Educators have spent their year changing the lives of the various students that have walked in and out of their classrooms and schools. With it being the end of the year educators are still working hard to make sure that their students have every opportunity to succeed and the Association of Texas Professional Educators is doing the same thing.
One of my favorite times of the year is the ATPE Summit. This year the Summit takes place July 7th-10th in Austin, Texas. It is important as professionals that we grow with other educators and professionals. The ATPE Summit provides this opportunity. ATPE provides a wealth of great keynotes, information, and even more importantly connections with other like minded people.
Although the information that I have learned at the Summit over the last 2 years is impressive, the most notable part of the Summit is the House of Delegates. The House of Delegates allows members of ATPE from across the state to have a voice. This is a time where we can vote, discuss, and collaborate with what we would like for our lobbyist to work on during the year. It is a chance for Texas educators to have a larger voice outside of the classroom.
My favorite part of ATPE? Many times as we get frustrated at what is going on our professionalism is questioned. ATPE continues to be professional in all matters and looks at all of the different views. The Association helps educators and professionals see all sides of a story.
As educators we are constantly changing lives. As legislators they are changing educators lives. As ATPE members our well being is advocated for. I look forward to the ATPE Summit. I look forward to the Summit for collaborating with like minded educators, having a voice when often our voices seem to be lost, and making a difference for all educators.
We celebrated Teacher Appreciation this year by going back to the 80's. (get ready for picture overload!)
Each day was a different 80's theme. With the help of our administration and my over achiever partner in crime Mandy Madden. With that, follow along with our week of totally rad good times. I have linked some of the various websites that I found ideas from, but honestly I enjoyed using images.google.com more to search ideas and then recreate them myself.
Monday- Who you Going to Call? Elliott Teachers!
We pulled several of our Destination ImagiNation students and remade the Ghostbusters Theme Song. (I am an 80s movies fan anyway.. but it was SO much fun pulling out some of my faves!)
How did we make the costumes you ask? They are painter suits that you can find at Home Depot (and.. our Home Depot in Irving is the BEST!- We always take our DI kids to Home Depot and their staff is always the best with our kiddos)
Our awesome Ghostbusters
Check out our remake
Like, this video was way fun to make, but we had to give out goodies to start the week.
So our administrative team dressed up as Ghostbusters and passed out colossal cupcakes that Kroger had made (these are my FAVORITE cupcakes by the way-90 of these good things!)
Tuesday- Back to the Future Breakfast
We asked each grade level to bring a different ie. kinder- juices, first grade- donuts and so on. We set up the teacher lunch room with a large breakfast buffet.
Bright table clothes and cut out eyes out of paper and taped on
Added various movie posters around the lunch room- but of course we had to add this to a corner!
Wednesday- Was a surprise! Staff was invited to wear their best 80s duds (and there were some great outfits!) The principals had lunch provided to us by food services catering. But that afternoon we had a staff meeting where at the very end our principal directed us to go to the gym because she was so disappointed that she had to show us what happened. Before school let out (and with the great help of one of our awesome PTA volunteers Heather) we had decorated the gym to look like an 80s prom. There were balloons everywhere, lots of snacks and drinks, 80s music and a photobooth.
Part of our Rocking Leadership team
Elliott Teacher of the Year through the years
Photobooth- backdrop is a bright green table cloth with 80s streamers on it. Rubik's Cube made out of boxes covered in black paper and then construction paper.
Of course I didn't get pictures of the whole gym, but I do believe it turned out pretty awesome.
Thursday- This where the Pac-Mans came into play. The giant Pac-Man began the game. Throughout the school there were 3 other Pac-Man ghosts (all of these were created out of post it notes by the awesome Madden) Coming from each ghost was a certain color of dots (those dots took forever to put up, but there was not a hallway wall that was untouched) Teachers were instructed to meet in their team leaders room for their conference period. I then gave instructions to go a certain ghost and follow the dots. The dots led out a door and to a waiting car where our admin was waiting to take them to Sonic for drinks. Thanks Josh Workman with Capitol Wealth Strategies for taking good care of us!
Friday- We offered a VIP Badge (new badge lanyard and nice acrylic badge holder) and a Rockstar VIP lunch.
We started the day with remaking the Breakfast Club commercial
VIP Badges
26 pounds of brisket, corn, beans and bread
Thanks Eat_Catering_Service for the awesome lunch. Chef William always does a great job
So, the power went out during lunch- I continued serving- however, I am the worst meat cutter EVER.. and I don't really like brisket.. but I knew the staff liked it :)
We survived the week, and as soon as I left school on Friday Madden was already calling me about planning for next year (yes, we know our theme and we have ideas!) What did you do for teacher appreciation?
