Cora Howard

Adventures in Substitute Teaching

Let me start by saying that I am not an authority on substitute teaching. In all, I ended up substitute teaching for 3 and a half days before being offered a job (not three and a half consecutive days, but spread out over two weeks). Still, I wanted to share a little bit of myContinue reading “Adventures in Substitute Teaching”

Adventures in Scheduling

I was made to be a teacher for many reasons, but one of them is because I LOVE summer break. I can still sleep in until noon like a teenager, and I love filling my days with books and hobbies. Doing absolutely nothing works out fine for the summer, but once I knew I wouldn’tContinue reading “Adventures in Scheduling”

Adventures in Job Applications

I had to apply for more jobs than I can count to end up at my dream job. I learned some lessons along the way, and I want to pass those lessons along to anyone who may be job hunting in the near future. #1 Decide where you’re going to live Seth was interviewing forContinue reading “Adventures in Job Applications”

Adventures in Certification

One of the things I learned living overseas is to never assume anything. You would think that I would have applied that lesson to moving to a new West Coast culture (or that when living stateside it would be safe to assume some things), but alas, I made some errors in judgment that made itContinue reading “Adventures in Certification”

Washington Adventures

Welcome back to Mind the Gap! It’s a new season for me in a new place. Seth and I just moved to Washington, and now that we’re getting settled I’d like to share some of my adventures with you. Over the next few weeks, you can look forward to reading about my experiences with transferringContinue reading “Washington Adventures”

Flat Mrs. Cora

After writing last week’s post, I realized that I haven’t actually explained my Flat Mrs. Cora experiment. It did not go how I expected, but I want to share what I expected and what actually happened so that you can go into a similar experiment with more realistic expectations! I can’t take credit for theContinue reading “Flat Mrs. Cora”

My First-Day Shirt

Last summer, I decided it was time to update my wardrobe. Most of my teaching clothes are ones I bought secondhand before moving to Thailand three years ago, so I decided it was time to put some new shirts into the mix. After searching several stores over several days, I ended up finding only oneContinue reading “My First-Day Shirt”

The Switch to Hybrid

Here’s my promised long form post about students having the option to come back to school. Last week was the first time this school year that students had the option to come to in-person school. Different grade levels had different turnouts, but in Grade 2 we had about 75% turnout for onsite learning. Those studentsContinue reading “The Switch to Hybrid”

A Couple Sweet Moments

Yesterday was the first day my school offered in-person learning for students. Out of the 15 students in my class, 11 of them came to school (they were split between the two onsite Grade 2 teachers) and 4 of them stayed online. My online class also has a handful of students from the other twoContinue reading “A Couple Sweet Moments”

I am a Fern

One of my favorite units in Grade 2 science is our unit on plant needs. After a series of explorations to discover that plants need water, sunlight, and dirt, we take a step back to ask this question: do all plants need the same amount of these things? Anyone who has ever owned an orchidContinue reading “I am a Fern”