Skip to main content

Searching for Motivation

Has anyone seen it? I've been looking everywhere for my motivation to get prepped for back to school, to blog, to create some new resources to use in my classroom, and I just can't seem to find it. I'll have random bursts of energy where I'll decide to redo my teacher toolbox,


After!


Befor



which I'm SO glad I decided to do this! The sun had completely bleached out the scrapbook paper, and the colors I had originally picked did not go at all with my blue and green color scheme!

To see more info on how to make this box, check out here and here!




or I'll make a new anchor chart,






try Pioneer Woman's iced coffee recipe, which was delicious and easy...



or clean my office (which I've been doing for two weeks!)
I hate this mess!


or go into school and get a bunch of printing done...

but then I come home, see this adorable baby below, and crawl into bed.

Have I ever mentioned I suffer from some pretty severe anxiety? I'm usually pretty good about handling it, but with the upcoming school year and the baby it's been pretty awful, and I have felt like I'm heading over a cliff multiple times this summer. So I put sunglasses on Bella to make myself laugh...

She loves it...don't call the aspca.
However, I'm trying to keep a positive attitude this year, and live each day like it's the best day ever, because it totally CAN be! So I won't complain, I'll just do the best I can each day, and that's going to have to be enough for me this year! We are always our own worst critics, and I need to tune out the voice in my head telling me that my room should be completely sketched out by now.

I'm not heading to my classroom until Friday of this week, but you better believe I'll be posting some pics! My theme this year is simple and streamlined, minimal with pops of color, and reusing as much as possible that I already had!

Finally, tomorrow is the last day for the annual TpT B2S sale! You can get 28% off in most stores, and make sure you enter the code BTS15 at checkout. Happy shopping! I purchased a ton of resources today, my favorites came from The Superhero Teacher, Laura Randazzo, and Teach Inspire Change!


Stay tuned Thursday, where I"ll be blogging over at our new collaborative blog, The Middle School Mob!



Comments

  1. Don't stress! You've done a lot and it's summer...and you're preggo! Sometimes we need to give ourselves permission to not be teachers during summer...and I should take my own advice ;) Things will be great and everything will work out how it's supposed to :)
    Stephanie
    Tales of Teaching in Heels

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Aww, thanks Ms. W! I hope you are staying cool!

      Delete
  2. I know the feeling. I have spurts where I get excited about going back to school, but then feel the impending doom of my sleep and relaxation going away. Oh well, I guess it's just bittersweet. By the way, I LOVE your puppy! She is such a doll!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thanks, she is so cute, but kind of a monster sometimes :) It is hard to know that setting an alarm is coming very soon! Good luck with your school year!!

      Delete
  3. I know the feeling. I have spurts where I get excited about going back to school, but then feel the impending doom of my sleep and relaxation going away. Oh well, I guess it's just bittersweet. By the way, I LOVE your puppy! She is such a doll!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Don't stress! I always look at your blog and think, "man I wish I were as organized as Jen!" I do know the feeling. I've had some pretty bad anxiety this summer as well, just trying to balance everything and also try to remember to let myself relax. Trying to relax gives me anxiety, ironically!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Thank you so much! I am so not really that organized this summer, lol! Isn't that the worst? When you try to relax and then stress because you can't? I hope you get a chance to enjoy and destress!

      Delete
  5. I literally have her iced coffee recipe on my phone to make lol

    I'm lacking motivation too :/

    Anisa @ Creative Undertakings

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Thanks for stopping by! JW

Popular posts from this blog

Before the School Year Begins...

I decided that before I can start posting about what I'm doing this year, I needed to share some of my favorite strategies from last year that went really well with the students. I was completely inspired by Kelly Gallagher after reading devouring all of his books at the beginning of the school year! I had the opportunity to go to a Kelly Gallagher workshop at Judson this spring, and it was absolutely amazing! He was so nice when I went up to him (I was terrified and starstruck), and even wrote "You're Welcome" on this piece of paper, because my students actually asked me to THANK HIM for changing the way we read novels in class.  Students + asked me + to say thank you to an author + about school stuff = UTOPIA! Here are some of my abbreviated notes from the day: His TOP Points: Kids should write 4X more than you can physically grade  Students suffer from word poverty. Must get students reading more in order to be exposed to vocabulary. We ne

RAK Classroom Kit + Enjoy the Magic of The Holidays at Oakbrook Center!

Last week The Middle School Mob hosted a FB Live Holiday Hop, and I shared how I do a RAK (Random Acts of Kindness) activity with my students during the holiday season . This was my first time doing a FB live and I had so much fun! You can check out the RAK Classroom Kit here If you live in the Chicagoland area and want to have a fun family outing this Christmas season, be sure to check out my post over at Modest House, Extraordinary Home ! Save Save Save Save

Writing Notebook: Finishing up "Write Ideas" and first Invitation: AAAWWUBBIS!

Happy Monday!! Today I am continuing on with the Writer's Notebook! Last time I left off, students had just finished their "100 Things I Love". After that, students completed their writing territories, which I got from Nancie Atwell's book   Lessons That Change Writers.  We spent the first day discussing writing territories out loud, going through the list in detail, so that students had ideas of what to write about. I told them to think of it like the caption for a picture. One to two sentences that could become something more. Students had to complete this for homework. We also completely numbered our table of contents so that we could add in sections and start working in other parts of the notebook.  Students wrote their writing territories on these pages. Then we moved on to the Writer's Eye (I). Students had to place terms that described them within their "I" or around their "Eye". I created my o