A Little Bit About Me ...

...plus, why I'm writing this blog!  You just know that you are dying to know, right??

I never wanted to be a teacher.  It never even made the top five on my list of career choices (though actress, singer, and fashion designer—thank you Don’t Tell Mom the Babysitter’s Dead—those were all on there).  But here I am.  I suppose you could say I fell into teaching, mostly because I didn’t know what else to do.  But I’m sure glad I did.

College was never a question; that is, going to college was never a question, it was just a question of which Florida school would be my college of choice.  And my major?  Why, theatre of course! (see paragraph one)  And that was fun…for a semester.  When I realized I was in way over my head, I got off that track super-fast, and made my way over to Early Childhood Education.

The End.

No, just kidding, that would have been way too easy.  I did end up sticking with that career path for about two years, until I decided it was too easy and wanted more of a challenge.

(HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA, I’m sorry, I’m finding it hard to continue after just the thought that being a teacher is way too easy.  But I must go on…)

After that, I moved on to a major in Radio-Television with a minor in Criminal Justice.  The funny thing is, I really liked learning about those subjects…I just didn’t enjoy the doing of those subjects as much as I thought I would.  But by that time, I had been in college for three years, and my parents were getting a little exasperated with funding my journey to “finding myself.”  So I graduated.  I walked, I got my diploma, I shook the Dean’s hand.  And the next day?  I went right back to waiting tables at a popular theme restaurant in Orlando, Florida.  It took waiting tables for another year, moving to NYC (and waiting tables at a much more lucrative establishment) the following year, and moving to North Carolina to bring me to where I am today.
So what’s my point?

There are some people who know they want to teach the moment they come out of the womb (these are usually your childhood friends who always wanted to play “school” where they would be the teacher and you would be the student, along with a menagerie of stuffed animals).  There are also some who take the scenic route.  But teachers are teachers at heart.

I've only been teaching for seven years--to put that in perspective, the iPhone was just barely a household item when I began, only in its early stages of iPhone 3-land--yet I've made my share of observations and have learned a whole bunch (such as, ALWAYS check clips you want to show on YouTube BEFORE showing them to your class).  My first year of teaching was hard.  Like, really hard.  But apparently, EVERY teacher's first year is hard.  Whoa.  Mind blown.  So I want to share what I've learned, in the hopes that maybe some nugget I share will help a fledgling teacher somewhere out there.

I hope you enjoy some of the pearls of wisdom I picked up on my journey.  And I hope you laugh. Because teaching isn’t teaching unless you find a reason to laugh at yourself (or in spite of yourself) at least once a day.

And now, About Me...the Cliffsnotes Version

I love yoga, Broadway, football, sleeping, boy bands, Disney, the 80s, Harry Potter, my dog, my cat, and my husband (not necessarily in that order).  I grew up in Florida.  I live in Charlotte, NC now (though, contrary to popular belief, in a house, not at school).