spanish calendar.  I don't use a pocket chart, so I have no idea if the pieces would fit inside properly.  What I'm planning on doing is putting them on a blank bulletin board I have behind my desk.  It's actually an old chalkboard that was covered with masking tape rendering it useless.   So I stuck cork board onto so it can actually be used.  Right now it's covered with black and white polka dot wrapping paper, just waiting for something to go on top.  So, I came up with these calendar pieces that I'm likely going to tack up with these funky thumbtack hooks I found and then switch them out each day.  Since the theme of my classroom is aqua chevron and black and white polka dots (I can't pick just one), I made two versions in case I decide to move it to one of the chevron boards instead of the polka dot board.  Once I'm able to get into my classroom, I'll take some pictures.  :)

I'm going to be working on some more posters for my TPT store as soon as I get a chance, so stay tuned!

Bulletin Boards + Decor

I am such a sucker for pretty things.  Now, you KNOW that means my bulletin boards must match my pretty things mindset.  I know most Spanish teachers stick with the standard Spanish boards and I did too, for a while.  Then, a couple of years ago I started to make some changes.  I still like the content of my boards to be related to my subject matter (of course), but I don't like them looking traditional as I am anything but.  

In my old classroom, I had bulletin bulletin boards inside the room and also a nice wall outside of my classroom that I used.  I didn't make the best boards outside the room because I couldn't put up paper, borders, etc., but I still used the space like I did here with an extra credit project I did with my students asking them to portray why it's important to learn a second language.  I actually took this idea and am using it again as my start of the year bulletin boards for next year since I want to spark interest with my new students by featuring my old students.  In fact, I had a student make me the large Instagram poster (he drew and painted it) that I'm using again next year in a different purpose.

#WhyStudyLanguages bulletin board (outside of classroom) from 2012-2013 school year.

The inside of my old classroom from 2012-2013 that just showed the start of my Social Media board.  Ultimately the Pinterest side was decorated with real life pictures of vocabulary in the world and the Twitter side had different Tweets from students that were written up each day.  The Boggle board stayed looking like that and encouraged the students to make words from the letters shown in Spanish.

Now, in my new classroom (2013-2014), I embraced the idea of wrapping paper instead of bulletin board paper and even used some plastic tablecloths later in the year (sorry, no pic) along with tissue paper flowers and even some papel picado made by a student (cut up tissue paper used in many Day of the Dead celebrations).  Of course, I had a very "loud" room last year as my new room was desperate for some paint on the walls and I had to make due this year and cover up the disgusting leftover tape (that was practically glued to the wall) from moving in.  It took a year, but the room will be painted this summer so I don't need to cover anything up like you see I did below.

Zebra was the print of choice for 2013-2014 since I found a lot on clearance.  This isn't just my bulletin boards, but more the decor of my room.  You can see my pink bulletin board housed my contact info for the first day.  I left it up for a while, but wound up changing it to something else (below) later in the year.  The black board was intended to be a homeroom announcement board but I wound up not having a homeroom, so that changed pretty quickly.

This is an eclectic shot of my room.  I told you I had a lot going on.  But, I did love my shower curtain window with the map of the Spanish-speaking world used as the main focal point.  I also did a calendar on my side white board with washi tape.  I love how it looked, but I wound up ditching it about halfway through the year because I needed to use that space to put up daily objectives for the three levels I teach.

I wish I had a picture of both my bulletin boards with the directional maps my students painted onto butcher paper, but this is all I have.  We did a long lesson on giving and following directions and my students made several different maps, this being one of them.  I'm hoping I get some even better maps this coming year.  :)

Please forgive the yellow-y walls and trim, they're being painted this summer.  This is one of the two boards I've done for the 2014-2015 school year.  As I mentioned above, this is the extra credit project I had students do a couple of years ago.  I plan on switching out these pictures with my new students pictures once we complete this assignment as a project.  I also created the bottom border with different words used to explain why it's important to learn a second language.  Chevron is clearly the theme this year...actually, it's aqua and white chevron mixed with black and white polka dots that will be on my other two boards.

Though I'm re-using the Instagram sign a student created for me a few years back, this board is new all together.  I took inspiration from this Pin but realized I really couldn't do something like that on my door.  So, I took it inside my room and made a little bulletin board of snapshots of Spanish-speaking countries.  This was especially important to me because we'll be traveling to Spain for my FIRST trip abroad with students in 2016 and I wanted to make sure I had something to "sell" the trip to my incoming students.

