Lessons With Dad

As a new graduate who just finished his undergrad work, I was ready to  change the world one child at a time. When I finished my student teaching it was in the middle of the school year, so no one was hiring. I was taking sub jobs daily to try to earn some money before applying for a full-time teaching position in the fall. While subbing I got to know a good amount of teachers and they started to request me as their sub. Business was booming and I soon became busy on a daily basis. While subbing one day I learned of a 2nd grade teacher who was going to be on maternity leave soon and needed a long-term sub for the last three months of the school year. Although I did not have a lot of experience in younger grades I decided to  apply to be her long-term sub. I was thrilled when I got a call informing me that I got the job. It was a huge sigh of relief to know that for two and a half month and I would not have to worry about being woken up at 5:30 in the morning, askin...

My wife and I met through a mutual friend that I was currently teaching with. She was trying to get us both to meet by having us in the same spot and make it seem random. With how awkward that sounded to us, we decided after talking online a few times to just go on a first date. It was the first blind date I ever went on.  I remember feeling extremely nervous and was not sure how it was going to go. Fast forwarding and now almost 5 years of marriage, I would say the first date went well enough for us to get to this point! The first time driving up to her house my heart was beating so fast and the little moths in my stomach were turning into butterflies flying frantically about. I remember contemplating as I pulled into her driveway, “I hope she likes the flowers. I hope what I am wearing is OK. I hope we have enough things to talk about for the night.” On our first date we went to dinner and then went mini golfing. I was trying to be a gentleman and let her win, which was very...

RUST-OLEUM Chalked "Linen White" Since my wife and I have been together we have only had a queen size bed. Recently, we decided to upgrade to a king bed. My brother had a king sleigh bed frame that was just sitting in his basement. He told us we could have it if we wanted it. My wife told me the only way she would take it, was if he would let us refinish it. So, needless to say we were off on our next project! Materials: Paint  Wax Paint brush Sandpaper   First coat Last weekend we went to our local hardware store to get some chalk paint. If you have never used it, chalk paint is pretty amazing! You start right away by painting without the need to sand the previous finish off. We ended up choosing Rust-Oleum Chalked "Linen White"  from our local hardware store and the wax finish to go with it. Both together tend to run around $50. The only other things we needed for the project was a paint brush  and  sandpaper .  After the s...

   After wrecking my brain trying to figure out what would engage 4th graders more in the classroom, I settled on games. Afterall, what 9 or 10 year old does not like playing games! I needed to figure out how I could bring games into my classroom, while having them align to the standards. After doing some research I came across two approaches, Game Based Learning (GBL) and Gamification. It took me a while and a lot of research to understand and figure out some of the differences between the two. I will do my best to portray how I understand each one of them and what the difference is.  Game Based Learning  When I went to the conference I realized the speaker that got my inner fire burning was talking about GBL. I thought it would be inspiring, motivating and engaging for students to use the GBL approach in the classroom. So, what is GBL? As I have to come to understand it, GBL is using gaming elements and strategies of a traditional style video games, with d...

Once my wife and I had been dating for a while we started gathering the same group of friends. We were never people who liked to sit at home. We love to travel, go out to eat, watch movies, or just hanging out with friends and family. Our friends and family started having kids before we did. That didn’t deter us from hanging out with them though.  It was better than staying at home doing nothing, and we both love kids. I have two nephews and she has eight nephews and one niece.  So we were use to being around children, especially me who is surrounded by them everyday at work. Needless to say, family get togethers are a bit more hectic on her side of the family. When we would talk about our future and lives after kids, we swore it would not change us from doing the things we wanted to do. I have never been much of a baby person. In fact, the first time I ever held a baby was when our son was born. I know it sounds silly, but people make such a big deal about suppo...

