Meet the Teacher Monday, on Tuesday :)

I'm linking up with Blog Hoppin' for Meet the Teacher Monday (forgive me for being a day late, I had trouble with my Mac yesterday, not suprising!)

Tell us a little something about you...

My name is Rachel Sarti, I am married to a wonderful man named Dan, who is an airline pilot. Needless to say we like to travel :) We have a 2 year old White German Shepherd named Hannah. I love being domestic, cooking, baking, sewing, and of course reality tv. The rest of Dan's siblings live within a few miles of us so we are lucky enough to spend a lot of time with family. We are also hoping to have children very soon :)

How long have you been teaching?

I have been teaching in my own classroom for 4 years. I taught Kindergarten my first year and 1st grade for the past 3. While I was going to school for my teaching certificate, I substitute taught for almost a year. I learned a lot and made some great teacher friends this way. 

You might not know...

Teaching is my 2nd career, it's crazy having a second career being a whopping 28 years old but here I am! I graduated from Arizona State University in 2005 with a degree in Human Communication. I worked for a design firm as an administrative assistant and eventually a project coordinator. After a couple of years, I decided to go back to school to become a teacher, I wanted a career where I feel more stressed fulfilled :) I substitute taught and served at Chili's to put myself through a post bac program for my Elementary Ed certificate and I have since gotten a full SEI endorsement and an Early Childhood Endorsement. Looking back on it, I wish I had done a masters program in the first place but whatareyougonnado? Hopefully I'll start my masters soon :)

What are you looking most forward to this school year?

I'm really looking forward to creating units and printables for my class a la the blog goddesses who have inspired me. Our math program is not ideal so my team and I supplement A LOT with teacher created materials. I've been inspired to make them cute, fun and meaningful for my students. I could use a tutorial if any dear teacher would like to volunteer their time and expertise (wink, wink).

What do you need to improve?

I need to improve my writing block, including grammar. Our school uses Thinking Maps and I love them. They are a great way to brainstorm ideas for writing and I'm trying to incorporate them into my daily writing.  I would like to work on developing great prompts and have the students generate lots of ideas so they can write and write. You always have the kid who takes 10 minutes to write 1 word and the other kid who is done in 2 minutes, this drives me crazy!

I am a piler. I make piles of paper and lists and they tend to take over my life counter top. My goal is to get better at filing or recycling papers as I use/copy/receive them. We'll see how this works out!

What teaching supplies can you *not* live without?

I have to write with a Sharpie extra fine point in black. I also keep fine point markers around for writing names on folders, name tags etc.

I was hoarding a pack of Mr. Sketch smelly markers that I finally decided to bust out and I am obsessed.

Two words; pocket charts.
  
Magnets; I love to put magnets on things and put them on the whiteboard. This way they aren't permanent and I can change things around frequently.

Notepads to make millions of lists.

Post its; to make mini lists.

Books, books, books!

Thanks for stopping by!