You Can Take the Teacher Out of the Classroom, But You Can’t Take the Classroom Out of the Teacher

I’ve been an educator for 11 years.  And like most educators, my whole world revolved around teaching.  Fortunately for me, my now husband and I met right before summer break.  Otherwise, I don’t think he would have stuck around.  During those first two months, he was amazed by this carefree, loving-life, spontaneous girl.  We went to bars and baseball games during the week and stayed up late talking.  Then pre-planning and the beginning of the school year arrived, and he was introduced to early bedtimes, 5am alarm clocks, cardigans, and conversations that only involved my students or their parents.  For the next nine months, he reminisced about the girl he met during the summer and wondered if she’d return.  When summer came again, he remembered why he fell in love with me, but dreaded the upcoming school year.  When I overheard him compare my nine months of teaching to a woman going through a pregnancy every single year, I realized that I had to make a change- for his sanity as well as my own well-being.

Luckily for my husband, I took a step away from being a classroom teacher and began a new role as teacher leader.  While this position consisted of teaching small groups of students and also coaching and training the other teachers, it somehow provided me with more time to focus on my home life.  Right after we got married, my husband accepted a job in Perth, Australia where we are currently living.  Here, I am even further removed from the classroom teacher role, but I am working part-time doing relief teaching (or substitute teaching).  I say further removed because I do not stay up late grading papers or lesson planning.  I don’t go to sleep making lists in my head or worrying about my students.  I show up the morning of and read what I’m supposed to do that day.  And at 3 o’clock, I pack up and go home.

But even though I’m not in full-on teacher mode, I still think about ways to improve lessons or resources that would help out other teachers.  That is why I’ve been creating the resources I always wanted to create during the school year, but never had the time. I learned so much in my role as teacher leader, but then never got to fully share all my knowledge and resources with others.

So that is the main purpose of this blog: to share resources I create and strategies I love. I will include links to my TPT site where you can download all the resources I discuss.  I’ve also gained much insight from teaching abroad and plan to share my adventures as the teacher with the American accent in Western Australia.  So if you just need a lighthearted story to make your day a little brighter, you’ve come to the right place.  This is my first time writing a blog, so feel free to comment and give me some feedback.  I’d love to hear what you have to say.  Thanks for reading, and I hope you return.