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.

I can't believe it's already December and we have less than one month until the new year, 2023!  Who is excited about the holiday break that's coming up, however!!

This winter, Mr. Xiong has been more sick than any other COVID related year (since 2020).  I've just had the common cold (cough and stuffy nose) but lost my voice in the process.

Fourth and fifth graders are doing their Wish List project where they get to spend a certain amount of money doing online shopping.  They are learning how to search for online items, copy/paste as well as take screenshots.  This will help them in the near future as they continue to use computer skills.  Whether you celebrate Christmas or not, everyone has a wish.  What do you wish for this holiday?

Everyone has started their keyboarding with the exception of PreK students.  I wish I had a better program for the little ones to just do letter recognition on the keyboard.  As well, everyone seems to like Coding while using Code.org.

Yes, it's been awhile since I've blogged.  Last year was a crazy year due to the schedule changes...mainly because of the pandemic.

The pandemic hit my family hard last school year.  I've lost a two cousins, a brother, a niece and a cousin's spouse.  These were just people closes to me.  I don't wish anyone to have to go through this with their family.  It was really hard on the whole family as a whole.

Now, what did you do this past summer?  Here are three things that were on top of my list: Family/church, camping and golfing.  That was my daily routine.  I guess you can through in work as well but that only happened two days a week.  I worked at Phalen Golf Course over the summer. The furthest place we went camping was in Ely, MN.  It was beautiful up north but there were so many mosquitoes!  At the beginning of August, my friends and I went to a golf tournament in Michigan.  We drove there and did karaoke in the car.  That was fun!  Lastly, we did a bunch of church activities and they were so fun!

So, are you excited about this school year?  This will be my 30th year teaching since I started in the Fall of 1992.  I hope you enjoy your teachers and have a great school year!  See you at school.