Welcome to Mrs. Peterson's Room!

I'm finally taking the leap and starting a teaching blog. I'm still not sure if I'll have a whole lot of new things to contribute to the land of teaching blogs, but now I have a place that I can share, reflect, and journal about some of my experiences as a teacher.

For those of you who don't know me (yet) I'm Lisa Peterson. I have many titles and roles in life: wife, mother, daughter, sister....the list could go on, but my newest title is "teacher". I ended up teaching by taking a little bit of a round about path. Right about the time most teachers are finishing up their college career and student teaching I was married and expecting my first child. It wasn't until 2 more children later that I had the opportunity to go back to college - which worked out well, since I finally knew what I wanted to be when I grew up. I started attended Brigham Young University - Hawaii in April 2007 and (finally) graduated in June 2010 with my B.S. in Elementary Education and a Hawaii State teaching license for grades K-6. It was a long journey (including the birth of baby #4) and, aside from my children, it is definitely my proudest accomplishment.

Last summer as I was finishing school and student teaching (in 4th grade) the job hunt was on. Staying in Hawaii didn't seem like a very viable option then, so while I did apply to the Hawaii DOE, I was also looking for jobs else where so my family and I prepared for the move back to the mainland. Long story short - I ended up with a job teaching Kindergarten on Maui. (For a slightly longer version click here.)

So here I am one year later - it was a whirlwind of a year. I learned a lot, I stressed a lot, I neglected my household duties a lot (read piles of laundry and MANY dinners purchased rather than cooked). But I'm happy with my choice to become a teacher and I'm looking forward to enjoying teaching this year - now that I kind of know what's going on.

I hope that you'll join me in my adventures in teaching this year. I'm looking forward to sharing them with all of you. This week I started working on my classroom - I moved to a new room over the summer - getting it all ready for school to start on August 1st. Yes - that's in 1 week. I actually go back to work officially on Tuesday (like 1 day away) and the students start the next week. I still have a lot to do, and lots of ideas that I picked up here and there that I want to share as I work on my room this week. I also have been making a few things for my room that I am making quick tutorials for - file box seats (they seem to be all the rage in the teaching blogworld at the moment) and homemade phonics whisper phones (for SUPER cheap). So be on the look out!