I'm linking up with the Secondary Smorgasbord crew to shed a little light on what my family and I like to do once school officially ends.
Here are my two boys headed off to the last day of school last year.
I know that for me, summer is all about taking time to relax and refocus. Since my husband is a teacher, we get to have a lot of family bonding / getting on everyone's nerves time...and this is what we like to do...
Swim
We sign up for a community pool every year...and try to spend as much time in the water as possible.
Travel
I'm off to Vegas for the Teachers Pay Teachers Conference in July. (I'll be presenting on a panel for starting sellers.) Then, as a family we're hoping to take a trip to Boston.
Golf
Yes...that's right, I've decided if I can't beat 'em, I better join 'em. My boys love to golf and I'm determined to love it by the end of the summer, too!
Goof Off
Summer is all about letting loose and having some fun...
Celebrate the season
From parades to fireworks to baseball games...we're all about maximizing the season!
To tell you the truth, when Sherri (from Literary Sherri) and I first brought the idea of a regional TpT meet-up to our local meet-up group, I was kind of thinking that maybe we could get about ten people to come. Then...through some amazing teamwork from the event organizers on our WNY TpT Team...this happened...
Oh, and this...
Back Row: Robyn, Amy (yes, TpT Amy), Sherri, Ellen, Susan, and Selma
Front Row: Jen (THE Jen Jones) and me!
Not Pictured (but super critical to the success of the event) Karry from Yay for PreK, Lora from Kinders in New York and Donna from Worth a Thousand Words.
And, what a meet-up it was!
But...before I spill all the juicy details of the event...perhaps I should start at the beginning. Our goal from the start was to gather other TpT-ers and spend time really, truly learning from one another. We wanted to plan a day of collaboration with tons of tips and tricks for how to grow our TpT businesses. So, for several months we worked together to plan this event. There was a bunch to do - registrations, payment coordination, communication with attendees, gathering donations (over $10,000 worth), making and designing the decor, creating an agenda with tons of meaningful content, stuffing goodie bags, preparing the giveaway prizes and coordinating with one another. Thank goodness there was a team of us! Thanks Lora, Karry, Selma, Susan, Ellen, Robyn, Donna, and Sherri!
About the Donations
Teachers (and TpT teacher-authors) love free stuff, so a couple of us took on the task of asking a lot of people - businesses, etsy artists, friends, and national companies to contribute to this event. And the coolest part was that sometimes they said, "Yes!" (See a listing of some of the donors below.) I'm not kidding when I say, that the overwhelming response from those who donated was "We LOVE teachers!" How cool is that? On the day of the event, the swag was overflowing...
Goodie bags for each attendee.
Here's what was inside the goodie bags. Do you see that red card on the bottom right? There's a link on the back of it that provides access to over 3,000 pages of digital donations from fellow TpT teacher-authors. That's right, our own community of teacher-authors donated to the event. Pretty amazing!
Teachers Pay Teachers donated a tote bag and water bottle to each attendee...and Acco donated 2 project notebooks that we stuffed inside each bag. Plus, TpT sponsored the breakfast! Thanks and Yum!
The giveaways were epic. Hue donated 3 iCreate Hue document cameras that were raffled off. Plus, each person's name was pulled from a bag throughout the day.
Then, they came up to the table and picked a prize. The prizes, were amazing...gift cards to TpT, a 1/2 hour Skype session with Rachel Lynette, handcrafted awesomeness from Etsy artists, themed gift baskets donated by each WNY TpT Team member, and so, so much more!
Our Special Guests
We were all so humbled by the fact that Jen Jones from Hello Literacy offered to not only attend our event, but also present to the entire group and host 6 round table discussions...oh, and she did it all on her own time and dime. Yes, you read that correctly. Jen came to the Birds of a Feather Flock Together meet-up and shared all her insight with each of us and she didn't ask for a thing. I loved her before I met her, but let me just say that having spent time with her on Friday and sitting in on her presentations on Saturday, I have even more respect, love, and gratitude for her. She's humble and smart and real and talented. Do you use her fonts? If not, get over to Hello Literacy right now. This lady's got it going on!
Another amazing addition to the event was Amy from TpT. Have you met Amy before? If so, you already know that she's warmer, kinder, brilliant-er, funnier, and awesome-er than you can even imagine. Amy's the type of person who makes you feel like you've been friends with her for years after just a two-minute exchange of words. I love that! I also love that her passion for TpT and the teacher-authors that work so hard absolutely oozes out of her. She's a careful and thoughtful listener and a sweet and beautiful person. She participated in every aspect of the day. I didn't think I could love her more, but somehow, I do!
All the attendees! I'm nuts about all the people I got to meet on Saturday. I love that they put their lives on hold to grow a TpT community (#tptflock 4eva!). I love that they came into a room of strangers and opened their minds and hearts to one another. I love that they shared their experiences and ideas so that we all could do a better job. It's pretty invigorating to be around 50+ people who are passionate about the exact same thing as you. If you're like me, you try to explain TpT to other people (and their eyes glaze over), so being in a room with people who know about custom categories and thumbnails and site-wide sales is just plain awesome! Oh, and I loved that there was a whole spectrum of experience in the room. There were people who were just starting their stores and people who are total TpT rock stars...and the best part...you couldn't tell the difference!
