Weekly Summer Linkup- Why I started blogging

I am linking up with Monica from Iheartgrade3 for her weekly summer linkup!

So I had successfully finished up my first year teaching. What a whirlwind, but I loved it! I had so much fun learning right along with my 1st grade kiddos. However, I felt like I wasn't able to be as creative as I liked. During my student teaching and education experience, I thought I got the opportunity to be very creative, then fast-forward into my 1st year. It was much more, we have to get this in, we have to follow this program. I didn't get the opportunity (as much as I would have liked) to put my spin on things.

I was a customer of TpT, and I thought, well I have a couple things I've created, perhaps others would find them useful. So I became a TpT seller last July/August (2014). I immediately fell in love with the creation process. But of course, in order to grow my business, I needed to have a following, a market of teachers to sell my products to. But who would want to follow a FB page? Or who would want to read MY blog? So around October (I think), I just dove in head first! I started a blog, I started a FB page, twitter, instragram, and I was already on pinterest. A tad bit overwhelming!

But it has been so rewarding, and kind of like an outlet, to post different things going on in my classroom, as well as my life! One of my oldest and dearest friends (who is not in the education field, but a SAHM) helped me to first promote my blog. I still have very few followers, but my first few comments in support of my posts were from other SAHMs gaining ideas from what I was doing in the classroom.

I feel like blogging, and creating my own products, has helped me grow as a teacher!! I have absolutely loved this school year. The activities have been fantastic, and of course it helps that I am enthusiastic about them, so this gets my kiddos excited about whatever we are learning!

 

Next school year, I will be moving from a 1st grade teacher to a primary literacy teacher (grades K-2), so I think that will help me with more topics to blog about!! Make sure to check out why others started blogging!