I still have a lot of work to do in my classroom, but my hands are tied until everything is painted.  Hopefully this will help to inspire you.  What are your bulletin boards looking like??

Revisiting Interactive Notebooks

I haven't been writing in the blog much as I just haven't had the time.  Between a full-time teaching job, a part-time home based business and a rambunctious two year old, I'm surprised I even found time to start the blog, let alone keep up with it.

Anyway, I wanted to take a bit of time to talk about the Interactive Notebooks I mentioned in my last post.  I knew I was onto something when I first starting seeing information all over the net about them, but I never knew they'd turn out to be something my students took seriously and some even cherished.  I've said before that I work in a very blue collar town and, unfortunately, education isn't necessarily the most important thing in many of my students's minds.  I had several students tell me these notebooks not only helped them in my class, but some even told me they liked them so much they plan on using them in the future...even in college!

Here is one of my Spanish II student's notebooks.  She took pride in this and it shows from her cover art.

I haven't worked out all the kinks yet and I know I could do so much more with them, but for the second half of the 2013-2014 school year, I used them and I have noticed a change in retention and an improvement in my students' grades.  I do think the Interactive Notebooks are the reason why.  Let's face it, not every high school student is a good note-taker and not every high school student cares enough to bring materials to class, learn from those materials and then succeed in class and outside of class.  To combat that, I began using the notebooks and I intend to use them next year as well because now my students know where to look for information, notes, vocabulary, etc. (in the Table of Contents).  

I still have one more day left of school this year, but over the summer I'll be working on revamping the notebooks and I'll be sure to post a lot more on this subject.  Let me know, are you using Interactive Notebooks in your classes?  If you are, what are you doing, what do you like, what don't you like?  If you're not, what would you like to know?

Until next time...

Interactive Notebooks

Have you heard of these?  Thanks to Pinterest, I found these gems that have really helped my students.  I just started them in the last couple of weeks, but I've never seen the success with learning AR verbs that I'm seeing from my level one students now.  Usually it takes a while to get the students to catch on, especially with the second and third person forms when subject pronouns are not given.  However, since implementing these notebooks with a foldable AR verbs page last week, I'm seeing a vast improvement on previous years' retention and understanding.  I don't have "better" kids this year, in fact my students this year have proven to be more of a challenge than previous years.  I'm in awe over this right now.  

If you don't know what an interactive notebook is, it's just a composition book that the students use to record notes, practice, vocabulary, etc.  However, it makes great use of color coding things, using foldables, and some (not mine) even focus on left/right side brain functions.  My students are notorious for losing their packets (since I don't really use a textbook) and coming to class with nothing, not even a pen or pencil.  Since last summer, I'd been eyeing up Interactive Notebooks but thought they were too much of an elementary concept.  Finally, a couple of weeks ago it dawned on me that I could use them with my Spanish I classes because what they're really learning is elementary level communication in another language.  So, at the start of the new chapter, we inputted a few important things including chapter vocabulary and a few key verbs (since we didn't start this at the beginning of the year) and then I began my instruction on AR verbs.  When I saw my kids using their AR verbs foldable to complete their work CORRECTLY, I knew I was onto something.  In fact, I wasn't planning on it, but I also introduced it to my Spanish II as well because it's working so well for my Spanish I classes.

Now, let me just say that there are a lot of teachers out there who probably think I should be doing more input based teaching and not necessarily focus on the correct grammar.  I get that and I wish I could.  However, the way my district is set up, this is how we're teaching and this is what works for our kids.  I've tried to sneak in more TPRS based learning and other popular teaching methods, but in a district like mine, it hasn't been working.  So, this is what works for me.  I love activities that get my students to use the language, but when we're just learning how to do something, these Interactive Notebooks are what I've found to be a huge helper.  Do you use Interactive Notebooks?  If you do, please share your experience in the comments section and let me know if you'd like to see more of mine.

Object Pronouns

I hate them....object pronouns that is.  Teaching them has always proven to be quite a task and this year was no different.  The textbook series we use teaches Direct Object Pronouns in Spanish I, but last year we never got to them.  Rather than teaching Direct Object Pronouns, teaching ton of other material, and then teaching Indirect Object Pronouns, I decided to mold my latest chapter around both of the object pronouns.  

In years past, I was able to get through Direct Object pronouns relatively quickly.  This year was not the same as any other year.  I think I spent two weeks or more on the concept.  Knowing that I am very far behind compared to other years, I didn't want to spend that long on Indirect Object Pronouns.  I wound up having to teach much more in English than I wanted, and using way too many English examples for my liking, but it was the only thing that seemed to work this year.  Some years are more difficult than others and this is one of my most difficult in terms of achievement (figures, it's the year the state has implemented SGO's and will be monitoring my students progress more than before...oh well.).

