What's Up In Room 14?

So it's hard to believe that the first half of the year is over.  Where did it go?

Tons of amazing and life changing stuff has happened, and I want to share it here, but in small doses.  Here are some of the topics that I have become more familiar and experienced with in the first half of this year:

• Team Teaching
• Differentiation
• 2nd grade
• Whole Brain Teaching
• Social/ Emotional Education
• Class Meetings
• Waldorf Education and Parenting (My Sam is in a Waldorf school for Kindergarten, and it has changed my life!)
• Soul Care for Teachers and Students
• Showing Up to Love our students
• Rafe Esquith's latest book
• Mentoring Teachers
• Mentoring PreService Teachers

It's crazy that with over 15 years of experience, I am still learning so much!  It's an every single day sort of thing for me!  It's overwhelming and exhausting, and I want to share it with you here.  So call out your peeps and invite them over because I'm bringing this bad boy back!

We ended December with our off, off, off, off Broadway production of The Gingerbread Kid Caper.  It is a school tradition, but it was my maiden voyage.  I worked with my team teacher.  She had the brilliant idea of turning the door area of her room (our performance hall) into a gingerbread house with gumdrops with everyone's name.

The students voted to make gifts for everyone who came to our performance.  (It was totally packed.)  So the week before we made yummy cinnamon ornaments.  Our recipe was 1 cup cinnamon (I know it's a ton.  I bought it at Aldi's for a buck a cup!), 3/4 c. applesauce, and 2 - 3 tablespoons of white glue.  I mixed by hand and rolled it out in a gallon ziploc bag.  I only gave the kids 2 cutters--trees and gingerbread.  It was just right. We used toothpicks to make the holes.  A couple parent volunteers ran sweet little strings through--that red and white bakers string.  Our class smelled great!

Looking forward to sharing so much more.

Happy 2015 to us all!
Where are you learning and growing professionally?

Together We Are Greater Than Our Parts

"Together we are greater than our parts." I think we should be taught to live by and really believe this principle. Here are some ways I've been seeing, experiencing and witnessing this recently:

My magic purple bag and idea notebook are shown above. I never thought I had time for writing down my ideas, but in Flying Lesson by Kelly Rae Roberts, she said she keeps everything in notebooks to begin with. She is such a beautiful and creative artist. I'm recommending her course and ebooks, if you are a creative spirit who wants to make money and not be a starving artist. I can't even tell you how much good stuff I've written in that notebook in the past 2 months--chapter titles for a book. Affirmations for teachers. A complete and detailed outline for my adventurous course The Art and Soul of a Brave Teacher. My mission statement. And so many more goodies that will soon be revealed.

Brave Women's Breakfast for April--finding surprising connections and empowering each others ideas and thoughts.

Finding blogs that unexpectedly propel my secret future ideas forward. Two right now are scoutie girl where tara gentile offers a FREE 8 session course, and if that's good for you, you might also look for other courses/opportunities with Tara Gentile here. And then there is Goddess Leonie down under in Australia. Her 3 part blogs on business really spoke to me.

This week is Spring Break! and even though I'm starting out a little under the weather, do I need to say more? I'm brimming with ideas--if I can just accomplish a fraction of them!

The ripple effects of the Hopeful World course I took in December with Jen Lemen, Odette and Innocent are still being felt on an almost daily basis in my life. I feel such great gratitude for them.

And we are potty training at our house this week. Boy is that a collaborative effort! I'll keep you updated on progress!

Who do you collaborate with? What do you have to offer the world today?