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The Value of TpT Membership.
Teaching didn’t click with me as a creative profession. When I became a public school teacher, I stopped all my hobbies because I had so little time to myself due to stress and the new adjustments to a teaching profession. I stopped reading, drawing, sport. I ended spending time on what used to give me so much energy. I thought once I become efficient and productive in my teaching career, I will provide time to the things I’m passionate about. But time flew, efficiency was a hard thing to catch; stress and overwhelm were always present. When I transitioned into elementary education, I found myself having to create resources for…
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Next TpT or Instagram Star?
I like the way education and educational resources have become commercialized, wrapped in the box with the possibility to be delivered into your mailbox or to your door. The idea of knowledge, skills, and opportunities to be fostered only in the classroom is long gone. Now everyone, from toddlers to beginner teachers, moms, education enthusiasts, and 70-year-old want-to-be entrepreneurs have access to personalized, carefully preplanned, quality courses, webinars, Ebooks to suit anyone’s needs. The modern trend for sharing knowledge no matter your status and educational experience is allowing new opportunities for those who want to receive education in a general sense and, most importantly, for those on the other side…
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5 Things I Wish TpT Sellers Stopped Doing.
My black and white printer was choking, scrambling to process all the jobs I kept on sending, flashing desperate “cartridge low on ink” messages. By September 20th, both of my robust machines gave up. A block of 700 printer paper ran out in front of my eyes. And that was the beginning of the school year. “I feel like a cargo train ran over me,” – I said to my husband at the end of the second week of September. I never felt so resourceless and overwhelmed. Starting to teach the 2nd grade for the first time honestly felt like getting to the moon with no equipment. Well, not precisely…
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Why Most Resourceful Educators Leave Classrooms.
The decision about staying in or leaving the teaching job is taken by 80% of educators within the first five years of teaching. Five years seem like a lifetime to me. I was done with school already after my first year as a new teacher. “It was hard” – cannot describe the emotional and physical imbalance I found myself in. And now, going into my fourth year, I’m trying to rationalize decisions and figure out what the comfort place in education looks like for me, or it’s just a myth. “This is the time to try different positions and grade levels,” – veteran teachers say. “You are still a fresh…
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My Biggest Vulnerability.
After the period of squelching across the “new teacher” life stage, dreading the unexpected, mastering the bases while adjusting to “no one- told-me-about-that-in-college” experiences, I’ve learned to be efficient and gained my confidence. This helped me avoid vulnerability and spillage of work and stress into my life. Being vulnerable does not, in my mind, go with teaching. As a teacher, you model excellent behavior and spirit, you are to demonstrate leadership and show strength in your decisions. Vulnerability would jeopardize many processes and routines, generate a crack in your belief about the value you bring to the society by educating students and creating the atmosphere for them to grow as…
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My Passive Income Obsession.
I’ve been obsessed with the idea for a passive income for quite a while. This stemmed from the realization that my current job may not be my dream job, it might not hold for a long time, or my priorities may shift. If you want to know about the passive income idea, you can start with Pat Flynn’s site www.smartpassiveincome.com because he is the master in this science. Apart from Flynn, many other online entrepreneurs have cracked the mystery of passive income. The ones that I came across are: Michelle from Making Sense Of Cents, John Lee Dumas from EOF, Tim Ferriss. After a ton of thinking and tinkering, I…
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How Much Money Do You Want To Make As a Teacher?
My husband is a day trader. He buys and sells stocks. He sometimes holds them overnight or for a couple of days, and then he sells them profiting from the difference in the price of shares. So it makes him a swing trader, too. Sitting next to him on a weekday, I channel into a cryptic conversation he has in chat rooms with other traders. Some things sound familiar because my ear is used to the trading jargon. But what I found more interesting is that straight money talk is never a taboo there. Traders discuss decent and significant amounts of money they once made or are still making a…
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Does Financial Literacy Have to Be Part of Teachers’ Training?
Cool! At least I have a stable job! At some point in my life, I paused to ponder the following question: why do I feel the vacuum of the information I need and how can I fill this in? Moving between the idea “Cool! At least I have a stable job!” and the realization “Do I feel truly fulfilled? ”, I was struggling to understand what was tugging on me, and why I felt I was deprived of something. What I have noticed is I sincerely wanted to up my game in the classroom when working with students and start delivering value to their lives in a way traditional education…
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33 Ways to Save Time and Money as a Teacher.
I have recently listened to the episode “What would your life look like if you valued your time as much as you value your money?” by Angela Watson from www.thecornerstonefroteachers.com. It made me think about hours and hours of time lost in my first year of teaching. I started reevaluating my time input and the value of my time during the second year of my career at a high school. Yep, second-year new ng teacher become smart! Unlike in a community college where I would teach the same course over and over again to different students, in high school, I would experiment a lot with a variety of materials and…
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Why I Stopped My Contributions to 403b for Teachers.
From the author: In this post, I will list 5 reasons why I stopped my contribution to teacher’s 403b plan. Hi there! This is quite an intimidating topic to write about. You see, I’m not a numbers girl, but I do go far and beyond my uncomfortable situation about numbers to find out where my pennies are going. Being aware of how your money is spent has nothing to do with stinginess or even frugality. I would say it’s a trend that everyone is following now. For me, it’s looking for bargains, finding natural products for a reasonable price, appreciating simple things and getting off the consumer society bandwagon. Let’s…
