Five for Friday: This is why I teach....

I had such a great week! I had my first common plan meetings with all the grade levels at my school, had tons of former students connect with me, and started my second Master's program. I've been wanting to write all week, but I've just been too exhausted. Well, the good news is I get to link up with Doodle Bugs Teaching for their Five for Friday. Here's a look at my last week!

1. Came home from hot yoga on Monday night to these texts:

Andrina was my student during the 2005-2006 school years. Here were are at her 8th grade promotion:

She's such a great kid! I'm so glad she's kept in touch with me over the years...she's now a sophomore and going to school in Southern California. I think this year she's going to be deciding with four year university to transfer to...Andrina, I say make it a PAC 12 school! No matter where you go, I know you'll do great, and if one day, you find yourself in a position where you get to help kids, I know that you will love it just as much as I do. I'm so glad to have you in my life!

Freshman in High School? No matter how old, always happy to reconnect!

2. This week also brought me visits from more former kiddos:

HMS Class of 2011 -

HMS Class of 2013 - 

We got to catch up and I heard from the two freshman how they missed Heritage so much and the Juniors we just so funny - remembering stories from when they were on our team at Heritage.

Stephanie was so surprised to find that I still had her story in my library. This girl is really hilarious. She was remembering back when she had to stay after school in our "Responsibility Room" and she retold an interaction she had with my coteacher, Mrs. Bray:

Stephanie: Mrs. Bray, can I go to the bathroom?
Bray: Umm....how about you wait a few seconds and go when you all leave?
Stephanie: Well, there's still 10 minutes left of class....?

Bray: Oh...now you're doing math? Well maybe if you did your math homework you wouldn't be here!**

**You have to know about our team - while kind of sarcastic, we had awesome relationships with our kids and it just worked. Stephanie retold this story laughing about how Bray would always be so straight faced and strict and kind of making fun of kids. Totally Team Heartless. I def need to write the Team Heartless blog!**

Anyways, Stephanie then went on to tell me how she figured out, "I just couldn't win with you guys. I realized the best thing to do was probably just stop talking!"

Such a great visit with all these kiddos!

3. I started my second Master's this week. It's kind of crazy. I was sitting there in the first class hearing about all the things we had to do and thinking to myself, "Michelle, you can still back out. You can save this until later. Forget about homework and just go to yoga and blog and watch college football on the weekends." The thing is, right now the district will reimburse at 80% and I just can't pass up that kind of financial help with a degree. I would be stupid not to do this now...

So I am doing Educational Administration at Northeastern Illinois University. I kind of picked this college randomly, but I am so glad I ended up in this program. The director of the department said, "We know what the hell we're doing here," and after being with three different instructors on Wednesday night, I can see they are totally right. It's going to be a lot of work, but nothing I can't handle. So, I'll have an M.A. in 2015! Excited for that. I'm going to write more about this on a different blog...so stay tuned!

4. Yesterday I got to teach in a first and third grade classroom and had so much fun. Both were writing workshop sessions but I was so glad one of the reading specialists came with me to first grade because I had no idea how to get the kids to do the writing after they did their ideas with the pictures.

Brainstorming a list of careers for when they grow up...

Kids drawing four reasons why they want that particular career...

And then, my colleague, showed me how to teach first graders to write the sentences to go with their pictures. If I had to do this, I would have just given them a sentence frame and said, "Ok, go write your sentences!" She, however, broke it down so easily for them! I loved learning from Chrsitine!

5. I found this picture on another blog awhile ago and saved it:

There has never been a time I found it more true than right now...all the visits and texts and even learning new things from my peers. I love my job, so much, and even though I think I should be paid more, what I get from it intrinsically - well, you could never put a price tag on that!

Well that's all I've got for this week....have a great weekend!