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It's Funny...

Sometimes, I think it's funny (only kind of funny, because it's also a little disturbing) when I read about an idea for how to do something, only to realize that this great idea is exactly what I USED to do. It's "funny" because I HAD already been doing these great things, but a bit disturbing because I had completely forgotten them!

The most recent example of this came the other day, as I was reading The Together Teacher (which I started reading to be able to link up with Kelly at An Apple for the Teacher - I'm contributing a post about Chapter 10 in September).

So, I was reading chapter 1, where the author was explaining how to create a weekly schedule that shows every day by the hour, so that you can plan for and see when you will complete the tasks that need to done, and I was like - "Wait a minute, I used to do that!" Quite a few years ago, I used to spend much of my "spare" time working on my Mary Kay Cosmetics business. I went to meetings every week, held skin care classes, etc, and I learned SO much about ways to plan my time so that I could fit in all of my activities (and my children's activities), without letting anything slide. The weekly planner templates could be ordered from MK, but after a while I created my own on my computer. What a flashback when I saw a similar template in this book!

This led me to remember that I also used to create monthly, color-coded calendars of everything our family needed to do (color-coding was also a MK recommendation). I kept a copy in my school planner and gave copies to my husband and my mother-in-law (because she helped with child transportation and wanted to attend sporting events, school events, etc).  I started doing all of this at least 15 years ago, and wow, those calendars were full.......
I think I stopped being so dedicated to making them when my oldest daughter graduated from high school (6 years ago!!). At that time, my youngest daughter was not involved in many activities, so it was mainly my son's sporting events that we needed to know about (and school things). The color-coded calendar wasn't so critical any more, so I gradually stopped making them. (And, I wasn't as active in MK any more...there just wasn't time...so I didn't have the constant reminders to use these scheduling practices.)

This chapter has been a great reminder to get back to some of my old practices!



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  1. UnknownAugust 12, 2014 at 7:11 PM

    EEk! I am so excited to find another middle school math teacher! I am excited to be a new follower and look forward to reading all the things you do in your math classroom!

    ~Kimberly
    TheMiddleSchoolMathematician.blogspot.com

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