I have so much more to tell you about the event...but that's coming in another blog post! Until then...here's a couple more pics to hold you over.
I've been a huge fan of the TpT married team of teacher-authors behind the store Created for Learning for a long time. Fortunately for me...and you...they agreed to share some of their true confessions with us. I think you'll find them to be candid and funny and down-right daring (wait until you see Lisa's video).
in October of 2012 in the month after Jonathan finished writing his 4th unpublished young adult novel. We heard about TpT for months and had colleagues suggest we put our stuff up there and see what happens. So we did. We started off with the free account, and after 2-3 weeks decided we should get the full membership. We just kept polishing up all the resources we’d made over the years, making them super awesome, and the store grew and grew. It continues to humbly blow away our expectations.
we like things with more than one meaning. Our resources were created for learning and we, as people, were created for learning, to always be curious about our world and those we share it with. So in a way . . . our store title is (1) our stuff and (2) us.
Our store is filled with...
awesomeness.
OK, OK, we have mostly resources for secondary English and Language Arts. Our big sellers are the novel units that Jonathan has created. You can buy all the activities for a novel in one teaching package or each activity can be purchased separately.
Our favorite part about creating resources is...
Jonathan: . . . harvesting the thematic truths, imagining the journey students need to travel to learn them, then creating engaging, good-looking resources to get them there.
Lisa: . . . visually organizing something to help students understand specific concepts. I also like things to be just the way I want it. :-)
In terms of TpT, we'll never forget when...
Jonathan: . . . we went to the 2014 TpT Conference in Vegas. We learned so much and got to see the widespread awesomeness of the TpT community. We also got to feel a few of those moments when close communities feel a little like junior high with the insiders and outsiders, and we decided we wanted to do everything we could to help people feel like part of the family.
Lisa: . . .My answer is the same as Jonathan’s but with the added bit of me realizing that I had gifts to add to running our store. It switched from me feeling like TpT was Jonathan’s thing because he was making so much and still in the classroom, to us being partners. I better understood parts of TpT, like customer service, collaboration, and marketing, that I could do even while being home with our kids.
Where in the world do you live now? Have you ever lived anywhere else? If so, where?
We’ve lived in Southern California within a half-hour of Disneyland for most of our lives.
Jonathan was born in Germany and lived there the first two years of his life while his father taught English. Lisa grew up in the same town she lives now. She lived at Hume Lake Christian Camps for a month during high school when she attended a leadership camp and then she lived there for a summer in college when she worked there. This is where Jonathan proposed to her.
We are moving this summer to Charlotte, North Carolina. We are excited to experience some seasons for a change.
After someone meets you, what do you hope they say about you once you leave the room?
Jonathan: . . .He has such amazing knees. Okay, seriously, I wish they would say, “That guy really cares.” Lisa: . . .She is such a loving person.
If you had a day completely free of obligations, what would you do?
Jonathan: Free of parenting obligations too? In that case, sleep in, romantic adventure, eat breakfast at the infinity pool bar and grill, read a book and sip some kind of mango yummysauce drink, skydive, lunch, take a nap, romantic adventure . . . err . . . it’d probably really work better with romantic adventure, then nap . . . jet ski through some caves and between small islands and watch the sunset from somewhere epic, eat dinner by fire pits, drink some more mango (or maybe berry, this time) yummysauce drinks, watch a movie projected on a screen that looks out over the ocean, romantic adventure, go to sleep.
Lisa: Sleep. If I was not tired, I would go somewhere pretty, probably the beach, to walk and do some quiet time in a shaded area because I hate sunscreen. I’d eat some tacos or pizza and read a book with an ice-blended drink. I’d meet up with friends to share dinner and “play games” but really I just enjoy being a part of deep conversations about our life curiosities and other funny thoughts about our quirky interests and stages of life. If it was a kid-focused day and money didn’t matter, we would take a train to San Diego and go to Legoland since we have never been before. We would sleep there in the Legoland hotel in the pirate-themed room so my girls could pretend to be Tinkerbell.
Describe the worst haircut or outfit of your life.
Jonathan: All growing up, my mom cut my hair. Just one of the ways families save money when your dad is a private school principal and your mom is a stay-at-home. Most of the time, my mom was pretty doggone fab, but his one time...let’s just say that I was in high school in the era of Vanilla Ice and an accidental line buzzed into the side of your head was not as cool as it sounds.
Lisa: I’m am a child of the 80s and early 90s and most of my outfits were pretty bad then and so was my hair. The black and white outfit was one that I got very memorably bullied for wearing. The students in my class called it a cow outfit. I thought the outfit was so fun and still wore it anyway because the only thing that connected it to looking like a cow were the colors so I thought the kids were dumb.
