Back to School: My five favorite classroom postcards

Good morning, afternoon, or whenever it is that you read this. Schools in Texas generally begin the fall semester in mid-August. However, teachers go back a week and a half to two weeks beforehand for a ‘magical’ period of time called in-service. During this time, schools provide teachers some of their mandatory professional development hours, as well as deliver information about data, mission statements for the year, and other legal requirements such as safety meetings. My current school is generally pretty good about giving us time to work in our classrooms, but I’ve been in schools where there is barely an hour of ‘room time’. And hopefully, your district doesn’t do convocation, because then you lose one of your precious mornings to sit in a church or district auditorium while the district level leadership throws a pep rally for social media with teachers as the props. Sometimes it’s a nice way to catch up with teachers at other schools, at least. The best part of in-service,…