Hello!
My name is Heather and I was just recently offered a job teaching third grade in North Carolina. I'm from NJ. Clearly this has caused a bit of a whirlwind as I start 2 weeks into August. In the meantime I need to wrap up my life in NJ and MD (where my college friends are) figure out how to afford to move on an hourly salary from JoAnn and figure out how one plans the first day of school. As I'm sure you (if anyone reads this) can imagine this has led to Pinterest being my favorite procrastination tool.

Oh Pinterest...

Anywho, a little bit about me. Like I said my name is Heather. I'm 27 and was born and raised in the great state of NJ. Lived at the shore when I was a kid (No, I do not have a snookie bump, tan, get in fights a lot, or talk like that) and now live in the suburbs of Philadelphia. I had heard that there were many openings in NC just by the beach and a Marine base and decided I may as well drive down for a job fair. At the fair I spoke with my new principal and the rest is history. I was offered a position teaching third grade. This is super exciting as I student taught third grade and third graders have a special place in my heart.

So far I've found all kinds of cute resources for the classroom. I got the Trend Owl Stars Job Chart and Study Habits bulletin board sets with a gift card given to me by my mentor teacher. I plan on making my room owl themed, which seems to be a trend, but I actually do love owls in general. I like that they are a symbol of wisdom, they remind me of Harry Potter and, as a parrot owner, I like that they are birds lol. I also got a bb kit with pal trees a parrots. I plan on putting them near my Reading Island (idea stolen from Pinterest) and then adding a Twitter Board so the kids can tweet about what they're reading or learning. I also just found an idea to use QR codes on hw to explain directions to parents or post them around school so kids can scan them for extra credit. I believe that at the school I'm going to be working for I can write a grant to get I Pads and MacBooks in the classroom as well as the Smartboards and Computers that are already there. I plan on writing for the grant as soon as I can get comfortable with my kids because there are so many WONDERFUL ways to use technology in the classroom.

I am not a stranger to blogging. In high school and college I owned three domains. One was Lucky-You.org, which was my first website. This was how I learned to create web graphics and code HTML. I also owned Cinderella-Story.net for many years and averaged 1000 hits a week. I also owned a writing portfolio called Words.org where I hosted short stories written by myself and friends. I have been without the time and proper photo editing software for a couple of years but recently downloaded Gimp to make stuff for my classroom and thought I might give the whole teaching blog thing a try.

This blog is a space for me to document and reflect on my first year of teaching. I imagine it will be helpful to me as a teacher to write things down and see how my kids react to things and how I react to them. I am also sure that more experienced teachers... heck probably any teacher... will find it entertaining. I plan on also doing some crafty things (maybe a made it monday) and book reviews. I little of my book background. I worked at Border's for about three years as the Kids, Independent Reader, and Teen specialist meaning I read most of the books and could generally match a kid to a book that was on level (thanks to my teacher training) and would keep them engaged. After Border's closed I took a job at Books-A-Million doing the same thing.

ANYway, it's almost 1 a.m. and I am sleepy.
Goodnight!