If you had to enter a talent contest, what talent would you showcase?
Jonathan: Ask me in high school and I totally would have turned my belly button inside out. These days though, I’m pretty good at lots and super-talented at little that’s interesting. I think I’d create a kid’s story on the spot.
Lisa: I am mediocre when it comes to typical talent show talents. So maybe a theatrical read-aloud of a picture book or showing off my baby-wearing abilities. OO, OO, wait, I can roll my stomach like a belly dancer but I think it looks much cooler when I’m pregnant. (Check out the video evidence! It was filmed the day before our second child was born. EDITOR'S NOTE: It's incredible!)
Name two things on your bucket list.
Jonathan: Beer w/ Bono & travel to Israel and see the world Jesus walked in while he was here on Earth
Lisa: I don’t have a bucket list. . . I’ll pick two now: Learn enough Spanish to feel comfortable having a basic conversation and travel with Jonathan and our daughters to London to stay for a few weeks (and hopefully many other international places).
What do you want to be when you grow up?
Jonathan: A wise, active, and fun-loving world traveler. I want to mentor young dudes in life, women, God, those crucial life skills no one talks about, and Otter Pop flavors.
Lisa: A wise, active, and fun-loving world traveler. I want to be the old grandma lady that gives lingerie at wedding showers and brings up the topics people are often thinking about but that are too taboo to say. I want to be able to dance whenever I feel the urge even if I become the star of a viral video.
Well, that's the end of Lisa and Jonathan's true confessions! If you want to learn even more about them and see what they're up to, be sure to head over to Created for Learning!
P.S. If you're a TpT teacher-author and you're ready to share your true confessions email me at brainwavesinstruction@gmail.com.
Thanks to Jackie at Room 213 for organizing this blog hop!
It's so true, right? When I think about my own experiences as a learner, the times that I made the most profound instructional gains were when I felt that my teacher truly knew me and believed in me as a student. That's why I believe that the best learning always occurs when students feel a connection with their teacher...when they know that their teacher cares about them as a person.
If you're reading this, then you already know that students don't care a bit about what they are being taught until they know that their teacher cares a bit about them. Any teacher checking out a blog about learning and instruction is one who is invested in their profession. So, the ideas that I'm about to share are probably not new...in fact, I bet you have a few ways that you build caring and compassion into your own instruction that I'd love to read about! However, I hope that these ideas remind us all about why we became teachers in the first place.
We love learning.
We love students.
And showing them both each day is what matters.
How often do you hand back a piece of student work to see them quickly scan for the grade and then toss it into a folder...or worse the garbage? That's why I love writing students fun notes on their papers. Instead of "good job," I like to write comments that show I know and care about them, like "Wow, use figurative language in your writing as well as you shoot 3-pointers!"
I'm a huge fan of making positive phone calls home. They're such a wonderful way to build positive relationships with students and their families. You can read all about it HERE.
I love watching my students excel in the classroom, but for many of them their true talents are on display at the band concert, or on the soccer field, or during the school play. That's why I try to reserve at least one night a month to attend students' extracurricular activities. There's nothing better than the connection between that student and I the next day in class!
I've always heard that the best way to get your own children to listen is to whisper your message within their earshot to someone else. I like applying the same technique with students. When talking with colleagues I love to brag about individual students within earshot of them. Spreading the word about the great things kids are doing is super important!
When the bell rings at the start of each class, I'm at the door to greet my students. I love giving them the impression that I can't wait to see them. It sets the tone for a caring classroom before the class even begins!
On the first day of school I let my students know that I will be holding them to the highest behavior and academic standards. I want them to achieve beyond anything they have ever done before. That means that there are classroom management procedures in place. It also means that they might be redoing their work to meet my standards. This is the "tough love" part of showing them that I care.
OK, this may be obvious, but I'll never forget when I was student teaching and my supervising teacher kept telling her students day-after-day how much she loved them. I was in awe of this. I've followed her lead and tell my students how much I care about them and my profession all the time...even when I'm stressed and tired and overwhelmed.
I love creating homework and classwork with students' actual names in the assignments. I'm careful to make sure that their names are associated with positive things and connected to activities and hobbies they care about. It's not hard to do and kids love seeing their names in print.
Celebrating students' learning and achievements is super important. I love to do it in little ways like hanging their work around the classroom and in big ways like planning events to celebrate their learning.
As you know, teachers are human, too. One of the ways that I show students that I care about them is by trusting them with stories from my own life. I share information about my family, my life successes, and times when I have struggled. Sharing builds important connections.
At the end of the (school) day, teaching is not about standardized tests, curriculum requirements, paperwork, data, and reports. I think it's about creating an environment where students want to learn because they know that their teachers care about their profession...and most importantly each of them.
I love learning about my students through their own work as well. Units like this MEMOIR Writing Unit and this NARRATIVE Writing Unit are an awesome way to engage students in their learning and gain insight into their lives at the same time!
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