Let me introduce you to the teachers!

Marie and I are so thrilled to be starting this blog! We have a ton of ideas that we can't wait to share with our teaching friends. Everything from organization, Common Core, technology, reading, writing, etc! However, before we get started, let me introduce myself and how I know Marie.

My name is Crystal and this will be my 9th year teaching. I earned my teaching degree at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. (GO BIG RED!) After graduation, I moved back to Naples, Florida and taught there for 6 years. My first 3 years were in an ESE inclusion classroom of 2nd graders. Then, I moved to another great school where I taught 2nd and 3rd grade multi-age for 3 years. Both schools provided me with an excellent start to my teaching career and allowed me to grow in so many ways! However, I decided that Naples wasn't the place for me to stay forever and decided to move to Chicago. I applied at what felt like every district under the moon and was blessed to earn a teaching position in Winfield, IL where I would teach 5th graders! This scared me at first, but I was soon okay after meeting another new teacher there, Marie. She was also a new teacher and we instantly connected.

Throughout our two years there, we met to share ideas and worked together to grow professionally. Our paths ended up taking us both to new school districts this year, but we knew we had to keep in touch. Knowing that she would be teaching 2nd and I would be teaching 1st, but using 2nd grade standards, we decided to meet and develop this little blog! This is something we had talked about in great depth over the past year and finally the time has come! We are so excited to take two different perspectives of 2nd grade standards, other educational topics, and completely different settings of urban and suburban education and bring them together here!

Please share your thoughts, follow us, share our link, check out our TPT stores, Facebook, Instagram, or whatever you might choose! We are excited to embark on this journey with you all!