Friday Flashback - March 2015

It's the last Friday of the month, so I'm linking up with Julie Faulkner of Faulkner's Fast Five to share the top 5 highlights from my month with you.

My boyfriend's daughter using her ingenious
"broom method" to clean off my car.

1. March snow days!

This has been a big year for Tennessee teachers.  We've had a grand total 11 snow days in my district!! Two of them were this month.  They were life savers for me, because it really helped the count down until my last day of teaching fly by! Also, amazingly, two of those snow days I had previously scheduled a sick day for.  That worked out nicely!  Now, as a lifelong Michigander, I do laugh at the snow and ice days we have in the South and how people panic.  But I certainly am not going to complain about having them!

2. I quit my teaching job at Spring Break. 

My very own Tardis card.

Glitter.  Everywhere.

This was a lifechanging, and absloutely agonizing decision for me. I'm going to do a separate post on this soon, but I worked in an extremely sick building and my room was covered in mold. I had been chronically ill for the year and a half I spent in this building, and the district refused to clean or replace the light fixtures it was growing on. Things are difficult for teachers in Tennessee and I simply cannot describe what was coming down from the top to be put on the backs of teachers. In addition, I found that my highly-sensitive person personality was not cut out for managing classrooms of 30+ kids while under extreme pressure. It became all too much, and even though I knew I would be done teaching this year since last summer, I finally found I couldn't wait out the last two months.  Since the beginning of the year, I became severely depressed, gained weight, my anxiety issues were multiplied tenfold. I regularly fantasized that I would be assaulted by a student or fall down the stairs and hurt myself so I could go home. Every morning I dreaded going to work and felt like throwing up or just throw myself out my second story classroom window. (Not really. Sorta. Still would be preferable to work).  Now I feel like the weight of the world is off my shoulder's, and I can't wait to see what the future brings.

I do have to say my students gave me the two most amazing surprise going away parties and I bawled and bawled like a baby. Apparently the kids worked SO hard all week to secretly prepare them for me! I couldn't believe the effort they put into it and it was definitely an amazing wrap up to my 4 years of teaching.

3. Real estate, here I come!

In my "real estate clothes."  Trust me, I don't look
half this put together when teaching.

I've had my real estate license since this summer and have been signed on with a brokerage since then.  So, I guess you could consider me a previous part-time real estate agent.  However, I didn't do anything with it during the school year because school just overwhelms me and I had been so ill from the mold in my building.  Well, now I am going full time in real estate! (Well, plus full time with TPT, so does that make it part time and part time?  But besides teaching/creating Language Arts materials, real estate has always been my other passion.  When I was a kid, I would draw subdivisions and floor plans and then "sell" houses to indulging family members.  So it's in my blood.  I'm excited to get going.

4. Product Overhaul

I'm working hard on updating all my products because I am totally OCD, plus as I continue to create I continue to learn and improve.  I recently redid my best selling Thesis Statement Task Cards to make them ink-saving black and white cards.  Color is no problem for me, because I always just printed in black and white and used them disposably at school, but I know that the color is an issue for some teachers who have printing allowances.  So, presenting my new task cards:

5. New Products

I have product creation ADD.  I'll work a little on one product, get bored or get an inspiration, and work on another.  I have a folder with I think at least twenty just started, halfway done, and nearly at the end products.  One day they will see the light of day!  Because of this ADD, I haven't been able to crank out products as quickly as I had hoped.  However, I have made a couple of new ones this month: A FREE "Film as Literature" graphic organizer for any movie, and a specific one with detailed answer key for the 2011 film version of Jane Eyre.  The freebie would be great to leave with a sub or to use during the eventual end of the year movie time.