A new blog, a new year

After a long hiatus, I am ready to start blogging again about my teaching experiences. For a while, I had a nice blog that documented my experiences teaching middle school music. When I went back to school full time, that went by the wayside, even though I had every intention of documenting my experiences at ASU as well, but that gave way to hours of reading and writing for classes, so writing for fun wasn't really on the top of my list of things to do. Either way, I am back and excited for this new blog and for another year of teaching.

I am so grateful for this upcoming year. I really do love my job at South. It will be my second year here, but I feel like I have been there for ten. Nothing beats an incredibly supportive admin, fantastic colleagues, and the most amazing students. Sure, there are frustrating days-any job can be frustrating, especially when we work with humans. Let's be honest, we are not perfect :) However, I feel like this is my home. I finally feel like I can be who I am as a human. I feel trusted that I am making the right decisions and if I have questions I have countless people I can talk to. It's great!

This blog is going to be a bit of a hybrid in terms of what I talk about. My philosophy on learning and teaching has certainly evolved since I started teaching in 2003, but it has changed immensely since I began my graduate studies at ASU two years ago. Truly, I could not have imagined, even 5 years ago, that I would be at my current job and loving it so much. I have to credit ASU with being so life changing. So, sometimes this blog will delve into that, but today I am writing about organization!!

For years and years, my standard lesson planning tool was a notebook. Each class got a notebook designated for them. Here i would write down my lesson plans (in bulleted form), reminders, to-dos...etc. It worked for me. I also used a calendar for important dates as well. This year, I am attempting to be a bit more tech savvy and will be using Chalk.com, a FREE online planning tool for teachers. One of the reasons that I am trying this out is because I am going to be creating larger project-based units and this will be an easier way for me to embed smaller lessons into the units, and have it all at my fingertips (seriously, what did we do before the cloud?!). Additionally, if I felt it necessary, I can share the lessons with students-which would be incredibly helpful if students are out multiple days. I have been playing around with it and seems pretty user friendly. What planning tools do you use? Please share!

I will do my best to blog once a week. I think that is a good goal for myself. Thanks for stopping by and reading and please feel free to comment below!