Aim to Be Awesome, Not Perfect

So way back in August, I started a post on my goals for the new school year. My goals: blog once a week better website skills  So how am I doing with these?  (insert laughter here) Well, if you follow this blog, or follow me on Twitter, you know that I haven't blogged hardly at all since the school year began.. so we know where I am in that goal.  My goal of better website skills ... well.. that became a different goal - the goal of communication. And it sharpened into 2 goals - better communication with the staff at my school and with our community.  My first goal stemmed from some complaints that information was hard to find, since it could be housed in a variety of places, based on who created it or its content. Also, there were a lot of files on our school server, but those are not reachable when you are at home and you can't open them if someone else is editing them.  One of my assistant principals floated the idea of a staff Google Si...

So this year I started using an "Interactive Notebook". First off, I think my decision to keep a separate notebook per class period was a good one. I think I am doing okay with it, as the kids seem to like the foldables, the occasional coloring and keeping things organized. And I have been perusing my photos of my notebook pages, trying to figure out which one I like best so I can share it here on my blog. Problem is... there isn't anything I feel like I can share. Half of the pages are okay - but not worth sharing. The other half I have seen on the blogosphere or on Pinterest and the versions out there are way better than mine. So I thought I had nothing to share.... but then the lightbulb came on. One of the questions that come up about interactive notebooks is what to do when a kid is new or absent. Some teachers make extras or have a student copy theirs... but I teach middle school and one of my goals is to help students become responsible for their own...