Meet The Teacher: Open House Week

Well, tomorrow is the day! Our first official day back at school is tomorrow so not only will you be "meeting the teacher" (me!) today, but my new students will tomorrow! To celebrate I'm linking up with TBA's Open House week. 
I am excited to go back to school. I have loved having the last 2 months off with my daughter but I love my job as well. I have often said that teaching isn't what I do, it's who I am!
Over the past 8 years of my career, this being my 9th year, I have taught Grades 4, 5, 6, 7, and 8! The majority of my time has been with Grade 7, which I loved. I looped with my last class of 7's to grade 8 a few years ago and while it was amazing in the fall because we could jump right in, it fizzled out by the spring. I think it's because I also taught the same kids in Grade 5. So we were together for 3 out 4 years by the time they were in Grade 8...that was just a little too much.
This year I am teaching Grade 3...my first year in a primary class and I am nervous. They are going to be sooo little!
I believe in having high expectations for my students. Many of my teaching partners in the past often remarked that the work I gave my class would be too hard, but I have never looked at it that way. I think the higher you aim, the higher they go. So I tackled Shakespeare with my Grade 7's and 8's, I wrote essays with my Grade 5's...etc! 
The majority of my career was spent teaching Language Arts and Geography/History with a little French thrown in. I taught in a middle school so we had a full rotary schedule and each teacher only taught a single core load. After 6 years of full-time teaching, I had still never taught my own Math! Then two years ago I moved schools, went from teaching Grade 8 to Grade 4 and had a Math class for the first time. Now, Math is one of my favourite things to teach and I am super excited to implement all the things I learned this summer during the Guided Math Book Study.
So here I am, 12+ hours away from the first day of school! I can hardly wait to see what this year brings.