Motivating Our Students...{with a little teacher music video}!

That's right...its a teacher music video...made by yours truly and performed by all the amazing teachers at my school.This year I was lucky enough to be in charge of  a pep rally to motivate our test taking students. The idea behind it was we wanted K-2 students to be a part of the major testing that was getting ready to occur at our school. So I had the idea of making a motivational video to play right before the pep rally.

With a little help from my hubby writing the lyrics to Miley Cyrus's "Party in the USA", I grabbed the school video camera and stalked all the teachers at my school during their planning. I am so blessed to work in a school with such fun people, because everyone was on board! With this project, I finally learned how to use Windows Movie Maker and recorded the song through a program called Audacity. It took about 2 weeks of diligent work, and it was so worth it! The kids loved seeing their teachers on video acting silly, and it was so great seeing all of us work together for our students.

I think I am going to start this as an annual tradition at our school.Will I make improvements to next year's video? You Bet! Like for one, I won't use my voice...I love to dance, but singing is not my strong suit. I took one for the team this year, but next year when I write another song, I'm getting someone else to sing it!

Let me know what you think and if you have suggestions for me for next year.

Exciting News!

My dear bloggy friends out there in blogland. Oh how I have neglected you. I have lots of fun things to share with you but first I will start with my exciting news....

 

On Friday I was named Henderson County's 2013-2014 Teacher of the Year!

 

The look of pure shock at my principal when I found out!

 

Still in disbelief with absolutely NO speech prepared!

 

After the ceremony, my principal and I headed back to school, only to find that the entire school had lined the halls with posters and were all cheering. It was surreal, unbelievable and of course made me swell with tears. Talk about an emotional roller coaster. It was truly a moment I will remember forever! I'm so blessed with so many amazing people in my life...friends, family, coworkers, and all you amazing blogging teachers who inspire me on a daily basis. Feeling beyond blessed!

 

But let's get back to business. I finally submitted my national board portfolio this month...signed, sealed, delivered (online)...I'M DONE! I also got the test out of the way too. It feel so good to finally be free from spending all of my free time working on it. I'm so excited to be a blogger again.

 

So, without making this the longest post in the world I want to share something real quick.

 

Here are some inspirational candy tags that I made for our 3-5th graders who are taking their End of Grade tests this week. We had a special pep rally for them and each K-2 student wrote a letter to a 3-5 student encouraging them to do well on their test. Along with it we passed out blow pops and these tags:

 

 

To get your free copy click on the picture or click here!

 

You could use this with any test.The kids loved it.

 

I highly recommend having a pep rally with your school to get kids excited and motivated about taking the test. Ours was awesome. I also made a music video with all of the staff at my school. It is a song that I rewrote to "Party in the USA"...except I call it "EOG Test Day". If I can figure out how to upload it, I will post soon!

 

Thanks for hanging in there with me! Blogging is finally a top priority now that boards are over. Haleluiah, amen!!!