Professional Development November

Today's session:

• I learned about two really cool links today: Interactive Fruit Machine works like a slot machine and chooses one name from a list (like a raffle)
• The other cool link I learned about was an anagram name generator. My best anagram name was Beak Drones On.

Hope these are fun for you as well.

Hopes and Fears

The professional development coordinator asked the new teachers to write about our hopes and fears for this, our first year of teaching.

My hope is to "run an organized ship" so to speak. I will be directing two preschool classrooms with 15 students each, teaching three-, four-, and five-year-olds, working closely with student with special needs, inspiring four full-time and one part-time preschool teachers, organizing the logistics surrounding three or more special education specialists, and trying to keep documentation of most of what occurs in the preschool. I would like to be organized in what the students are doing, when they're doing it, why they're doing, how they're doing it and whether it went well or not.

In addition to organized, I would like to "keep my cool". This is my first full school year in the classroom and the sun will set tonight and rise tomorrow no matter what happens in preschool. I would like to take myself less seriously and laugh more at the craziness that preschool tends to be. Life goes on and God is GOOD!

My prayer for the year is for patience and perspective.

From The Mountain Brooke

From The Mountain Brooke comes The Mountain Classroom.

For my professional development class comes a blog about my "first year" teaching experiences. While I took my job last February, I am excited to log a full year in my school, in my position, and complete that renowned full "first year" of teaching.

This is where I will document various professional development experiences, professional reflections and other lessons (taught and learned) over the course of this school year.

This year I will be the director of a preschool in the mountains... with 30 children a day, nearly 40 children enrolled, 4 teaching assistants, a handful of special needs providers, and my position requiring a hat-rack to hold all the hats I am meant to wear... a year of learning and fun certainly in store.

Stay tuned...