Finding Encouragement & Inspiration; Especially When Life Doesn't Go As Planned

I hope you have all had a great Teacher Appreciation Week!  If you are a TpT buyer, I hope you got some great deals {I DID! :D}, if you are a TpT seller I hope you sold a lot {none for me this time, but not giving up!}.
I have wanted to get this post up for at least a week, but I had several challenges along the way: pictures that didn't load in Dropbox, a partially written post that didn't save in Blogger, preparing 2 days of lesson plans, & oh yes, spending my birthday at the hospital while my 20-year-old son {stepson} had open heart surgery to put in a pacemaker! {Below is a picture of Tyler, his girlfriend, & son; grandma {me} with Tyler Jr. & us grabbing food while Tyler was getting ready for surgery.

I am not giving up though so, here is my post that I hope gives you hope, encouragement, & inspiration.

Teaching is a challenging profession for many reasons...it is easy to struggle with discouragement, depression, & feelings of defeat and inadequacy due to class size, behavior issues, testing, pedulum swings & more.  We need to find proactive ways to counter all of that.  Here are some resources to help you do just that!

Elmer's Teaching Club

Search Elmer's Teacher Club on Facebook & like them.  They share quotes, images, & more to encourage & inspire teachers. It is so nice to see these in my Facebook feed!  Most Fridays they give away prizes, I haven't won YET!  Someday!

Kid President's Guide to Being Awesome

I am LOVING this book!!!! I got it in a Scholastic book order thinking it might be okay because I had liked some of his videos.  To begin with, I was surpised to learn more of Roby's {Kid President} story and how Kid President came to be...did you know Roby has Brittle Bone Disease?...I didn't before I started reading his book.  He has had over 70 broken bones & 13 surgeries...wow! He has such an incredible energy & joyful spirit, it is contagious watching him & reading his book....I STRONGLY encourage you to pick a copy or 2 or 3...classroom library, gifts...here is his video promoting the book.

Would you love to get encouraging messages throughout the week reminding you what an awesome thing you're doing being a teacher or reminding you about the impact your choices are making in the lives of your students?

 Joe Blizzard aka Mr. Teacher aka EDcouraged aka Dear Teacher/Love Teacher is one of the greatest sources of teacher encouragement you will find out there!  The directions for signing up for his text messages is above, he will send you deep, thoughtful, encouraging words throughout the week as well as frequently he ahs a link to a printable/poster that he has created.  I have linked to his blog above, but if you search it on Facebook you can have words of encouragement in your Facebook feed too!  YOU ROCK MR. TEACHER!!!!

Words carry such weight in our lives; they are powerful.  I have many memories from my 3rd grade year of school, an very few from 4th grade.  When I think of 4th grade two words come to mind, "Idiot" & "Dummkopf" {which means idiot in German}.  As an adult and teacher, looking back it was a challenging class...also, he had been a 6th grade teacher & our district just switched to middle school, no 5th grade spots were open, so he was 'stuck' with 4th grade...I started the year on the 'honor roll', but by the end of the year I wouldn't do any work...I don't know that the words were directed at me, at least at the beginning, but they still had an incredibly devistating effect on me. My mom realized something was wrong when another teacher went to her and asked what was wrong, the teacher said I used to be a bright bubbly child, but had become dark, quiet, & withdrawn.  That teacher had as much of an impact on me becoming a teacher as my amazing 3rd grade teacher.  

I have been collecting quotes for a long time that encourage me & inspire me & design them in a way that is aesthetically pleasing for me.  I hope that they are the same for you too.  I wanted to get this in for the 'big sale', but that just didn't happen.  I will have it 1/2 price, only $2.50 until Monday, May 9th & then it will go up to $5.  This is less than if I had it on sale for 28% off.  I will continue to update it with more quotes, I currently have a database of around 200 quotes I want to design...every time I add 10 quotes it will go up 50 cents.  So, this is the best bargain you will ever find. 

I have included square images {JPEGs} to use on Instagram {they do have my watermark} which I found works great as a slide show on the computer! All quotes are also in a PDF landscape so you can print these out for your classroom, staff room, home, or as gifts...all rectangular pages have my copyright information in font size 6.

Back at the hospital finishing this post & uploading the product to my store.  Tyler is doing great after surgery & should be going home tomorrow.  I also wanted to share a highlight of the week...flowers my husband sent to me at work, we don't tend to get teacher appreciation gifts from students, so the flowers were very special to me! {I love Gerbers!}

Update on May 10th, wow was this post full of errors!...I have edited the post...Tyler went home from the hospital on Sunday & is recovering well...his follow-up is May 18...prayers for his recovery are greatly appreciated!