Meet the Teacher: Amanda Nickerson

Today was my first official day of year number nine, and it's Who Monday at Blog Hoppin'.  Can you believe it's already time for Teacher Week?! I'm joining my friends for a little fun... and I'm sharing my current back to school stats... plus a little blast from the past.

Honestly, I feel like this entire blog is basically a diary of my teaching life, so I have decided to take it back to my pre-blogging days.  I could have easily titled this post "Meet Miss McVay" since it's more about my past than my present because let's face it, I am a social media addict, so you probably already know way too much about my classroom and my life.  :)  So... anyway... now you can see the whole continuum of my teaching experience...minus my days at a behavior school...because who knows what happened to those photos.  Sad face. 

Let's see what I could dig up from the archives, shall we?

This is a photo from student teaching in the spring of 2006.  :) I  was working the drive-through window at McDonald's for McTeacher's night.  I had the pleasure of working in the same second grade classroom for a full year, and I knew that teaching was everything I wanted at that point.

As you can see from another student teaching photo... I have always had an affinity for props.  :)

I used to teach first graders too... once upon a time.  Here are some of the activities we did for CVC words.

I also taught summer school for a few years.  This was part of my first grade group with their hilarious self-crafted reader's theater masks.  I totally forgot about this, but they are too stinkin' cute!

I also had no shame.  Not a shred.  Because who doesn't dream about being a coconut tree.  Right?!

Besides making Chicka Chicka Boom Boom themed frocks, I also used to make a lot of my own resources... and that sounds a lot like what I do now... except I didn't realize I could make digital resources... so I drew everything myself.  

I believe I have mentioned this before, but reading "Reading with Meaning" and meeting Debbie Miller during my second year of teaching was a game-changer for me.  She transformed my rudimentary teaching style, and she helped shape me into the teacher I am today. 

The next photo montage is from my first year as a third grade teacher in the 2008-2009 school-year.  

Freckle Juice Characterization

School-wide Election Project- Collaboration with Mrs. Hartwig's Fourth Grade

The First Annual Whatchamacallit Workshop

An engineering challenge using index cards.

A student initiated invention that came out of our unit on circuits and energy.

The final photo is from my last year in my former school district.  It was taken on the day of our word parade.  I had just had knee surgery, so I was on crutches for a legitimate reason.  Out of necessity, I dressed up as "Incapacitated".  My student dressed up as "Hypochondriac."  This is one of my favorites.  :) 

It was so much fun digging through old albums to find pictures for this post.  It's amazing to see how much I have grown since the 2005-2006 school-year.  It's amazing to see the transformation from hand-drawn to computer generated classroom resources too.  (I still kind of LOVE my original goodies because there's something so warm and welcoming about homemade/handmade stuff!)  I love seeing my first take on some of the projects I still enjoy doing with my students after all of these years.  When you boil it down, I still value fun, novelty, creativity, and critical thinking.  I just continually refine those projects and resources year after year to make them better than before.  Because that's what we do.  :)  We reflect... we look back... we look forward... and we strive to do even more than before... and even more than we thought we could.  Because at the end of the day... we all want the very best for our students.  I hope you enjoyed this trip down memory lane with me!

Don't forget to link up with Blog Hoppin' and introduce yourself!