The Elementary Entourage: What I Love About Teaching

Hey everyone!!

I hope you are having a warm and lovely February! I so love this post. It's really nice to stop, take a breath, and think about what I really love about teaching. There are so many things that I do love...love notes and hugs from my students, positive feedback from parents and my principal's praise. The smell of my classroom, crayons, and erasers are unforgettable, and I love walking into my classroom in the morning no matter how tired I am. Oh my...these things are burned into my heart! It makes every hard day worth it!!!!

BUT....the one thing that I love the most about teaching is actually kind of mundane.

PLANNING A UNIT!!!

I LOVE sitting down, researching my material, and creating an entire unit for my grade level and my students. We all know there is a lot of planning that takes place before we present a lesson. But to the students...it's magic!

Okay...okay...there are times I don't always LOVE it. I get frustrated with it and wonder what in the world am I going to do with it. I think HOW in the world can I make this better for me and my students? How can I give them the very best possible learning experience and where in the world am I going to find learning resources to give them that experience? (TPT of course!)

This year I was fortunate enough to work on our Project-Based Learning unit for our grade level. We decided as a grade level to help create a beautiful environment for our school by cleaning up the flowers beds, and planting flowers and seeds. To do that we had to learn about plants, what plants need to grow, and how plants grow from seed to plant.

For me, the author of our lesson plans and schedules, it was very daunting at times. I had to make sure we had significant lessons, proper activities, and garden time to ensure our students received the best hands-on learning experience. They had to get dirt on their hands and they had to love it. Challenging!!

It was hard and it was sometimes a challenge finding just what we needed for our unit! Sometimes the cutesy craftivities were just not enough and sometimes there was just not enough time for the in-depth lessons. There were outside resources I had to use and thankfully, we have friends at school to direct us! I had ALL of our teachers in on the lessons. From our science lab teachers to our art teachers...they all took part in it! Stressful!

We learned about plant parts, the jobs of plant parts, and the life cycle of a plant. We had to be experts on the matter! It wasn't easy going out to work in the hot sun to pull weeds, digging in the dirt, and finding the time to do it.

But in the end...everyone worked hard to make it happen and the results were beautiful. Our principal was so proud of our efforts and we were, too. Students and teachers really loved working in the garden!! WOW! My students still talk about it. Here are some of our photos...take a look!

FROM THIS...