It's been a while...

We excitedly went on spring break not realizing the world was going to change... Covid turned our worlds upside down and now here I sit years later no longer a first year teacher, not a second year teacher but I am nine weeks into my 8th year of teaching. 

My teaching journey took a few twists and turns over the past few years. After my fourth year of teaching 1st grade I excitedly got a position as a social studies teacher for 4th or 5th grade or at least I thought... A week before school was to start the principal at the intermediate school called me in and told me they needed me to teach 4th grade math. Panic was my first and foremost emotion. My issues with math made me doubt my ability to effectively teach 4th grade. Sensing my panic the principal told me that I had a good team of math teachers to support me and she would be there as well to guide me. 

My next thought was why? Why me? The simple answer was that I was a certified teacher and math is a STAAR tested subject, social studies is not at this grade level. They could put a para, a long term sub or even an uncertified teacher in the social studies position but they needed a certified teacher in math. The principal promised me they would keep looking for a teacher to fill the math spot and as soon as they did I would be moved into my dream position of 5th grade social studies. Guess what?  You guessed it they never found another teacher AND at the end of the year I was told I would be in math again. I asked to be transferred back to my old elementary school and had the choice of teaching 2nd or 3rd grade math. 

I have been a 3rd grade math teacher for three years now. But everything has changed, the curriculum, the admin, the kids, the environment and I cannot say it has changed for the better. 

And I cannot say that I am the same happy, excited teacher that used to write about her teaching journey. I am not sure where I lost her. Was it a slow progression? Is this just what happens to all teachers?  Or did covid, bad admin or the change in kids cause the shift in who I was as a teacher? 

Reading my old blogs made me sad to see how much I have changed. I still know most of my first class and see them when I attend some of their sports events. They make me feel a hint of the same feelings I had way back then. At times I have contemplated trying to get certified to teach high school so that when they all become freshmen next year I can try to find the old me. To try and find the love and excitement I once had. 

There are a lot more life updates that are much happier to share but that is a story for another blog. 

One of my first teachers...

You will hear me talk a lot about my Grandma, Aunt and Dad when it comes to the first and maybe most important teachers in my life. However, there is another person who had a profound influence in my life from a very early age. My Grandpa was a more quiet influence in my life but he was no less important to my upbringing.

As I was going through my pictures looking for a particular picture for an other project I was struck by how many pictures there are of me with my Grandpa throughout my childhood where he is teaching me or sharing something pretty cool.

I found pictures where he is helping me learn to walk when I was a baby, some where he is listening me read one of my many books, and one of my all-time favorite memories from my childhood is when he took me to see a Boeing 747 carrying the space shuttle Challenger on its back when it landed at Kelly AFB in 1983. He talked to me some about why it had to ride on the back of the 747 and how cool it was to see it in person. It is a memory I have always cherished because I got to share it with my Grandpa who seemed as fascinated by it as I was.

I can still see my Grandpa sitting at the kitchen table with the newspaper spread out in front of him while he worked on a crossword puzzle. I cannot say I love doing crossword puzzles but I do have a large vocabulary and a love for knowing all sorts of weird facts that helped my Grandpa work through those crosswords. My Dad and Grandpa heavily influenced my sense of humor and mischief. No one can deny I have the Shaffar stubbornness, although, I like to think of it as determination.

There are so many things I learned from my Grandpa that it would be impossible to list them all.

I am so grateful to have had the opportunity to spend so much time with both of my grandparents. They played a huge part of some of my most cherished memories of my childhood and definitely helped me to become not only the person I am today, but also the teacher I am in my classroom.

Top left: Watching the space shuttle Challenger. Top right: Reading to my Grandpa. Middle : Grandpa taking a break from his crossword puzzle to feed baby Tina some tasty breakfast.  Bottom row: My Grandpa helping me walk. 

No longer a first year teacher - Weeks 1 & 2

What a whirlwind the first two weeks have been.  I have a new partner teacher, who is awesome! We have six first grade teachers thankfully, which means we are in teaching hubs of two instead of three like last year. It is a lot easier to prepare and keep track of 33 students vs 64-66 last year. Also with a full first grade team it means our class sizes are smaller.

