It's time for a HUGE Thank You!

It's 11:49 on New Year's Eve and the ball is just about to drop in Times Square. I quickly take out my phone (getting it ready to send out all of those very important "Happy New Years" texts to family and friends) and happen to fall upon an email from Donors Choose telling me that one of my larger projects has been funded by one person.  I'm in awe and amazed...and then the ball drops and it's 2016.

I feel like this was a perfect way to start out a new year.  A perfect way to start a fresh and give thanks for all I've received in the past year.  This past year has been a pretty good one-both personally and professionally.

Professionally-it's had a lot of changes and I'm pretty excited about most of them.

This past year, I switched jobs and with switching jobs meant a lot of new things-new grade levels, new subjects to teach (MATH), new ways to do things.  My life had been so focused on literacy and the younger grades the past 8 years that I had almost NO materials for the older grades or MATH.  So, I turned to Donors Choose.  Since accepting my new job, I've written a lot of projects and they've ALL been funded.  I've received amazing materials including-an ipad, a chromebook, a mouse, charging station, folders, math workbooks, paper, glue, printer ink, laminating sleeves, many different math games, math manipulatives, legos and numerous other things I can't even recall at this moment.

I want to take a moment and thank these people (most of whom I don't even know) for helping me create a safe space for my students where I have everything I could ever need (and more) to help them be successful. For helping me be able to try different things to teach topics I've never taught before (including using legos-I'm super excited to start that when school starts back up!).  For helping me gain simple materials like paper and glue that makes it so we teachers can spend all of our time focusing on the important tasks at hand (teaching the little humans of the world).  For making my students excited to learn and explore the world around them.  For being so generous that it actually blows my mind.  THANK YOU!