Meet The Teacher Monday!

We all know how much I looooove link up parties...so here I am linking up with a bunch of awesome teachers from this blog for 2011 Teacher Week! Today is Meet the Teacher Monday.

Tell Us a Little Something About you...

Well, let's see. I'm Katie, and I'm a 23 year old third grade teacher. I have lived in North Carolina for all 23 (and a half, this week) of the years that I have been alive, and all of them have been spent less than an hour away from home. Where is home, you ask? Good 'ole Durham, North Carolina. Bull City, baby! Yes, I am a huge Duke Fan. :) 

I spent my college years in Greensboro, where I attended UNCG. I moved home in July 2010 and spent my last semester (yes, it took me forever 4.5 years to finish college...blegh) commuting back and forth between Greensboro and Durham. Not a fun time, let me tell you. However, I would have to get used to a long drive...but I'll save that saga for the next question. 

I have the best significant other in the whole wide world, and he is known affectionately as boyfriend (how original) on this blog. We have a golden retriever and a fat, lazy, insane darling tabby cat. The combination of those two makes for fun times at our house! We currently live in Cary, NC. In my spare time I love reading, spending too much money at Target and the Limited, and catching up on blogs.

 Now I feel like I'm writing a dating ad..let's move on.

How Long Have You Been Teaching?

I am currently beginning my first FULL year of teaching this year. Because I graduated in December, I could only teach for half the year last year. Boy, are those jobs hard to come by! Luckily, I moved in with boyfriend right after graduation, and was offered a job at the school were I completed my student teaching. However...that job was in Graham. Yes, Graham. For those of you who are not familiar with North Carolina, Graham is about 45 minutes west of Cary. Every.single.stinking.day for 4 monhts I drive 45 minutes to work and 45 minutes home from work. Sometimes it was an hour or more for me to get home due to 5:00 traffic. After school (and my contract) ended, I decided it was time to move closer to home.

I'm currently employed with National Heritage Academies as a third grade teacher in Raleigh, NC, and I only have a 20 minute drive to and from work now! Hooray!

You Might Not Know...

I considered not pursuing a career in teaching (or even going to college, for that matter). 

For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be a teacher. I played school with my cousins when I was younger, as well as my barbies and stuffed animals. When my little sister came along in 1996, she became the victim of my teaching ways.

When it came time to go to college, I wasn't ready. I had a MAJOR panic attack the night before I was to move into my dorm room, and I told my mom I didn't want to leave. I refused to pack. I stayed up until about 3am the night before I left for college, regretting every letter of intent I had signed and every student loan that I had taken out. I was a momma's girl, who had never been away from her mom or sister for more than 3 or 4 days at a time, getting ready to leave for college. NO WAY, JOSE. 

...I guess we all know how that one turned out. My mother would have died had I decided not to go to college. And here we are, 6 years later. I don't regret my decision to get my college degree for one second.

What are you most looking forward to this school year?

School actually started last week for us! I attended a New Teacher Orientation in Michigan in the first week of August, professional development started the following week, and then school started last Tuesday. I've been a busy busy bee! Now that I've met my babies, I'm looking forward to getting lots of feedback from my dean and my principal, and getting to embark on a new journey with my babies. Learning new routines and procedures is exciting for me!

What do you need to improve?

The number one thing I need to work on right now is my classroom management. During my internships and student teaching, classroom management was a breeze. Now that I'm out on my own, it's not as easy as I thought it was. Turns out, a class behaves much better when there are two teachers in the room than they do when there is only one! My first class basically ran the show. The biggest lesson that I learned in my first half year of teaching was to go in and set rules and expectations! I'm working on that this year, and my little third grade babies are wonderful so far, after only 5 days!

I also have a weird habit of not being able to hold eye contact for very long. I have a very irrational theory and explanation for this. I'm currently trying to rid myself of this fear.

What teaching supplies can you *not* live without?

Last year and throughout my internship/student teaching experience, I relied heavily on my SMARTboard.  Now that I teach in a charter school, I have to live without the luxury of having one. I'm hoping that I can figure out how to use that projector thing that is currently accumulating dust on top of my cabinets....

I LOVE love love index cards. Crazy, I know. I can't function without them. I might have a slight obsession. I use index cards for EVERYTHING. Word wall words, exit tickets, notes to parents, notes to me...anything.

I keep a stash of caffeine and/or Monster Energy drinks in my illegal inherited refrigerator. I know they aren't really school supplies, but I can't function without them.

Clorox wipes are a must, especially now that we eat lunch in our classroom. I might be a neat freak.

I don't know what I would do without my mini paper cutter. It saves gobs and gobs of time!!! Do yourself a favor and go buy one. You're welcome.

That's me in a nutshell! 

Stay tuned for teacher talk Tuesday, where I remember the horrors joys of my first half year of teaching and give advice to those fresh newbie teachers, although I haven't quite achieved veteran status myself.