Love of Teaching

Yesterday we celebrated Valentine’s Day in math. I love to celebrate Valentine’s Day because it’s one of the few holidays we can actually celebrate without “offending” anyone. We’re gearing up for our state-wide testing in a few weeks by doing lots of review. I created a packet where students had to answer loads of math questions that all dealt with Valentine’s Day. They had to calculate the area of chocolate peanut butter cups, translate chocolate kisses, and rotate hearts on coordinate planes (just to name a few). I was pretty proud of the packet I created and the kids did really well with it. I highly recommend it if you’re looking for a good review packed for middle schoolers around V-day. You can find it on my Teachers Pay Teachers site. Sorry it’s not free, but I spent a lot of time on it, so I hope if you do check it out you’ll consider buying it.

http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Product/Valentines-Day-Math-Review-Packet

Valentine’s Day Packet Preview

In the meantime I’d like to list a few reasons why I love teaching. Sometimes as teachers I feel like we focus so much on the negatives of teaching, I want to write some reasons why I truly love it.

• I love that there is never a dull moment, and the kids never cease to surprise me.
• I love that my coworkers always support me and continually know what I’m going through.
• I love that I’m constantly challenged to not be stagnant, but come up with new ways to get to students.
• I love the “thank you’s” and smiles from my kids when I’ve helped them through a tough concept.
• I love the way students get so excited when they finally get something.
• I love when the kids point out something I do I wasn’t even aware of: ie “Miss Newell you always twirl your hair when giving notes.”
• I love when I run into former students and they are genuinely excited to tell me how their lives are going.
• Above all I love that my job is worthwhile, and though it may be difficult at times, I cannot imaging doing anything else but teaching kids.

I hope you all had a lovely Valentine’s Day!!