Blown Away!

I have had the best week ever.  I am BLOWN AWAY by the students, staff, teacher leaders, and administrators at Linn-Mar Schools.

This week I had the opportunity to work in kindergarten, first grade, and third grade classrooms at several elementary schools in our school district.  While I taught Jolly Phonics, Journeys, Guided Reading, Daily 5, and Everyday Math, classroom teachers had an opportunity to give assessments to students, or leave their classroom and observe model teachers in action.  Model teachers are a key part of our Teacher Leadership Program at Linn-Mar.  There are twenty model teachers Pre K-12 that have been selected to keep an open-door policy and welcome staff in to observe their teaching.  As I visit more classrooms each week, I'm convinced we have hundreds of model teachers.  I'm so impressed with what I have seen.  I'm loving my new position, but after being in our amazing Linn-Mar classrooms, I'm over the moon with new ideas in management, classroom organization, room arrangement, transition phrases, catchy songs, and Whole Brain Teaching, I am looking forward to using these amazing ideas and strategies someday.

As I listen to stories of staff who have been visiting classrooms and observing teachers, and as I observe them myself, I am blown away by the teaching and management in these classrooms.  Why? We are only three weeks into the school year and I have witnessed some amazing routines in action. This tells me as an educator that our teachers are extremely organized, well-planned, and have spent plenty of hours in the off season to be ready for game day..... a.k.a the first day of school.  Thank you everyone for allowing us to come into your classroom and learn from you.  We have so much to offer each other.

I want to give a shout out to all the teachers who allowed me to observe and teach in their classrooms the past two weeks.  I also want to give a shout out to our State Legislature and Department of Education for the opportunity to implement Teacher Leaders in our School.  We have so much to learn from each other.  Thank you for allowing us to be better in our craft.