Meet Mrs. L.

Hello, friends!

I'm Mrs. L. and a fifth year English teacher at a mid-sized rural high school in IL. I decided to claim this little space of the Interwebs as my own to share lesson ideas, activities, helpful resources, websites, links, questions, and stories from my time teaching English.

I love reading other teachers' blogs to get ideas and share resources, so I decided to return the love! A little about me in the first post....

Like I said, I'm in my fifth year (wow!) teaching high school English. Man, this time has flown by! I have been in the same school all 5 years, and it's actually the school I student taught at in college.

I went on to get my Masters Degree in English in 2011 because I wanted to expand my knowledge in my subject area, and I'm also a huge nerd who loves being a student, going to class, discussing with other nerds, etc. You get the idea. I actually cried on my last day of class because I would miss it. Ha!

I have taught a variety of classes during my 5 years here: English I, English II, honors English II, English III, English IV, Senior Lit., English 101 and English 102 (both dual-credit courses with a local community college). I am also the adviser for our high school newspaper.

This year, I am also one of 2 English dept. members on a Common Core Committee. Can we just get a big scream out right now and a good hair pull over Common Core? So much to do. We're in charge of basically becoming the experts on it so we can teach it to our other English staff next year to start implementing. Because of that, many posts on here will revolve around CCSS. What I have found is that, while there are many great math CC resources and elementary ELA resources, there seems to be a scarcity of secondary ELA resources, so one of my plans is to scour the Web for whatever I can find that is helpful. If you have any great websites, please do share!

Outside of school, I love to read (especially suspense novels), go hiking, bike the trails, drink coffee, and play with my dog, Roxie. My husband and I recently adopted her from a shelter, and she has taught us a lot about patience and unconditional love. The poor girl was abused early in life and is terrified of people because of it, along with many other things. But she brings so much joy to my days, and I really feel like we adopted her for a reason. As much as we rescued her, I feel like she rescued us a little bit too.

She's approx. 1.5 years old, a black lab mix.

 I'm a semi-newlywed, married since 2011. Technically, we're probably not newlyweds, but I still have days where I see my ring finger and go, "Holy cow! I can't believe I'm married. I feel old," so we'll say semi-newlywed. We also bought our first house last August, so besides Rox, we keep ourselves busy doing things to the house.

That about sums it up. I hope to post at least thrice weekly, hopefully more, and look forward to meeting some other fellow teachers and learning more about this crazy-wonderful profession we call teaching.

~Mrs. L.