The FACS of Life

Do you ever look at web 2.0 tools and wonder how you can use them in your classroom? Well I thought I'd drop a few ideas on how to use Pintrest in the Family and Consumer Sciences classroom.  Event Planning  Teach an event planning course? Pintrest is a great tool to use. Have your students design inspiration boards for an event or use it as a brainstorming session. Pintrest can even be used as a collaborative tool!  Interior Design   Have students create design boards through Pintrest. Students can even create a board for the elements of design as well as a board for the principles of design.  Foods  Allow students to pin recipes they hope to try! This will allow them to be a part of the planning process and will engage them more then ever before! Make it a competition to see who can chose the most well liked recipe.  Sewing Students can find and chose projects based on the pins. Students can add their own creative edge to the ideas of others.  I

As I enter my semester 1 grades, and semester 2 begins I'm feeling overwhelmed. I can't believe that half of the year is already over. In my 5th year of teaching this has probably been the fastest of them all. I am looking forward to the change of classes in a few days and a chance to teach new groups of students.

Teaching Junior High is hard. Being in Junior High is harder. I don't think there is a tougher age to be. I can't imagine growing up in this age of technology where your likes on social media and the number of "swipe ups" you get determine your self worth. For these reasons among many others, I started using the compliment project. The compliment project allows students to compliment each other in a safe environment. I provide a white board with nothing more than a name written on it and some different colored markers. When my students come in I already have a name for the day written on the board. That student sits in the "hot seat" and their peers begin to write compliments all over the board.                                          Once the students finish the student in the "hot seat" gets to turn around and take it all in. I've had students cry, completely overwhelmed with love. It is a beautiful thing to see the confidence rise in

I know. I know. We're all busy. Between lesson plans, actual teaching, paperwork, grading, etc. how do we find time to breath let alone chaperone or sponsor a club? But we need to.                                                Let's be realistic. Our students aren't going to remember everything they learned from us. Or anyone else for that matter. Think back to your high school memories. Most of mine revolve around a dance, a field trip, a club or a sport. In turn the people who had the most influence on me were those teachers who were involved. My science teacher who ran prom. My history teacher who ran my favorite club. My coaches who inspired me. These are the lasting impressions on our students. Now please don't think I'm saying that academics aren't important, because of course they are. I'm just saying that so are the extras! I'm interested in what extras you all do for your students! So please share with me!  Here's some things

                                            Housing styles. Not always the most interesting topic for teenagers, right? Well we all know what happens when you you find a way to involve social media in your lesson plans. Students love it! You're really speaking their language this way. So I thought housing styles was a great lesson to include Instagram! Each student chose a different type of housing style. I had a decently small class so I allowed them each to chose the style that interested them the most on a first come, first serve basis. You could assign them the housing style or even allow them to pick a style from a hat. For this assignment each student had find an evolved version of the housing style they chose. For example, Greek Revival became popular between 1825 and 1860. It was reinvented and inspired the Neoclassical Housing style that was popular in America between 1895 and 1950. I gave my students one period to research their housing styles and find their new an

As the end of the semester is approaching it's almost time for finals! My Foods 1 class does a classroom version of the Food Network tv show, CHOPPED!. If you've never seen CHOPPED! before here's a quick run through of how the show works. (I've attached a video of the show in case you're interested.) 4 chefs compete in a culinary battle. The kicker is that each chef gets a surprise basket of ingredients. The baskets are the same for all 4 contestants but until they open the basket they don't know what's inside. The contestants have a time limit to complete a culinary dish using the surprise ingredients. After each round a set of judges "chops" one contestant until all four rounds are complete and there is only a winner left. I always purchase a full episode off of Youtube to show my students before their final to ensure that every student understands the concept of the final.  I also show them a slideshow that covers the rules of the