Welcome to another fantastic year at Troy Intermediate School in Avon Lake, Ohio. I hope you all have had an enjoyable summer. I know I have had a very busy summer. I began the summer by enrolling in a continuing education class on Leadership. I also read several educational books that would help me improve my instruction. I learned several new strategies to engage students in their learning. I also worked on revising my Interactive Student Notebooks. (You will hear more about these notebooks in a later post.) A couple of things I love about teaching is that I am always surrounded by children and books and always learning from both. I love my job and I am very excited to get back into the classroom. After meeting the students I am more excited than ever! I truly anticipate a wonderful year.
Besides teaching and learning, I really enjoy my family time. And this summer brought about several changes in our family. On July 8th my daughter-in-law Amanda, gave birth to my first grandchild. Her name is Allison Birdie Abernathy. She was an extra special gift for my husband as she was born on his birthday. You will hear more about Allison in later post, I'm sure.
My summer however, was bittersweet. Another change for our family was learning of my son's deployment just days before it was to occur. My son Alexander Scott Jones serves in the U.S. Army and he deployed to Kuwait for a year the day before school started. I am very proud of his service to our country, but he is my baby and it was so hard to see him go. Trust me, I will be putting in plenty of extra hours at school to keep me busy this year.
To finish off my summer, I spent lots of time trying to prepare my classroom for the school year. Can't wait to meet you all at Information Night. Here is a sneak peek into our classroom.