Mrs. Bradford

After 3 years of teaching 5th grade at Canyon Rim, I've decided I'm going to stay at home with June. I'm not sure how soon I'll return to teaching, but for now it's the best thing for our little family.

So just in case this is the end of an era, I wanted to post what I'll miss most about teaching:

1. Hearing the phrase "OHHHH!! I get it now!"

2. Random notes or drawings from students that say I'm the best teacher ever.

3. Seeing improvements in scores throughout the year (especially in math)

4. Book recommendations from students that are actually REALLY GOOD (Lightning Thief, When You Reach Me were just a few that were recommended to me)

5. Recommending books to students that they end up enjoy thoroughly. (Matilda, The Giver, Bunnicula, and the Harry Potter series were amongst my favorites to recommend)

6. Crying while reading aloud the end of "Where the Red Fern Grows" to my class, and looking up only to see several students crying with me (It gets me every time).

7. Teaching American history

8. Playing competitive games of Wall Ball, Speed, Dodgeball, and Darth Darts (Darth Darts is a game I created for math where the class competes against me {Darth}. I make sure to be super evil, especially if I'm beating them.)

9. Nachos from the cafeteria

10. Visits from former students wanting to share good news or just to say 'hi'.

11. My 5th grade team

12. Hilarious students

13. Seeing my students faces the first time we launch a rocket.

14. Finished products for BIG projects we work on.

15. Hugs from random kindergartners, 1st graders that I don't know.

16. Canyon Rim in general

There's much more, but that's all I can think of at the moment.

Before I cleaned out my classroom, I took some snapshots to remember what teaching looked like.

Here's just a few images...

Donuts were my favorite class reward for the kids (if they met their AR goal, increasing ATI scores more than 5 percentage points, filling up their "Warm and Fuzzy" jar):

The rockets I mentioned before:

The White House Tea Party project where kids do a MASSIVE report about a famous American:

Front board, SmartBoard:

A massive sign the kiddos made when I returned from maternity leave:

Daily Schedule:

Mrs. Bradford's Plinko! This was the kids' favorite thing. They would earn tickets and every half day they would cash in their tickets for a chance on the Plinko Board to earn prizes. William made the board for me... perhaps I'll use it on my children someday:

A view of the wall next to my desk:

My favorite president, writing wall:

What a teacher's desk SHOULD look like:

Cubbies. Remember cubbies?

Calendar, classroom jobs wall. (That Bradford flag is going to hang in front of our house)

When students felt discouraged about how hard the work was, I'd make them read this quote from Harry Potter. (One student laughed and told me I was nerdy...at least he felt better.)

My library:

Love:

Now with everything wonderful about teaching, there are some things I WON'T miss:

1. AIMS

2. Grading piles of papers (yes I admit, the "piles" were my fault due to procrastination)

3. Students throwing up in my classroom (happened 5 times)

4. The smell of meatball sub day in the cafeteria

5. Making sub plans

6. Student excuses ("I didn't take my medication." is my favorite... Really? That's your excuse for kicking someone?)

7. Tattlers

8. Consistently missing work from students

9. Finding really old, smelly food in desks because I have to find missing work from students.

10. Saying goodbye to June in the morning.

Now people are asking what I'm going to do now.

I think I have plenty to do for now.