Hello, my name is Jordan Potrzeba (PA-CH-BA) and I am a first year, third grade teacher at St. Paul Lutheran School in St. Joseph, Missouri. I was born and raised in Hastings, Nebraska all my life. Hastings’ claim to fame is Kool-Aid, the popular kids drink where it was invented. In May of 2016, I graduated with a degree in Elementary Education and a double endorsement in Special Education from Concordia University Nebraska.
My interests in include eating skittles, traveling the world, writing books, and running half marathons for the fun and pain of it. Over the next several blogs you’re going to get to know me very well.
It’s the Monday after Thanksgiving break and before my alarm clock can even go off, I’m already out of my bed skipping down the hallway because I’m so excited!
I arrive at school to a series of shouts from one of my students and her brother who have just arrived at Daycare. As I enter the school wearing my headphones I’m jamming out to Taylor Swift as I “Indiana Jones-ly” jog to my classroom hoping no teacher catches my behavior.
After I open my new penguin designed door, I turn on my lamps, plug in my Christmas lights, turn on my coffee-cake scented plugin, and greet our Crayfish.
Two minutes until it’s game time! My SmartBoard is ready for our hashtag prompt of the day. (Today it’s #McKennaMonday since we’re celebrating her birthday.) My Tree House is ready for students to take lunch count in, my Zebra Pen is ready for reading rotations, and my Reading Safari has every book in place, ready to be checked out. The only thing I need to do is grab my crossing guard vest and hat before greeting my students with high fives of all sorts.
The day day jumps into high gear as we complete one activity after another! And as the school day is officially finished, we are STILL excited, students and teacher alike.
Why? We used things like Google Forms to type our spelling words today on our chromebooks, while listening to my “old” iPod. We studied for our Social Studies test on Kahoot as it turned into another competitive bout for a coveted sour worm. We did a lot of reading on winter animals as part of our reading rotations, sang our multiples of 7 in math, I got a new pair of shoes at recess courtesy of my two of my students, and we found out third graders can say the word ‘differentiate’, but not Mr. Potrzeba.
And that was just Monday….As teachers sometimes we don’t exactly look forward to the thought of coming back to school after a restful weekend. We snooze our alarm clocks a couple of extra times, grab a coffee larger than we need, and trudge our way into another week.
But what if? What if we came to school so stinking excited on Monday about what fun learning adventures the day was to hold. Imagine then the difference it would make in our students. Imagine the difference it would make in our class. Imagine the difference it would make in US!
I don’t mind Mondays, really. And when you set the week off to a fun and exciting start, each day just gets progressively better until we reach that day of the week we all love, FRIDAY!
