Day 4: Jeans and Plans

The best two gifts you can give to a teacher do not come in the form of material things. Instead, two things that I get that make my day are being able to wear jeans, and planning time. Today we got both. We had our county wide institute day, and on these days with no students, we get to wear jeans (and we get out at 1:15 which is a huge bonus). There is something about being able to wear jeans that is so comforting. It just makes the day better. I wear jeans all the time, but for some reason, getting to wear them to school just hits different. They just feel different wearing them when you are at school. It is such a simple thing, but at least to our school, it makes a world of difference.

The second gift we can get is planning time. Time to sit with our partner(s) and really plan out a unit. My partner and I sit down and plan every Thursday which is super helpful, but it is only 50 minutes of time. We talk daily about what we are doing and make adjustments, but rarely do we get to sit down and really plan a unit from beginning to end. Today during our institute, we were afforded a majority of the time to do just that. We spent hours planning a new unit from beginning to end. We found every resource we will need. We created a calendar so we can continue to use these plans year after year. It was so nice just to be able to have the time to get this done. No interruptions, no having to go get the kids in five minutes, just time for us to get whatever we needed done. And we did just that.

These things seem so simple to most other people. Other professions may laugh at us because these are normal to them, especially to those that work from home. But for us educators, these are the “gifts” that are the best to us. Today was one of the most productive days I have had in a while, and I got to do it while sitting comfortable in my jeans.