It's my birthday today and I'm having a sale.  Artistry of Education @ Teachers Pay Teachers is 20% off. We go back to school this week after two weeks off.  I hope you find some materials to help you get back into the routine ..read more

I love sharing my work on Teachers Pay Teachers. Today and tomorrow they are having a sale and everything in my store is 25% off if you use the code CYBER19. If you need a couple of activities for December, check out these freebies. The Case of the Missing Snowman Coded Messages Holiday Version Conversation with a Gingerbread House Have a great week ..read more

Last year some of my students wanted to make comic books for their classmates to read and I wanted to have standards for what I would allow in my classroom so I created a lesson for all of my students. To be honest, that lesson didn't go well.  I allowed students to turn in either a comic book or a story in Google Docs and the comic books didn't look good and the stories didn't accomplish the purpose I set out, so I scrapped the whole thing and started over. This year, I read aloud the first book in the Extraordinary Adventures of Ordinary Boy series and since I had the same request to do c ..read more

My teammate took this picture at the end of the first day of school this year.  I'm smiling and that's a good sign. This is the beginning of year 28. Three years ago, a woman I'd never seen before knocked on my door and asked me if I planned to divorce my husband. I discovered that the life I thought I had wasn't real. I joined a recovery ministry to get help for myself and ended up co-leading it. (This is the story of my life.) My ex passed away suddenly this March. It's been a rough three years. I share this on a teaching blog, not to get sympathy, but to share how experiencing multiple e ..read more

Ft. Dix 1983 -- I didn't share my military experience for a while except when participating in two truths and a lie. People would thank me for being a veteran and I would awkwardly thank them. A friend and fellow veteran has encouraged me the last several years to stand for those who can't.  We teach at the same school so we would both stand during the school assembly.  Students would turn around to stare. I think what I have is survivor's guilt. I didn't make any difficult sacrifices. I left service better off than when I went in. The military paid for my college and gave me some li ..read more

Did you survive Halloween? This year Halloween was on a Thursday, which meant that Friday we had school with overtired, over-sugared students. We weren't supposed to wear costumes, but some students ignored that directive.  Since we changed the dress code, we don't really do anything when students come to school dressed inappropriately. One of my students came dressed as a unicorn.  She refused to math and when I pushed her, she whined, "My biggest problem is that Halloween is on a school day!"  I wanted to agree with her. One year I had a class where costumes were a regular occurrence ..read more

I missed blogging. I had to come back and I'm surprised that after two years of ignoring Artistry of Education, my following has grown. I have had quite a personal journey in the last five years and I may share bits and pieces here, but most of it feels like it belongs in a bad made for TV movie instead of a teaching blog. I went back to teaching the fall of 2016. I spent three years teaching fifth grade in a gifted and talented program.  This year I moved to third grade in the same program. But enough about me... This last week I had student/parent/teacher conferences.  After years ..read more