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I am officially retired! This is a bit scary, but very exciting for me. I made the decision a year ago that I was going to retire while I was healthy and able to spend quality time with my grandchildren. I now have 7 of them!
It will be a big shift financially, but I know that it will work out. I am hoping to have the time to work on my TPT store now and do a better job of promoting as well. The money I earn will give me some extra for the things that are not a necessity. 
One thing that has always been important for me and my husband is making sure that our kids are okay. When they were struggling, we wanted to be able to help them out. This was never a hand out and they always were appreciative and gave back in many ways. Now that I am retiring, this won't be as easy, so the money earned from my creations will allow us to continue to be there for them if needed. I love to create resources. I have done this since I began my teaching career. If I couldn't find something I needed, I made it. I began sharing my ideas with my colleagues before we had things like computers and photocopiers. (I know, some of you weren't even alive when I started teaching so you can't remember those days.) Now I will have the time to do more creating and sharing. I plan to volunteer at my school and create for the teachers there. It will be fun to make things and try them out in different classrooms. I would love to be able to do things for myself. As much as I love my family, sometimes I need "me" time. I enjoy going to meet-ups with my BC blogger friends and I would love to be able to go and visit other places and do things just for fun. Being retired gives me the time, and earning income from my TPT store gives me the extra money to do the fun things. Well, there you have it. These are some of my dreams.
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This post is to share ideas and products to help with the next school year. This seems a bit weird seeing as I just finished school today, but many teachers have been on summer break for a few weeks already.
My product is to help with behavior management. This can be an area that can be very stressful if it isn't handled well. I am not an expert by any means, but I have had some success with difficult situations and many times students are "earmarked" for my class. Once, a boy was told by his brother that he needed to be in my class because "Mrs. Sequeira gets us!" The funny thing about it is, he was correct. I did get them. Even though they had very different needs, I was able to help them to have a successful year. This was not always the case, and I had a lot of lessons to learn along the way. Parenting helped and I used many strategies from home in my classroom. Watching and learning from master teachers also helped. 
Here are some things I learned:
I discovered that if I spent the first few weeks focusing on self-esteem and how valuable each of us is, that set the tone for the rest of the year. I also found that focusing on the positive instead of the negative and beginning each day as a fresh start worked well. 
I began using some of the material from Whole Brain Teaching in my classroom last year, and I continued with some of it this year. Unfortunately, due to a disrupted year end and start up because of labor disputes, I didn't do as much as I would have liked, but that which I did do was very effective.
Some of the rules were modified a bit to better fit my class. Rule 1 has the words "and correctly" added. Rule 3 is completely different because I don't require hands raised to leave seats. I have included the original versions as well. The full version is available in my TPT store.
Another thing that has worked really well is removing the audience for negative behaviors. This was something I was already doing, but it was reaffirmed when I started using the Whole Brain Teaching. It is very powerful when the class helps to create the positive environment.
If you are interested in learning more about it, I would highly recommend it. Head on over to my TPT store to grab your freebie.
It is that time of year when we want to celebrate and recognize our fathers and volunteers/helpers. These cards and posters were made for my students so that they could do just that. I decided to share them in my store.
We had our Parent Tea last week and these helping hands placemats and cards were placed on the tables. My students chose the ones they wanted to color and decorate. They also got 2 cards each to take home for their parents. If you aren't interested in having them color the cards, I made sets that were already colored as well. I used some of the cards to recognize our parent volunteers for our ukulele group. I created a message that was appropriate for them. 
Father's Day is coming and so I created cards/posters/placemats for dads and grandfathers as well.
My grandchildren helped me with choosing styles and they were very excited to get their own copies to color for their dads. Here are 2 of the cards they chose. I am offering them as freebies. You can get them by downloading the preview of the Father's Day Cards. 
I hope you have a happy summer and I look forward to sharing with you again.
Wow! It has been a long time since I last blogged. So many things have happened that I would love to share with you, but it has been so crazy, busy that I haven't been able to stop long enough to take a breath and blog.
Here are my reflections from this year. 
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About Me Charlene Sequeira
I am a wife, mother of 4, grandmother of 9, and a retired primary and music teacher. I love working with kids and continue to volunteer at school and teach ukulele. 
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