Happily a glutton for punishment!

I am in a unique position as a teacher.  I am currently teaching a course that no other teacher in my county is teaching.  In my county, we have county created curriculum maps complete with units, concepts, and essential questions that we must directly link our lesson plans to as well as post in our classrooms.  There has never been a whole lot of freedom in this area, which I get.  I teach in a very transient area so they want students to be able to attend any school in the county and be able to pick up fairly close to where they left off academically at their old schools.  Marine Science is a High School level science class.  However we are a marine schience and engineering academy so I teach Marine Science in Middle School over the course of three years, each one building on the other.  Last year I simply took the county curriculum map for the High School course and split it between two years.  This year I will be teaching a third year that I have to completely create myself.  But that isn't enough work for me, oh no!  I chose a new textbook that I love, it follows the 5E's and has so many resources, it is AWESOME!  But it has it's own format that does not really mesh with the High School curriculum...so what do I do?  I decide to rewrite all three years!!! Why I do these things to myself I do not know!

This week I have been able to design (cause they have to be cute) and write half of my curriculum maps.  I have also been stalking Teachers Pay Teachers downloading as much as I can about Interactive Scientific Notebooks (that is right I am not only teaching/writing 3 brand new courses of curriculum BUT I am also trying to implement a completely new teaching aid, luckily my book has a notebook correllation) and planners that I can download and use next year as I did not win the Erin Condren planner.  After looking at all the amazing things that other teachers have created I decided that "I can do that!"  SO I started a Teachers Pay Teachers store and uploaded my first item this morning.  Check out my lesson plan binder cover, it is FREE:  http://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Mrs-Ocean

I am working on some other items that I will put up in the next couple of days.

See Ya!
Mrs. Ocean