Kindles, reading and teacher appreciation

Right - so what happened to make me set my blogging aside for almost three years? Truth be told, I became worried that parents would "find" me and wanted to retain anonymity, plus generally, I have been overworked and ... well, let's forget the excuses, and just refocus on getting back to this.

Great discoveries in my personal life has been the purchase of a Kindle, which has made the purchase of books affordable for me - printed books are so expensive in South Africa. Every day we have a ten minute silent reading period after first break and that is a lovely quiet time in the school - at least, it should be, except for some teachers who seem to arrive late at their classrooms or don't read themselves. I have enjoyed reading my Kindle in class and, much to my interest, while in years gone by, no pupils showed much interest in what I have been reading, they do now. The technology definitely "grabs" them and many have brought their Kindles to school to show me what they are reading. Others have more openly talked about the books they are are reading and still others have even asked me to recommend books to them. Does owing a Kindle somehow make me more modern in their eyes. Whatever, it is, I have been delighted by their response to my own reading.

Another new "discovery" for me has been The Teachers Pay Teachers site http://www.teacherspayteachers.com and I have been slowly purchasing a variety of excellent materials for teaching. Being able to download digital copies and no longer having to worry about the slowness of shipping items to South Africa is a great joy. I am now even considering starting to sell my own materials on this website - if only, of course, I had more time than I do right now! Still, it's definitely enticing me to think of earning dollars. The competitions that I have connected with through this and other sources has been good too, like this one which offers a variety of autographed books and digital downloads: http://www.kleinspiration.com/2012/07/biggest-give-away-yet-thank-you-readers.html

 

I am loving all the new things that are available for teachers, all of which go a long way to making up for the occasional times of feeling overworked! Teachers appreciating each other is a great way for us to feel good about the work we do.