I am also a mentor teacher to one of the new teachers. He is pretty cool but don't tell him I said that. 😏

One of the things I realized this year was how much my class last year had learned and matured over the course of the school year.  I have to keep reminding myself that this new group of students is just beginning first grade and I need to start back at square one on everything. With that being said I am enjoying discovering all their personalities, motivators and how to interact with them in order to guide/teach them the most effective way I can.

There are some definite challenges this year that I didn't have last year. It has been a struggle to try and work through them, but I think that is part of what I love about teaching. Every class, every student, every day presents something new and I have to be on my game constantly to try figure out the best action plan. Sometimes your lesson plan goes perfectly, other times you have to change course on the fly and I love it.

My aunt swears I have ADHD because I cannot sit still and concentrate on just one thing. I like doing several things at once or I get bored. (ex. I will read, watch tv and listen to music all at the same time.) As a teacher I am moving around and multitasking the whole day. There is never a dull moment. (Sometimes I wish there was, especially this week when I am sick.)

Below are some pictures of what my classroom looks like this year. In case you couldn't tell I love Star Wars.

This was what my room looked like when I arrived in August to start getting it set up. 

Welcome to Mrs. Ogier's Jedi Academy!

My desk with Chewbacca as guard and small group table.

Library in far corner up ahead and center station on far right of picture.

Front view of my desk and back counter.

Jedi word wall and student lockers.

No longer a first year teacher.

A new school year is upon us! How did this happen? It feels like it was only a couple of weeks ago that I tearfully said goodbye to my very first class of first graders and closed up my classroom. However, ready or not we are now a week away from the start of another year. Tonight was the annual Meet The Teacher and just like last year I was a bit nervous.

Being an introvert naturally leads me to be a bit quiet and reserved. The concept of greeting 18-20 parents of my future students is a bit daunting for me to think about. Put me in a room full of 6 and 7 year olds I am good to go, but their parents, for lack of a better term, freak me out. Last year I was so completely overwhelmed and prayed I didn't make myself look like a total idiot. 😂

I kept myself distracted for most of the day to avoid thinking about meeting the parents. As we waited for the school doors to open and the rush of parents to be let in I gave myself a stern talking to. (You are awesome! You got this! They don't bite!) When the first parents walked through my door I slipped into confident teacher-mode and all of my shy awkwardness was happily no where to be found.

A few of my students from last year came into my room to say hi and it was such an awesome feeling to see them and get hugs. It was the kind of moment every teacher lives for. It made me think of a little girl I know who wanted to be a teacher from the moment she knew what school was. A little girl who dreamed of one day having her very own classroom and hoped that her students would come to visit her even after they moved on to another grade level.

6 year old Ms. Shaffar (future Mrs. Ogier) with her very first students. 

Her spelling tests were very challenging. 😆

 After meeting some of my new students I am even more excited for the new school year to start. I think we are going to have a lot of fun while learning all about math and science. I also have a new partner this year. We have been working together a bit over the past couple of weeks and she is wonderful! It is going to be a really fun year!

Confessions of a First Year Teacher - And That's a Wrap!

I cannot believe the school year is over! Overall, the year passed by quickly. There were points in the year that seemed to drag but for the most part I felt like it was all flying by at the speed of light. There were so many concepts and TEKS (Texas' standards set up for each grade level) that I needed to cover with my firsties. There never seemed to be enough time to cover it all while making sure no kids got lost in the shuffle as we powered through each different topic. (Became quiet the juggling act.)

I feel lucky that all I had to worry about, for the most part, was math. There was some time set aside for extra reading and AR testing with my homeroom class, but math was always my main focus. I still cannot believe that I am a math teacher. If someone had told my school age self that I was going to grow up and become a math teacher, I would have probably laughed in their face and encouraged them to seek psychiatric help. I struggled with math all throughout elementary, middle and high school. It wasn't until I reached college that I lucked out with a professor who was able to teach me the way I needed to be taught and I discovered that I actually liked the logic and absolute that is math.