   My wife and I don't get into many disagreements or "fight". I have come to realize unless it is worth fighting for or I can prove I am right, I am not going to make a big fuss about it. After all, "Happy wife, Happy life" right? I have learned this from life lessons and I think it has has helped me survive being a male, working in the female dominated field of elementary education. My coworkers thank my wife for instilling this mindset into me!    Trying to raise two toddlers, it is inevitable that disagreements will arise. We have different parenting styles and that is where the majority of our arguments stem from. When one of those moments happen we tend to be quiet and walk away until we have cooled down instead of saying something we may later regret (although that happens sometimes as well).     When I am not sure if I did something to upset her, there is a clear give away. When she gets upset she starts cleaning like a crazy women! She d...

Before After completing my first DIY project I felt a good deal of accomplishment. My wife must have been happy with the results too, because soon after finishing she asked me to tackle our cabinets. We didn’t have enough money to replace our current cabinets so we decided to give our cabinets a face lift. We did our research on some of the different products, what works best for the amount of time and money invested. After all of research, we came to an agreement that we would try the Rust-Oleum transformation kit , Espresso color. My wife didn’t want me to start on the kitchen just in case it didn’t turn how she wanted. She told me to start in the bathroom. It was a smaller space to do and would be less work to redo if I messed up or it didn’t turn out to her liking. It turns out that after completing the bathroom she loved how it looked! She was excited that as soon as school let out for the summer, she put me right to work. That way I would have t...

How did you come to an agreement or pick the name of your kid/s? Please click on "Post a Comment" below and write your answer in the comment section in order to share your answer with our readers. I am excited to hear what you have to say!

In this section I will post a weekly question to reflect on. Please click on "Post a Comment" below and write your answer in the comment section in order to share your answer with our readers. I am excited to hear what you have to say!

Today for Valentine’s Day I left a Nerf  Mega gun sitting on our Kitchen counter with a card that read, Open If You Dare. Inside the card had all the rules and directions for the game.  It starts at 3 p.m. the first one to get hit has to make the meals on Saturday. She has no idea when I will be coming home or where I may be entering the house! I unlocked the front door, and our basement patio door. The Possibilities are endless! Although I do not know where she will be either! I do not like to lose and do not plan to lose, but if I do it may be bitter sweet. She does not like what I cook so it may be a way for me to try some of my crazy dinner ideas I tend to come up with.This was just a fun little way to spruce up Valentine’s Day and make it a little more exciting, with a twist! Our Weapons Since this was written a last Valentine's Day, I'll fill you in on how it went down. I drove up to our block and parked a couple houses away. I snuck around to the back p...

   Besides being an elementary teacher and I am a proud father of two wonderful children. Well I guess as proud as you can be of a three and a half year old and two year old. So far our proudest accomplishment have been going poopy on the potty!     My son is three and half and he, to say the least, has been a bit of a handful. For the last year and  half he has been going through a raging fit stage. He throws, hits, kicks and screams. He has broken glass picture frames, thrown and ruined numerous books and I am sure has done some long term damage to my eardrums.      My daughter is going to turn two the end of March. She was our miracle baby! She was born 5 weeks early and had to spend her first month in the NICU. Thankfully she is healthy and a spunky little girl. I think she's going to be our comedian of the two. She too is learning from her brother how to pierce eardrums when she is not happy.     Although I would not chan...

Explore Like A Pirate   The best decision I made when trying to decide to go with game based learning or to gamify my classroom was reading the book " Explore Like a Pirate ." by Michael Matera. After researching and reading countless articles online, his book help clarify the difference between game base learning and gamifying the classroom, while also persuading me to Gamify my year long math class.    "Explore like a Pirate" is a fairly easy read and it gives you concise instructions on how to go about gamifying the classroom. It is set up very nicely that if you follow the directions things just start falling in place.    After I made the decision to gamify my math class I needed a starting point. "Explore like a Pirate" tells its readers to start with picking a theme. The theme can be per unit or a whole year it depends how you want to run your game. I teach 4th grade and one of the big things we do throughout the year is we have a week long cel...