Friday, September 27, 2013

A Day in the Life...of a Teacher {9.24.13}

It was seriously hard to take pictures of my day all day!  Things started to get so insane during certain parts of the day and I realized way too late that I hadn't documented them...so that's truly how a day in the life of a teacher is.  heh heh...in fact, I totally forgot to take a picture of my lunch time with my team.  Whoops!  And to think that is one of the only times I get such a large chunk of time (truly about 20 minutes) to sit and "relax".

I took all of my photos with my iPhone and filtered them through Instagram to do a sort of fun and matchy matchy black and white series of pictures...except for my outfit picture, because it was a bright blue and needed to be seen!

I am joining up with a few other teachers over on Second Grade Nest to give you a view into my day.




5:40 am | So, I get up at 5 am.  I get a lot of slack from others for this, but I put on a full, and I mean, full face.  I don't mean I plaster or cake it on, I just enjoy putting on makeup (foundation, brows, eyeshadow, liner, mascara, bronzer, blush, and lipstick).  It's a total accessory for me and it's possibly my favorite part of my morning routine.  I actually turn on YouTube and watch my favorite vloggers ever!...the SacconeJolys.  I wasn't about to take a picture of myself before 5:40.  LOL


6:25 am || Once I'm finally done with my makeup, I jump up to make my morning Shakeology (healthiest meal of the day).  It was Butterfinger this morning.  Then I sit back down at the computer to tinker around in my email inbox, Facebook, Bloglovin', Goodreads, and Twitter.  Does anyone else include this as part of their morning routine?


7:00 am | Quick check in the mirror to make sure I don't look a mess.  My top is from The Limited (and I wish you could see the texture here) and necklace is from Forever 21.  


7:34 am | Stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic as I drive into Phoenix...and this was AFTER I got off the freeway to avoid the bumper-to-bumper traffic that was on it.  Look in my rearview mirror and you can see the school bus...it was catching up to me while I was parked on the road.  Notice the sun flare?  The sun is always blasting in my windshield this early in the morning.  It normally takes me about 25-35 minutes to get to work.


7:45 am | Any teacher will see this and nod their head.  The mailboxes are one of those things that are part of every morning or day.  It's one of the first places I stop each morning and I thankfully had an empty box greeting me that morning.  Not that I am complaining.


8:10 am | My school day officially begins when I head outside to pick up my students.  Welcome to a way too bright and sunny day in the desert I call home, Arizona.


8:15 am | This is what a true multi-tasker looks like right here.  While my students are trickling in, grabbing breakfast, turning in their homework, and taking attendance...I am trying to finish up any loose ends I didn't get to finish before the bell rang.  My students take attendance on our ActivBoard (behind me) and read the morning message that scrolls across the screen via Tickertape.  


8:45 am | The real work begins as my students work on their calendar math...this of course was after they enjoyed about 15 minutes of relax and read time with books of their choice.  This is when I stopped taking pictures consistently.  Whoopsies.


9:10 am | Have you seen or read this book before?  It is one of my favorite picture books back from my college and student teaching days, called "The Gardener."  We were working on making inferences and drawing conclusions (for the 3rd day), so we were warming up with this book as a whole class.  They did pretty good actually!  This page right here is my favorite because it is a wordless 2-page spread showing the climax of the story.  Too bad this isn't in color!


10:35 am | Don't be jealous, but this is me and my team sitting in our first PLC meeting of the week.  But we also had my administrators and a PLC official in attendance watching and listening to us.  I am the team leader, so I was sitting behind the computer leading away.  I think we made quite the impression, as we are a pretty dang fantastic team who works super well together...and we get along very well too.  


12:20 pm | My absolute favorite part of each day is our read-aloud time right after lunch.  We all sit in the dark, with my Victorian lamp turned on.  Right now, we are enjoying The Lightning Thief.  This is the 4th time I've read this to a class and it is just as fun as each time before because the kids get so into it!


1:30 pm | Math notebooking as my kids learn how to use greatest common factors to simplify fractions.  They're doing better than I expected...yeah!


4:15 pm | My day continues outside of the classroom at a gifted training I am taking to finish up my hours for my full gifted endorsement and to continue learning how to best help my students.  I was there till 7:15...talk about a long day.


7:41 pm | Finally on my way home after a long day for a much needed dinner and rest before heading out to do it all over again the next day.  In this case, the next day happened to hold our first field trip of the year in it...it was going to be another long day.  


7:45 pm | Thankfully, I have an awesome hubby who had dinner ready for me when I walked through the door.  Yum!


8:00 pm | There was just enough time left to watch some of my guilty pleasure shows and get in some reading from this really good book I am reading.  Then, it's off to bed at 9pm, since I'm an old lady who gets up at 5 am.

Now it's your turn!  Even if you don't participate in the teacher linky...I'd love to get a perspective into your day in the life.  If you blog about it, definitely come back here and let me know.