Giving credit where credit is due.

Hello "readers"...if there are any of you out there yet!  This is my teaching blog!

Like many teachers feel at times, I've been in a teaching rut...the same ideas, the same lessons, the same feelings about the content (topics I love and the ones I'd rather skip over)...and then I discovered educator blogs!  I am excited about teaching like I haven't been in a long time.  I'm making new games, changing my instruction to meet learners at different levels and, most often, smacking myself in the forehead and saying "Why didn't I think of that?!"

I've come across and started using so many amazing activities and management techniques that I can't even remember everything I've seen and am finding myself going back to the same sites again and again.  {see "Teachspiration" on the right for my top favorites right now}  I keep sharing these ideas and explaining how my students are responding with excitement and better focus so I've been reposting, emailing, facebooking and tweeting every fun thing I've found.  These ladies are the idea creators...hence, where credit is due.  And then I realized...

All of those strategies I'm sick of using may be new to someone else!  I create new activities, centers and craft projects all the time.  Maybe I can help students I've never - and will never - meet just by sharing my ideas with others.  Teaching is not about hoarding your ideas, it's ultimately about the good of the students. And if bettering education is as easy as sharing, providing and giving away my strategies...why haven't I started before now?!

This may be a short lived or highly successful blog, depending on reader response and the impact it seems to be making.  It'll be slow-going at first and I'll add ideas as I figure out how :) but for now, come along with me as I keep my students interested in learning by first being excited about it myself.