It's All Worth It!

It all started in 2008, when I was frustrated with classroom management. It was my second year of teaching and I was teaching Kinder. I was not being successful with the techniques I was using on my own so I decided to YouTube classroom management for Kinder. The first video that popped up was Andrea Shindler's Whole Brain Teaching video. I sat in amazement as her kinders were all focused on her then turning to their neighbors and teaching. I couldn't believe she had ALL her students fully engaged! I knew I needed to learn more about this Whole Brain Teaching. I watched her video again and began taking notes. The next day I used some of the strategies in my kinder class and WHOA they were responding VERY well. I used a little at a time, getting comfortable with WBT. The next couple of years I began to incorporate more and more into my classroom. I was constantly on wholebrainteaching.com looking for more ways to help my smarties become engaged in their learning. I joined the book club and read, WBT for Challenging Kids.
Fast forward to 2013, I was teaching 1st grade. I became an intern with WBT and began my certification process. I wanted to use what I've learned to help other teachers in my building and most importantly be the best WBT teacher for my students. I was eager to film my first video for certification. Unfortunately, my video was not exemplary. I knew I needed to step it up and grow. I made another video for the 14-15 school year. I was better and did grow but again my video was not exemplary. Now I was DETERMINED to be certified! I attended the 2015 WBT National Conference in Pineville, LA. I met Coach B, the mastermind behind WBT, and he encouraged me! I attended his advanced class and learned so much more!
Now it's the 15-16 school year and I made my classroom a WBT model classroom, worked with my smarties EVERY DAY, and watched every WBT periscope I could. I was feeling pretty good about my video for this year. So I did it, well I guess you can say my smarties did it. They worked SO hard to help me get certified. I sent my video to Nancy Stoltenberg and she raved about it!!! I thought to myself, this is it!! She sent the video to Coach B. I was waiting to hear back and received an email. It said for me to give Coach B a call. He had some suggestions for me. I dialed his number, had my pen ready to take notes. Needless to say, he said I DID IT!!!!! I can't begin to tell you all the excitement I felt!! Tears streamed down my face. I did it. My video was finally exemplary and it was all worth it!

Newest WBT Rules

In WBT, there are 5 rule plus the Diamond Rule. Recently, Coach B introduced the virtue rules that are added to Rule #4 Make Smart Choices. The rule now states, Rule #4 Make Smart Choices! Glorious Kindness, Leadership, Courage, Invinvcible Grit, and Creativity. All the rules are said every day with gestures but on certain days Rule #4 comes into play with more detail. For example, Kindness Monday, Leadership Tuesday, Courage Wednesday, Grit Thursday, and Creative Friday plus all virtues. My students especially love Leadership Tuesday because they need to act and look
like 3rd graders to earn Super Improver Stars! 😉

Check out Heidi Martin, WBT staff member and first grade teacher, recite the WBT rules! Click the link below!

WBT Rules

To learn more about WBT, go to www.wholebrainteaching.com

Who Loves Brainies?! We Do!

Reading with Brainies
Check out my two smarties using Brainies during small group reading! Click the link above!

Who loves Brainies?! My smarties LOVE using the Brainies during our morning meeting, small groups, and during our 5 step lessons. We start the year off by learning what a capital letter is and a period. This really helps when we learn what a complete sentence means. We use our Brainies while oral writing. It really helps my smarties to understand many aspects of writing from complete sentences, critical thinking, paragraph writing and so on. My students keep a mini poster of all the Brainies on their desks. This helps them when they are writing and while teaching their partner.


       To find out more about using Brainies, go to WWW. WHOLEBRAINTEACHING.COM