Something I found that worked for me was this sentence construction game I played with my classes. Warning, it is a more of a translation based activity, but as I said before, that's what worked for me this time around.  Students were given a list of sentences in English with indirect objects and they had cards in Spanish and all they had to do was create a sentence for each of the English sentences with an Indirect Object Pronoun.  Believe it or not, this did prove to be a challenge but it was one most of my students were able to conquer.  If you'd like to see if your students are up to the challenge, I'm offering the activity at a discounted price on Teachers Pay Teachers for a limited time.  Just click the image below and enjoy!  

If you've had any success with teaching Direct or Indirect Object Pronouns, I'd love to know what you did, so please share in the comments below.

Valentine's Activity

Every year I try to figure out something new to do for the holidays with my kiddos, but every year Valentine's Day seems to be the one I get stuck on.  My kids have written Acrostic poems more times than I can count and the cards...let's just say I don't do them anymore.  I've gotten some inappropriate cards over the years and my kids overall just don't seem to care for the activity.

So, I searched Pinterest, Edmodo (my teacher groups), Teachers Pay Teachers, and several other of my favorite sites but really didn't come up with much.  That is, until I found an idea on Pinterest that got my wheels turning a bit.  So, I thought about it a bit and finally came up with this idea...a "stained glass" piece of Spanish artwork.

On Friday, my kids are going to make their own "stained glass" Valentines.  Because I know how my students can be, I decided not to allow them to cut their own wax paper or apply their own edging, so I spent a good portion of today making 90 "stained glass" sheets for them to work on. All I did was take my handy cutter from Michaels and cut squares out of the wax paper and then applied some cute washi tape onto the edges to frame it.  I got really lucky finding some black washi tape at Home Goods on clearance for $.50 each and several other colors including the red and white dot for $.99 at AC Moore on clearance as well.  I'm also planning on picking up more Sharpies since most of mine have gone missing this year (ugh).  I found these on Amazon which is the best price I've seen.

I can't wait to see how my students do with this little art project.  Want the instructions and graphics to use with your classes?  Check out my TPT store to purchase them for only $.99!

Parent/Teacher Conferences

Last night I had my annual Parent/Teacher Conferences.  Overall, I'm very pleased with how they went.  I've been doing this for 13 years now, so some years are better than others.  This year was one of my better years.  I didn't have to deal with any angry parents (truth be told, I usually don't) and I was lucky enough to receive some heart warming compliments from the parents of some of my students.

I generally don't look forward to conferences because it's a very long day for me.  I'm usually up at 5:30 in the morning and then don't get home until close to 9 at night.  This year was a little different since we didn't have a typical day of school due to a delayed opening...which was nice.  And, of course, I had a normal, busy day of school and then my meetings at night.  

Since I teach high school, I do not normally see more than 20 parents and last night was no different. Typically the ones I do see are the ones who are on top of their kids and usually are the parents of the better behaved, the ones who I don't really need to see.  Of course that held true last night as well.  But, hey, I can't complain.  I get to praise those students to their parents, some hear it a lot, some don't.  

I wish more parents came out to conferences, but the reality is that they do not.  So, I'm left wondering, why do we still have conferences in this technological age where we post our grades online for parents to inspect {and sometimes argue} any time they want?

Well, it's about time...

I guess it's finally time I did this.  I've been blogging for years for my wedding business, but never decided to delve into the rest of me...my teaching career, my family, crafting and of course, my love for glitter and sparkle!

So, who am I?  My name is Cherin (yeah, thanks, Mom and Dad, for giving me a name that no one can pronounce) - it's pronounce Sha-rin, not Sharon.  Anyway, I'm a 30 something mother of a  rambunctious two year old, wife to an amazing husband who supports everything I do, a high school Spanish teacher for 13 years and owner of a wedding décor business for 8 years.  I do a lot, but nothing more than many others do.

The purpose of this blog originally started out to be just my thoughts on education, teaching Spanish and teaching tips and tricks I've picked up along the way.  However, as I thought about it more, I realized I wanted to incorporate EVERYTHING into this blog...at least for now.  Its primary focus is still going to be education and my teaching life, but don't be surprised if you find a little here and there about the rest of me...since it's all a great, big package!

Today's post will be kept short so I can just start to get the word out there about myself.  But, be sure to check back often to see what's going on with me and what I can offer you.  Until then...take care.

Cherin