Well, against all odds, here I go!

But before I dig in, I think a little background information on my life is needed so that anyone who reads this will understand me! First and foremost, I am the mother to four beautiful boys! They are 6, 3 and the twins just turned 2. Needless to say, these four rugrats keep me on my toes! I am also married to the most amazing husband who supports me and allows me to do way more than what one would expect a busy mom of four would be able to do. He cooks, he cleans, he cuts the grass, he even patches and paints our walls once a year! Chris and I make a pretty good team, and I’m so fortunate to have this crazy family of boys with him. I wouldn’t be able to do our life without him.

Last September was when I headed back to work after my last maternity leave. It was the first time that I was going back to work as a mom of four. I was so scared for what the year was going to bring, not only because I was now responsible for four little humans, but also because I knew I wanted to start dabbling a little more seriously into what I consider to be innovation in education. I believe that I did a lot of great things last year in my class, including incorporating work stations and using Seesaw with my students. I also started educating myself on Deeper Learning and Project Based Learning, and ended up doing a really cool big question project with my class last year. In June, at the tail end of the school year, I got on a plane with a couple of colleagues and we went to the Summer Institute at High Tech High in San Diego. All in all, it was a fantastic year of professional growth for me!

It was also a very busy and difficult year learning how to balance work and home life! I would be lying if I said that I always kept it together; I definitely shed some tears throughout the year. But you know what, it was all worth it! I learned so much and was actually really excited to get back into the swing of things this September!

So where does this bring me now? Well, I signed up for the #IMMOOC (Inovator’s Mindset Massive Open Online Course) with the intention of doing this my way, at my speed, and the way that works for me (ie while balancing my professional and home life). I knew that this was a book that I wanted to dive into anyways, because I read Learn Like a Pirate over the summer and absolutely loved it (more on that book in another blog post one day!), so the online course came at the perfect time for me! Having said that though, I figured that I would take it with a grain of salt, and do what I could. I planned on mostly participating through twitter and Facebook, but I surely didn’t anticipate starting a blog… but here I am!

So, in short, I am very excited to start actually writing down my reflections regarding all of this “innovation in education” talk, instead of just spending countless hours at night trying to sleep while my brain processes all of these cool new things that I am learning and implementing in my class! I’m not sure what this blog will end up looking like, nor do I know how often I’ll be posting… But I am here now, and that’s already a great thing!