Teacher’s Brain

Free Winter Activities for Kindergarten and Up

Now is the busiest time of the year for teachers! Trying to keep up with holidays, family responsibilities and planning for the new year can be a lot! This is why I teamed up with some great Teachers Pay Teachers authors to give you FREE TEACHING WINTER resources at you fingertips! Click the photo of what you want to download from TpT! Don’t forget to let the author know how much you appreciate their hard work in your feedback or blog comments so we are encouraged to keep the freebies flowing! Have a healthy and hassle-free winter season!

FREE Winter Printables

These resources are for different grade levels, mostly Pre-K -5th, except the Spanish Verbs. Please click the image of the resource you want to download for free.

 

 

 

 

winter mitten color by number

Check out Christmas Freebies HERE or some NEW YEARS EVE GLASSES HERE.

Secret Tips to Successful Goal Setting

Hi, everybody!  I promised you last week that I would share with you my secret tips for goal setting, making sure you feel successful at the end of the day, and ways that you actually will follow through with your goals.  Time got away from me last week, but I am here now!

I want to let you know that making goals in today’s world is a MUST! You have got to set goals or you are just going to spin your wheel’s and not get anywhere.  So let me share with you some of my goal setting secrets.

First of all, you have to know what your big mission is whether that be doing something great in your business, losing weight, or wanting more family time.  

What is it that you want?  

This is going to help you decide what your goals are in the morning.  I want you to do these first thing when you wake up. You could do these at night, but I believe that it is important to do this first thing in the morning!  

Write Down Your Goals

So when you wake up, before you grab your phone, I want you to write down three goals.  These are doable or fairly simple goals. I want you to physically write these down. Even though you may believe that you can just say them in your head and memorize them, studies show that when you write something down (like these goals) you are fives times more likely to follow through with your goals.  

My three goals for today:

  1. Do a Facebook video about goals! (DONE!)
  2. Write a Blog. (In the Process!)
  3. Workout for 30 minutes. (DONE!)

Visualize Your Goal

Now this next part is very important! Don’t skip this!  Right after I write that down, I close my eyes for about 30 seconds, and I visualize myself doing each one of my goals.  I will also try to attach some sort of feeling with it. How will I feel after I am done with the workout or how will it feel to do my Facebook Live, and to follow through with something I told everybody I was going to do? I put a feeling with each goal by visualizing it.  

These goals can be little things, but they are all leading up to the big mission or mission statement that you are wanting to work up to completing or accomplishing.  Harvard studies actually show that if you are doing little things that are of some importance to you, and you finish them in a short period of time you will go to sleep feeling successful, accomplished, and satisfied.  

Sometimes life happens. I will make 3 simple goals that I think will get done within one hour, and I do not even get them completed that day!  That’s okay, because I will just add them on to the next day. I put them on my list for tomorrow, no big deal. I still feel successful the next day if I get them done, and I will still feel accomplished.  Chances are if you can not visualize it when you are trying to think about your goals, you are not going to do it. So if you come up with something too big and you can not picture yourself doing it in that 30 second time frame, you will most likely not follow through.  

Final Goal Setting Secrets

Those are all my goal setting secrets that actually have been working for me that I wanted to share with you.  Make sure that you know what your end game is or your end mission. If you don’t know where you are going, how are you going to get there?

Go ahead and start tomorrow!  

Create 3 simple goals that are doable, write them down, visualize it, and FOLLOW THROUGH!  Now go be a great goal setter!

Why I Left the Classroom

Why I left Teaching
Why I Left the Classroom

The Struggle

I am so thankful for everything that is part of my life right now including you!  My life is drastically different than it was a couple years ago!  I’ve never talked about it openly because I was fearful, insecure, and riddled with anxiety.

A couple years ago, it was my 20th year of teaching.  My son was in 5th grade at our school.  For me, it was a year of H-E (double hockey sticks!)  For the first time in my career, I had a principal who hated me. Still not sure why.  Not only did she hate me, but she got the rest of the staff, who I considered my family for 18 years, to pretty much dislike and/or avoid me too.  I was threatened with my evaluation, lied to, challenged with impossible tasks, given 5 MAJOR behavior problem students who physically hurt me and the other children regularly, and faced life-threatening health problems because of the stress.  Prior to the last year, I had been a well-liked and highly effective teacher who loved her career path.

Depression

Without going into a lot of detail, I suffered from depression, high blood pressure, and anxiety/panic attacks.  For the first time, I had been broken.  My mind, my spirit, and my body were broken!  I consider myself lucky that prior to that difficult year, I had never been on any kind of prescription drugs.  But I knew after waking up in fetal position next to my husband, crying that I didn’t want to go to school, and losing 16 lbs. in one week due to stress, that I had to give in to what my Dr. suggested…  A good therapist and drugs.  I was on anti-depressants, blood pressure medicine, cholesterol medication, and XANAX!  So basically, I was drugging myself to go to work. I even developed an eye twitch.  If I wasn’t at work, I was fine, but the thought of going every morning would begin a cycle that was dangerous to my health.  I fought it because I wanted to stay in the classroom.  I loved the students and figured I could transfer the next school year.  It was important to me to be there for my own son who was in 5th grade.  But, even on the medication, I continued to be harassed.

