Oh, the things to celebrate!

Thank you to Ruth Ayers for hosting this weekly celebration

at Ruth Ayers Writes!

This spring has been pretty stressful in good and bad ways!  There has been much new learning taking place, saying good-bye to colleagues and co-workers, and appreciation for streaks of good health.  Additionally, this week, the change of roles for coaches and the process of coaching moved from being "discussed" to action plans...

New learning...I am excited and nervous for all the new learning with being a member of my district's Kindergarten Readiness Assessment Team of trainers.  We went through the training process by the State of Ohio, have worked as a team to tweak our approach to training teachers from the district!  I have used things I learned about from the past year to help the team push the news out to teachers and parents using the Smore.com newsletters!  Here is one of our samples:

I am also currently using the Video Scribe app to make a video that shows interesting facts about the new components of the KRA.  The best part of all this new information and the part worth celebrating is that our team has worked together-supporting and building the new foundation and framework of this learning.  So I thank you team!

Beauty of the Earth...I am excited to say that I've enjoyed spending time in the gardens around the house-trimming hedges and planting some annuals.  The best part having a little three year old helper that wants to add water to everything we've planted!  She makes me smile  :)!

The retirements...we celebrated saying good-bye to fellow teachers who are retiring from their positions this year as most have either 30 or 35 years in with the district.  One of them has been a great friend and sounding board as a fellow literacy coach.  Yesterday was her last day and she will be so missed.  We hopefully think that it will only be for 60 days...and then she'll be back!  I am celebrating her accomplishments as a coach, colleague, teacher and friend as she's made a huge impact on children's literacy lives!

The health streak...  Since my dad entered the hospital at the beginning of the month, he came home and is doing better.  Both of my parents are in a stable pattern of good health lately.  Thankful and celebrating good health.

The job...the district decided to rename all of us and change our position to "Instructional Specialist/Coach" with more of a focus on being generalists.  We are now updating our coaching profiles and will be assigned to no more than 2 buildings each.  This makes so much sense although I am nervous about going out to the buildings who are matched with similar profiles to meet and be sort-of interviewed  by building principals and SIP teams.  Hopefully this will go well and I will end up well-matched with the buildings because we have similar views rather than being randomly assigned.