As a kid who struggled with math I think it helps me understand my students who struggle as well. I had many moments this school year where I tried to find different ways to present a concept to reach a student who was struggling. It was a challenge but one I was excited to take on.

We did near pods and kahoots!, we did hands on activities and pencil and paper assignments. we worked in groups, partners and independently, there were scavenger hunts and musical clocks, we played games, worked in our notebooks and made a few crafts.

The one thing I found myself slowly but surely moving away from was the text book. The series used in my district is, from what I have seen, one of the more popular ones and I really hated using the it. I found a whole year of TEKS specific math units on TeacherPayTeacher that I really loved and I found myself turning to these units and using the different activities that were so much more hands on and kid friendly than the textbook.

As a kid I was a huge fan of the Little Miss and Mr book series. When I was looking for fun anchor charts to use for the geometry unit I stumbled onto these fun posters. I was a true nerd in my excitement. Thankfully, I didn't have to be an expert artist in order to create these freehand. My kids used post-its to draw real world items that had the same shape as each poster character. 

*****

I think one of the hardest concepts to teach my kids was coins. We did a bunch of hands on type of activities. They struggled not only with identification of coins, specifically the nickel and dime but also trying to add mixed groups of coins. I ended up spending a little extra time than I originally planned trying to help them. We even worked more on skip counting by 5's and 2's which they were also struggling with. I tried the touch points strategy but my kids never really got the hang of it and it seemed to confuse them more than helped. I am holding onto the strategy to try with other classes later but I think I will concentrate on having them skip count and coin identification.

*****

The other concept my kids struggled with more than any other was time. We started by learning time to the hour which. It went so well I thought wow!!! they have this in the bag. However, when we went on to time to the half hour it threw them all off and it even caused them to get time to the hour confused. One of the activities they seemed to have the most fun with was during this unit. I had 22 clocks in sleeves in a circle around the room, each student had their own dry erase marker. I played music on pandora and the kids calmly walked around until the music stopped and then they had to drop down at the clock their were nearest and write down the time the clock showed. 

I walked around the room and checked each clock. If the time was incorrect we had a quick talk about where the hour and minute hands were pointing and what the correct time was. I never removed clocks so there were no eliminations which allowed every student the hands on practice.

*****

I think one of the most fun units of the year was graphing. We talked about every type of graph but we concentrated on bar graphs, pictographs and tally charts. Taking a page out of my mentor teacher  Mrs. Benson's play book the kids were split into groups of 4 and given a survey question to ask their classmates. Once they had collected the data they then had to create a bar or pictograph. Then they did the same thing in partner groups and finally each student had to write their own survey question, which I had to approve and I sent them to one of my hub teachers classes to survey that class. I allowed the student to decide whether they wanted to show their data as a bar graph or a pictograph. They obviously had key elements that had to be included on each graph (title, labels, key and data) but they loved being able to choose the type of graph they made and went to town creating some really awesome graphs. 

 You could clearly see my influence when all 3 of my classes where creating their survey questions. I think about 75% of their questions were Star Wars related. I was so proud of my little firsties. 😄

The other fun graph activity my kids loved was the Lucky Charms graph. This activity was so successful with my student teaching class that I couldn't wait to try it out on my own class. The kids followed all the rules and we all had a lot of fun. Their favorite part was when I gave them the okay to eat the cereal after they had recorded their data. They were all so happy snacking, graphing and answering the questions about their data.

I had one observation this year. The principal was in my room for the most nerve-wracking 45 minutes of my life. We were discussing 3-d shapes while I had the kids working on a nearpod with their iPads. The kids were engaged and really well behaved. I scored very well on my observation thank goodness.

I was asked to come back next year (yay!!!!) and will again be teaching math to first graders. I may be adding in science this year if we actually are able to be split into teacher teams of 2 instead of 3 like this year. (fingers crossed)


Finally, I would like to thank Rosemary😘. She kept me sane, well at least as sane as I can get anyways. Without her I would still be trying to figure out my RTI paperwork. 😂

Confessions of a First Year Teacher - Too many weeks to figure out...