Abuse

After getting beat with a chair again, punched in the stomach, calling the front office for help, and realizing no one was coming to help me, I knew I had to leave the classroom.  Seeing the scared faces and hearing the ear-piercing screams of the other kindergarten students as they watched their teacher get hit repeatedly, shook me to the core.  I knew the only reason they were in this situation was because the principal didn’t like me.  So, I had to remove myself.  Now, if you question, why didn’t you report it? Why didn’t you collect data on the principal? etc.… Let me tell you, I did.  On doctors orders, I left two months before the school year was over.  I still had to pick up my son at school, so Xanax to the rescue. I dealt with a staff who wanted to know what was wrong with me, and because I wasn’t ready to tell them, they made up their own inaccurate stories of why I left my dream career.

My husband planned several mini vacations because I was told to relax.  I know he was thinking this was the end of the wife he knew when we married.  These getaways were frowned upon by staff (according to the county investigator’s report) because I was on sick leave.  Little did everyone know the pain I was suffered from because WHY would I post that on Facebook?  In hindsight, I should have never posted pictures of me relaxing on social media.  But, in my defense, at the time I was on medication. Maybe it was also the need to let people know that I wasn’t completely broken too.

The LAST STRAW

It wasn’t until my son’s 5th grade graduation where his Certificate of Completion was conveniently removed from the pile that I pushed for a harassment investigation with the school board.  Seeing her smirking face as my son sat alone in a row as his friends got their certificate knowing she was behind it as my son signaled to us that he was okay was a total mind-blowing experience.  I had to beg my husband to leave before he made a scene as anger filled his “un-Xanaxed” body. Other parents were stunned, taking video and making noises to get staff’s attention that a student was forgotten.  I had to stand up to tell them they forgot my son.  Anyway, an investigation was done which amounted to nothing even though 9 other teachers came forward with their painful stories of harassment they endured from the principal.

The New Chapter

After that experience, even though I was offered other jobs, I decided I could not go back to teaching in this district.  I took me about 6 months to wane by body off all the medication that was mandatory for my survival.  Crazy how stress can mess up your entire body!  I tell you this story for two reasons. One is if you are experiencing anything like this, you can know that you can come out of it stronger than you were prior to the experience.  That you can find confidence, security, and begin a new beautiful chapter to your life.  I found a love and passion for making educational resources that I didn’t know existed.  Through this experience, I developed strategies to build my confidence back up and to become healthy again. Keep up with this blog in the future, and I will share some of the strategies that helped me.  I would have never left the classroom to discover this passion without that crazy experience. The second reason is I want you to know that YOU are part of my new chapter.  I love making teaching resources and helping teachers like you save time and money.  This is one reason why I offer freebies and discounts regularly.  Thank you for being there for me and for your students! My heart will always be in education. I value you!

Here is a Forever FREEBIE:

Spaceman Finger Spacing for Writing
Spaceman Finger Spacing Tool for Writing

Teachers Accept the Ron Clark’s #GradingPapersChallenge

If you are like most teachers, you keep up with the amazing founder of Ron Clark Academy.  Ron Clark is a visionary who transforms classrooms around the world by demonstrating high quality techniques that are game changers in the education field.  Not only are students engaged in energized lessons, but teachers dream of visiting his school to have some of that inspiration and creativity rubbed off on them to take back to their classrooms.

Recently the hashtag #gradingpaperschallenge has taken off on Instagram due to a challenge that came out of him being bored while grading papers.  He recorded himself grading papers while lip syncing Lady Gaga.  Then, he added the hashtag, and challenged teachers to have a little fun while doing this tedious task of grading papers. Check out his post.

Teachers all over the world have been responding to his challenge with some impressive video clips.  Here are some of my favorites, so far.  (You may even see mine at the end. Not going to lie… this #gradingpaperschallenge was fun!)

Wade King @_wadeking

 

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@_wadeking is on deck!! ROCK-ING-OUT!!!! #gradingpaperschallenge #teachersofinstagram

A post shared by Ron Clark (@ronclark__) on

 Mary Beth @houseofnichols

Barry White Jr @thatsbwhite

Sarah Barnett @simply_steam

Sparkle & Sprinkles @first_grade_teacher_life

Junior Bernadin @mrjbernadin

@thereactionwithkarachante

Me! Cindy Martin @teachersbrain

 

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Teachers, it’s your turn! Join @ronclark__ for the #GradingPapersChallenge !I am not in the classroom anymore, but was also challenged by by daughter to do this, and remember the long days of grading papers. 😉 What do you rock out to while working or grading papers? A little THRILLER keeps me pumped in October! ??❤️? I challenge all you EDUCATORS to take a fun 15 seconds out of your life to make your video. Smile & please tag me in yours, if you do. My IG is @teachersbrain teachers I expect to tag me: @the_whimsical_teacher @teachingthestars @mrsaverysisland @simply_steam @teachwithtori @jamieprncs #betherevolution #ronclarkacademy #GradingPapersChallenge #teachersfollowteachers #teachers #teacherspayteachers #friends? #elementaryteacher #edu #educhat #thriller #teachersofinstagram #teacherstyle #teacherlife

A post shared by CindyMartin24 (@teachersbrain) on

So, get out there and take the challenge! Please share yours with me by tagging me in the post. ( @teachersbrain )  Learning should be fun, and so should teaching! There is no shame in your game.