And just like that, it's been 30 years of teaching for me in the education field.  I've been a classroom teacher, a specialist (computer science), and a coach (soccer, basketball) in Saint Paul Public Schools.  The only other school district that I've taught at was Bloomington Public Schools.  This was right after I had graduated from college in 1992.  Thus, technically, I've taught for 31 years.

I remember coming into the district in my 20's and people were retiring left and right.  I was already envying them because they can now rest easy from their daily routines.  Now that I am at that age when retirement is just around the corner, I am often reminded of how cool it would be to retire and rest easy.  Congrats to those that are retiring after this school year!  

Sometimes we teach with what resources we have available for the students.  When I came to Frost Lake four years ago, they had just recycled all the desktop computers and bought a new cart with 30 MacBook Pro laptops.  Each student also received iPads so they can use them in their classrooms and take them home. There were no other resources available so I had to make due with what was available to me.  Thus, I made it a point to teach students how to use laptops and the apps associated with them.  We used Microsoft products until Google Drive was able to be implemented for students' use.  I was using a sketch program until Seesaw was adopted for all lower level grade students.  There have been so many changes in apps and projects but I remain grounded in the necessary requirements from students; learn life-long skills to benefit them in the near future.

We continue to work on keyboarding skills and coding skills.  We learn how to copy and paste photos from outside sources to make our documents more presentable.  We learn how to modify our text documents and change our fonts, size and color to make them attractive to our audience.

I am glad the school year is coming to a close. Mentally, I've had a draining year.  I hope that next year will be better.