The Best Year of My Teaching Career

First, note the difference between January 3rd of this year, and that of last year:

A difference of 51 degrees - holy cow!

Now let's look at an even bigger difference between this year and last year...

Last year (2013-2014) was hands down the best year of my teaching career. After the horrid year I'd had before, I fell in love with teaching all over again. My kids were fantastic, the school I was working at was great, the kids were amazing, I felt renewed confidence and energy... and did I mention the kids?

On June 2nd I turned in my signout sheet, my gradebook, my lesson plan book, my summer maintenance requests, my keys. That day I walked out with the wonderful feeling that I'd had the best year possible. And that wonderful feeling of freedom - not the one of being done with the grading, the planning, the paperwork, the phone calls, the test scores, the data. I had the one of simply being done. That day I quit teaching.

We all know how high the turnover rate is for the teaching profession, and chances are many of you are either seriously considering or beginning to consider leaving teaching yourself. Over the next few days I'll share my personal and professional reasons for my decision, and what life on "the other side" has been like for me.

Amazing Resource on Food Supply Disparities

Foods and nutrition teachers, here is an excellent article to use when discussing hunger, the global food supply, food insecurity... anything along those lines.

7 photos that reveal what families eat in one week

This article contains seven different pictures from around the world, each with a family sitting behind an entire week's worth of the food that they eat. There is a short blurb below each photo describing the family's food situation. This is an excellent visual and text-light way to help students grasp the disparities in access to food around the world - fantastic attention-getter!

"Anonymous" Teachers

I follow a LOT of teacher blogs, and a LOT of teachers on Twitter, and it's interesting to look at the differences between the ones that are "anonymous" and those that choose to reveal their identities.

Going all in is risky business, so props to those of you who take that full on. All it takes is for one parent/community member/school board member/whathaveyou to take issue with something you post, and it may very well be career-ending. Going "anonymous" gives you a little more freedom, especially when you need to share a less than sunshiney story about your classroom.

I keep placing "anonymous" in quotes because hopefully we all realize that there is no such thing on the web. Sure, I do all of the common sense things - don't give my full name (or use students' real names), edit my name and face out of pictures, edit students' faces out of pictures, so on and so forth. But, realistically, if someone really wanted to, they could find the real me.

And sometimes being the small world that it is people just stumble onto you. I've had people who have subbed for me find this blog ("I recognize those monkeys! And the stencils on that wall!"); I've had students say "Hey, I saw folder holders that looked exactly like these on Pinterest !" (though luckily they didn't follow the pin to my blog); it even turns out that my current boss's sister is a FACS teacher who reads this blog. And I know that this doesn't just happen to me - one of my favorite blog posts this year was when two bloggers I follow met serendipitously at JCrew - Sneaker Teacher and Roxanne from Books That Heal Kids.

We should all be careful, whether using legit names or not. At the same time, there are several posts and tweets (tweets especially) I read every week that are absolutely laugh out loud hilarious, but things you would NEVER say if your real name was attached to it. We all need people to be that brutally honest at times, because teaching is not all rainbows and kittens. It is hard. It is frustrating. It is overwhelming. And heartbreaking, and maddening, and infuriating. And the only people who get wanting to pull-your-hair-out-and-scream-and-cry-but-you're-too-exhausted-so-you'll-just-slink-away-and-find-an-alternative-to-the-copy-machine are others who have experienced the same thing. And the only people who get why you're so excited in August after what happened last year are others who have experienced the same thing. And the only people who get how much you still love that kid six and a half years later after he lifted a ball of yarn from your classroom and weaved it up and down the staircase blocking everyone and creating a total fire hazard are others who have experienced the same thing. And the only people who get how sad you still are five years later that that same kid didn't survive that car accident are others who have experienced the same thing.

So "anonymous" or not, do protect yourself, but do continue to share what's real - the good and sometimes also the bad. We all need to know that there are others out there who get it.

Ah, Young Love

Here's a discussion I overheard in the hallways of our local community college. To set the scene: Boy is trying to hit on girl who clearly isn't interested. Girl begins to lose patience.

Girl: How old are you?
Boy: Twenty. How old is you?
Girl (with attitude): Twenty four.
Boy: What dat mean?
Girl: A lot. Goodbye.

Poor guy was crushed, but I had to cheer for her to be smart enough to walk away.

Protect Your Handiwork

Here's another tip from the department of the obvious, yet took me a while to figure out that I actually needed to implement this procedure. I have these beautiful stand mixer covers I made for my kitchens, which were constantly getting mucky because the kids would just toss them wherever. I tried to get them in the habit of placing them on top of the microwave and out of harm's way, but to no avail - and somehow even those that followed through still managed to muck them up. So I started requiring that at the beginning of any lab involving the stand mixers, the covers had to go into a box by the ingredient table as soon as they were taken off of the mixers.

Problem solved. After the first lab with this new procedure, I never had to tell them again, someone would always remind the rest of the class to do it. Including me when I forgot to set a box out. Such a simple thing, but it works!

Milk Cartons, Time, and Space

Piggy-backing on earlier posts about organizing your ingredients table and making egg cartons more manageable, here's a tip for milk: save a couple smaller containers. Having representatives from several kitchens waiting around for the gallon jug not only uses up precious time, it's a spill waiting to happen. I divide the milk up into the smaller sizes so that more people can use them AND spills are much less likely.

Note: make sure the kids know you are reusing older containers, so they don't squawk about the old dates.

Great One Minute Video for Foods/Nutrition Classes!

Last night the hubs treated me to a movie date ("Mockingjay!"), and one of the pre-film promos was this fantastic Weight Watchers commercial that would be perfect for Foods/Nutrition classes in so many ways! Where I would most likely use it would be at the beginning of the year, when we analyze the different reasons that we eat and the various influences on what we eat. However, it would be great to use when discussing snacking, emotional eating, eating habits, eating disorders... any number of things! Check it out here:

Note: if the embedded video doesn't work for you here, you can follow this link to view it on YouTube.

Healing Hands

This particular post falls under the category of “Taking Care of You.” This time of year our hands tend to get really torn up: between the extra cooking and baking of the holidays, making homemade gifts, and constantly washing our hands to fight the inevitable attack of teenage germs (not to mention all the usual hands-on work of our jobs AND the cold weather), probably none of us are worthy of hand model status at the moment.

Over the years I’ve tried all sorts of lotions, tried wearing gloves whenever possible, tried getting someone else to do all of the work (kidding… maybe…), but none of these ever seemed to make any impact.

Until I tried Aquaphor:

Note: I am not getting any money from Eucerin, sad to say; I just really think this is a helpful product. This stuff WORKS. It is an ointment, not a lotion (think Vaseline), so it has a different feel and a different consistency than lotion. However, I’ve found it absorbs almost as quickly as lotion, is non-greasy, and works so much better. Not only does it heal hands, but it also acts as a kind of sealant. When I remember to use it about half an hour or so before doing a lot of baking, at the end of the process my hands are significantly less dry than when I don’t. A container is more expensive than regular lotion, but I've found that it lasts much longer, so the money spent evens itself out.

So, if you too are a hand abuser fighting dry and chapped skin, give it a try – I saw a dramatic difference within my first week of using it, and I’m confident it will also make a difference for you!

And Eucerin, some coupons would be really nice!

Uncle Ben's Responds

Hey, Uncle Ben's actually responded to my objection from Friday!

Gah! Why We Need Home Ec, Part 3

That is NOT A DRY MEASURING CUP, Uncle Ben's!

You can't measure the importance of teaching them to cook? How about the importance of teaching them to measure? And shame on you Food Network Magazine for printing this!