This teacher self-cares by spending a Saturday with this cutie!

Today was one of those teaching days where your heart is exploding with joy for one student, breaking with another, and stretching around a couple more. It’s exhausting. And it’s challenging. But it is what I love. Teaching is never the same day twice.

Future comic book artists, future boardroom collaborations, and future engineers. Otherwise known as indoor recess.

You know you work with the best when this shows up at your communal virtual work station - with cups!!! Today was a great day so hopefully RedM&M and I don’t agree about the looooonnnngggg week.

Students as young as fifth grade and younger, are dealing with serious peer pressure. With access to technology at all times, young kids are doing things we have taught and prayed they wouldn’t during the witching hours when they could use such precious sleep.

We visited the Plant House in Charlotte this weekend. Always a fun time with this crew.

While visiting my son in Las Vegas, I told waitstaff that a lady left a pocketbook. She said, “What?” “Pocketbook. She left her pocketbook.” My son turned to waitstaff, “Purse.” Then looked at me, “Momma. No one around here knows what a pocketbook is.” Bless my Southern roots!

This book deserves not only the Newberry 2021 but ALL the awards! Wow. Such a powerful story of acceptance, culture, and family.

Twinning with my intern. As the saying goes, when you teach with someone long enough... She only has one and half more weeks. Not willing to let her go. She has been very special.

THERE ARE NO BAD KIDS! Some of our students’ lives have been like a choose your own adventure book and they are lost and stuck on the wrong page. They may have no idea how to get back on the right page. Our efforts can help change a student's life trajectory! #maslowbeforebloom

Give students space to solve their own problems. At the beginning of the year the staff worried about what the kids would do with their masks during recess. Kids are smarter when we let them have the freedom to problem solve.

Students will ask to store a portion of their lunch in my classroom refrigerator. That’s fine. Today a child asked. Sure. She put 5 bite-sized KitKats and 1 full-sized in the frig. Through the day she traveled to frig and grabbed candy. By the end of the day they were all gone.

I was able to hug my daddy’s neck today for the first time since quarantine began. 🥰❤️🥰

Even though my children are in their 20s, I still get all the feels when they have come to school with me and I see this note the next morning.

Going over testing strategies and decided to get a little creative. We decided C might be the answer so we kept it in a safe place while we looked at the other choices.

Tried to get this hair closer to Jesus today. Apparently I needed it higher.

This is truth! 💯

It’s the last day of our standardized testing and we are all still smiling.

Conducting a phonics lesson today, I looked to my left and the student asked me if I could read this. #yougotme #studentschoolsteacher

In reading we talked about settings in books, meaning a time and a place. If there isn’t a specified date in a text, you look at past, present or future. I learned from my 5th graders that any text preCovid is considered The Past. They aren’t wrong.