Summers Off

I ran the gauntlet... and the gamut... of personal and professional development. Four conferences in 10 days. With a hot pot of coffee, anything is possible.

We LOVE Fred Rogers. We watched the amazing fiction/nonfiction combo of "Won't You Be My Neighbor?" and "A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood." We changed our shoes and put on our cardigans to discuss the wisdom Mr. Rogers has for every teacher, and how we can bring his neighborhood right it into our classrooms.

Now that our pants are off anyway (having created goals that scare our pants off), we're taking the plunge and making Big Hairy Audacious Goals.

This week we're going pantless. We're making goals that SCARE OUR PANTS OFF! We dare to create the goals that launch us far beyond our comfort zone and into the stars!

We went on location to talk to a group of stellar first year teachers who made it through their crazy first year of teaching and are ready to step up to the plate again this fall.

This is the part 2 of a 2-part series where we examine the genius of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and apply it to our classrooms. We discuss how we can create an experience for our students and their parents that will make them feel like they have found a golden ticket when the "factory" reopens this fall.

This is the first of a 2-part series where we examine the genius of Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory and apply it to our classrooms. We discuss how we can create an experience for our students and their parents that will make them feel like they have found a golden ticket when the "factory" reopens this fall.

WE LOOOOOOOVE conferences! We are professional nerds, aka teachers. We love to learn new things, and what better place to learn than a teaching conference like GYVTO that has so much positive energy and exciting ideas? We attended Get Your Virtual Teach On, and we wanted to share some mind-bending takeaways from some of the amazing speakers at the conference, like Brandon Fleming, Hayward & Star Jean, Michelle Ferre, and Dave Burgess the pirate teacher.

Did you ever “play school” over the summer break when you were a kid? Today we're talking about how we're still “playing school” on the Summers Off podcast. From playing school as little kids to having our own classrooms as adults, we have become life-long students. We know that when we stop wanting to learn new things, we don't stand still, but actually go backward. We love conferences because we love teaching, and we love teaching because we love learning. It's a circle, y'all.

This week we're talking about the two "New Years" for teachers. We are taking a look back at the resolutions we made at the beginning of the year. We talk about the teacher "New Year" in August and the opportunity to make new goals and get ourselves on track. We're talking about Happy Planners and reminiscing about Trapper Keepers. It's a good time at the Summers Off podcast.

School's out, and summer's here. We're talking about how to make a smooth transition from school to summer without becoming a binge-watching couch potato. We talk about different ways teachers start their summers off, whether it's with a big sleep, a big tidy, or a big adventure.

This is the “Summers Off” podcast, the show for all of you August-to-May school-aholics, taking the summers off to rest, re-energize, and get up and do it all over again next year. We're talking about teacher life inside and outside the classroom, and what it's like to live as an educator all year round. It's not just for teachers, but also paraprofessionals, administrators, and anyone who calls school their home away from home.