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Well. Hello faceless internet masses. I'm sitting here watching Mrs. Maisel, awesome show, and being mildly bored. I've gone from working full time and intern teaching full time to be under quarantine, not working OR teaching. At first it was nice, I've gotten more sleep than I have in LITERALLY years, but now we've hit the point where I'm starting to go a bit stir crazy. This is NOT how I planned things. Which is life, I know.

Well, the plan was: finish working at my current job, find a job where I'm relocating to, give in 2 weeks notice, say a teary farewell to my coworkers of almost 8 years, pack up, move states away.

So quarantine cut 1 month off the final semester of teaching, and I've been off work for like 2 months. Luckily at first I was still getting paid normal, and then I got unemployment. I put in my 2 weeks, not sure how that effects unemployment but we need my retirement to move. I've got a couple calls back for employment, but not in teaching. However I'm looking at VIPKids (teaching kids in China to speak English over the internet), and a few websites that do online art courses like Domestika. Oh, and did I mention I still need to make a teaching portfolio? I feel blocked with it! Artists block shouldn't happen with a friggen teachers portfolio.

...So yeah, there's my rant I guess. I don't know, maybe I'll add more later. I'm going to lose my mind.
Well hello!

Wow, what a ride. I can see how Covid threw a wrench in your semester.

About the creative block, I have a few tidbits of advice.

When I created my teaching portfolio we had this cover that had a Venn diagram on it and in each circle it had a the title of a different section of the portfolio.

One circle said "Teacher," and that section had...like.. our educational philosophy (can Google examples if needed), a copy of the teaching certificate, a copy of our transcripts, letters of reference from our professors or former employers, a copy of our resume...that sort of stuff. Things that described us as a teachers.

And then one circle in the Venn Diagram on the cover said "Students," and that section in the binder had examples of good student work from student teaching.

One said "Content," and that section had some lesson plans we had designed and/or taught in student teaching.

And one circle said "Community," but I forget what we put in that one.

One said "TEKS" (that's what they call them in Texas), and we had a copy of some TEKS and made up examples of how we might teach that standard.

Something like that.

If you're still stuck, maybe some of that will spark some ideas.

(I was lucky, the University I went to guided us through making our portfolios so it was easy. No possibility of creative block. Lol)

I have to say, that even though it's good to have a portfolio, and to use it in the interviews....a lot of principal's barely look at it, in reality.

But just having one looks impressive, so yeah, it's good to make it. Hope this helps!

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