Okay so yes, once again, I let time slip by without posting. Seriously, between RTI paperwork, annoying drama with those who shall not be named and just normal teaching responsibilities I find the days, weeks, months passing at a speed faster than I can almost comprehend.

So much has happened since I last posted. We made it through Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas. It is the eve of our return to school after winter break and honestly I could use another week or 2 off but alas, it's time to head back and anxiously await spring break.

Place value fun...

I borrowed another activity from my student teaching mentor teacher to help my kids understand place value and how numbers are represented in different formats. (standard, expanded and base ten block)  I broke the kiddos down into small groups of 5 and gave them each their own numbers depending on their individual achievement levels.

Redecorating a little...

After much inner debate and exhausting myself moving desks around into different kinds of groupings, formations, and old fashioned rows I decided to give tables a go.  I found I really prefer the tables because the room feels more open and I love being able to put down supply buckets at each table so the kiddos have easy access to what they need each day. Plus I think it encourages cooperative learning much more than the individual desks. 

I still kept 3 individual desks in my room because I do have some students that for whatever reason cannot handle being in a table group. They work better and my sanity is saved having them on their own. 

Creative Kiddos...

Each 1st grade student was encouraged to create a turkey in disguise at home with their parents/guardian. I read my class Turkey Troubles and then told them about the activity. They were all so excited to go home and come up with a disguise for their turkey. It was so much fun walking down the halls and seeing what all our kids came up with. 

I even joined in the fun and created two turkeys of my own. Star Wars themed of course. :D


Everyone looked forward to Thanksgiving break. The kids had the whole week off. We teachers had 2 days of inservice. Yay. :/  When we came back from the holiday the kids were literally bouncing off the walls and hard to get back on track. At times it felt like in the week they were out they forgot all our expectations for behavior and routine.

It was during the 3 weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas that I seriously questioned my career choice. Add in some unnecessary drama that I somehow got brought into the middle of and it made seriously question and rethink some options for my future.

IT'S CHRISTMAS TIME!!!!!!!!!!

 Being the Christmas fanatic that I am I spent some of pre Thanksgiving break in-service time decorating my room for the best holiday of the year. I even scoured TeacherPayTeacher in search of fun holiday themed center activities and worksheets. I was determined to go all out. I remember as a kid loving when our assignments or classroom activities were themed for the current holiday. It was kind of magical to me and I wanted to give that same feeling to my students.

Snow Day!!!

Imagine my excitement when I woke up one morning and looked out my front window to see this.

It continued to snow the whole day. School was delayed until 10am for 2 days. 

Snow makes everything so pretty and magical looking.

My kiddos watching it snow from our classroom window. They were so excited.
We spent our shortened days watching videos and doing some skip counting math crafting. As usual, I shook my head at myself for being shocked at how messy 1st graders can be when cutting and pasting.

The week before Christmas Break...

Christmas Around the World - Each 1st grade teacher choose a different country to present. I choose Germany, mostly because of family origins. I created a powerpoint with some of the traditions practiced and or that originated in Germany. Then I played some German Christmas songs and we created Tannenbaums while eating ginger snap cookies and candy canes. 

Parent Gifts...

After we finished with Christmas Around the world I kept my homeroom class and we did not rotate out classes for the rest of the week. I had my kiddos work on crafts to give their parent/guardian for Christmas. We had a lot of fun watching Christmas movies while I worked with small groups on their crafts. We made silly Christmas picture frame ornaments and paint swirl Christmas ball ornaments. 

The kids loved swirling the paint around the Christmas ball. I gave them a choice of 2 to 3 different paint colors. We tried glitter too but it didn't show up very well in the paint. Once each ball drained and had time to dry over a couple of days I put the topper back on and tied a red ribbon to the topper and the kids put it along with their silly picture frame ornament into a gift bag and took it home to give to their parent/guardian. 

