The first of many

Let's start with a little history. I was born April 28th, 1984. As far back as I can remember, I have loved teaching. When I was in kindergarten, I would white out the answers on my work and give it to my brother. I had my parents buy me handwriting paper and a chalk board easel so we could play school. I remember being in Brownies with my friend Anne and we made plans to open our own school in the future where she would work with the younger kids and I would work with the older ones. I mean, there were times when I wanted to be the first female president or a marine biologist and I didn't even go to college with the original intention of majoring in education (I went to theatre management.) My friend Charlie told me to get a job as a substitute teacher in Carroll County for when I am home from college since it was a sweet gig. I went for it and it was okay. For the most part I was just giving kids busy work to do. There were a few classes where I knew the teachers and they gave me actual lessons to do with the kids (mostly theatre, english, and social studies classes.) One day I got a job at Carroll Springs (a special education school where the students are in the large wheel chairs) and it was decided. This was the best day of work I ever had. I went back to school as soon as my winter break was over and declared a double major in Theater and Secondary Education.

So I did 4 years at American to get my B.A. in Theatre and Education and then one more year there to get my M.A. in Special Education for learning disabilities. At first I just went for the masters to make myself more hire able. I wanted to be a high school drama teacher, but I definately had a thing for individualizing education for all and using the arts to teach. I was blessed enough to study under the late Sally Smith and do an internship at the Lab School of Washington. It was a fantastic experience. I currently teach high school special education and I love it.

Basically I wanted to start a blog to have a place to post my ideas for differentiation and sprucing up lessons for high school students. I have done a lot of searching online for ideas and resources for lessons across content areas and there is not nearly enough out there for high school teachers. There are sites and resources galore for elementary teachers. I came across one other blog entitled "I want to teach forever" and it had several ideas and resources on it, so I thought I would create one too. I will try to update as often as I can. Feel free to comment with your thoughts, ideas, or questions. Feel free to take any ideas and try them in your classroom or share some of your ideas with me. That's all for now.