On the last day of school before we officially were on winter break we had a Polar Express Day. The kids were allowed to come in their pajamas and bring their blankets. I put out snacks I brought and some of the kids brought in snacks as well. We provided them with hot chocolate and then we spent the majority of the half day watching the Polar Express movie. We then had a book exchange where each kid brought in a wrapped book and picked another student to exchange with. I also gave them a stocking filled with trinkets and candy. By the time the kids left at 12:30 I was exhausted and ready to collapse. I love Christmas time but even I was ready to leave it behind and just crawl into bed for the next 2 weeks. 

Tomorrow it's back to school. Monday is an inservice day and then the kiddos come back Tuesday. Is it bad that i'm already counting the days until spring break?

Confessions of a First Year Teacher - Weeks 5, 6, 7, & 8?

I know, I know... It has been several weeks since I posted but umm Hi! First year teacher here and prone to becoming overwhelmed with all the lesson planning, parent teacher conferencing, fire safety assembly, field trips, surprise cupcake parties, grading and first ever report cards.

I experienced and survived my first parent teacher conferences. I am so fortunate to have been able to hold the conferences with my team mates. They were both awesome and it made the process far less stressful and intimidating.

Fun with Pumpkins!

We had another field trip and let me just say I slept really well that night. We took all 5 first grade classes to the pumpkin patch. It was an adventure for sure, a bit stressful but I didn't lose any kids in the corn maze. However, it might have been a close call. Close your eyes and picture just my class of 21 kids. We come out of the corn maze into the pumpkin patch and they all scatter in 21 different directions with only one Mrs. Ogier wishing she could clone herself. I did have a very sweet and helpful parent show up and help me corral my kiddos. Without her I would have seriously lost my mind a couple of times. I took advantage of excitement surrounding the field trip to have students practice their subtraction skills under the guise of creating their very own patchwork pumpkin. Students rolled a dice twice, subtracted the smaller number from the larger number, looked on the pumpkin to find the difference and picked whatever color they wanted to color that one spot on their pumpkin.

Just the facts!

I feel like the school year is speeding by quickly. Halloween is already upon us and the 2nd progress reports of the school year have already gone home. We have introduced fact families and students created fact family neighborhoods for each teacher. (Fact Families of Ogier Avenue, Saavedra Lane and Vazquez Street)

Future house builders?
















We have also started base ten blocks. I introduced the base ten blocks by reading a story about how a house is built and then giving each table group a random number of base ten blocks to build their own "house". After they built their house I had them count how many longs (tens) and how many units (ones) they used to build their houses. Finally, we discussed the total value of each groups houses and compared values.

Let's get specific!

I am also learning that I need to be VERY specific when I give instructions. This subtraction practice worksheet was my classes daily math activity. At the start of every day students come in and find some sort of activity to complete before we start our lesson.  On this paper the middle section the student was supposed to draw a picture to reflect the word problem. Apparently, this student took my "Simply draw a picture to go with the word problem" instruction as a creative challenge to simply draw whatever picture they wanted. :P

Yoda Says!

I "installed" a duct tape number line on the floor in my classroom and to practice subtraction solving skills using a number line we played Yoda Says. My students thought it was hilarious and were so excited for their turn to get their Yoda card and hop along the number line.

Crazy Red Ribbon Week

This past week was Red Ribbon week and each day was a different theme. One of the days was crazy hair day and we had so many imaginative crazy hair styles.

We also had Hawaiian shirt day, college gear day, twins day and costume day. Friday was by far one of the craziest days I have had so far. Not only were the kids allowed to wear their halloween costumes to school, we started the day with a math rally, PTO opened the snack bar at the end of the day, 2 of my students parents sent goody bags of candy and toys for each kid and I had a parent show up with cupcakes for the whole class. To say the kids were excited is an understatement.

 I dressed up as Chewbacca, of course. However, some kiddos thought that I was a bear and wouldn't stop hugging me because I was so "soft and fluffy".

Never a dull moment in 1st grade!