Teacher

It's summer vacation and I'm already thinking about the next school year.  I thought this was supposed to be my vacation where I don't think about work.  But as a teacher who truly cares about my craft, profession, and most of all my students my mind is already wandering about what this school year will hold.  So here are the items running through my head about how I can streamline some of the things I normally do in my classroom in order to save myself the gift that is so precious in a teacher's day, TIME!
The ideas that are currently running through my head to give me the gift of TIME:

• Pre-written generic emails to parents
• Unprepared for class
• No Homework
• Behavior issues
• Low grades
• Daily Check-off List for after school
• Take time and enter all 150ish parents emails into my school address book and sort them (by subject, class period, etc.) for easier mass emails (This will be time consuming the first week/weekend of school, but I think the pay off for the school year will be huge)

So as of this moment my word documents are open and I am sitting here watching TV doing school work.  Yes it is by choice but again the gift of TIME is probably not going to be there once this school year starts.

So now how does this connect to Mom~Teacher~Saver

• Mom - Completing these projects will hopefully, keeping my fingers crossed, give me more time to spend with my son at home in the evenings so that I don't have to work as late on a daily basis and I can also take care of myself by working out in the afternoons
• Teacher - I can use this definitely this school year and hopefully in the years to come.  I won't be using up as much time thinking/retyping these kind of emails to parents on a daily basis.
• Saver - Didn't I say this would be a TIME saver!

Monthly/Weekly Dinner Menu = Savings at the Grocery Store

Summer is almost over for teachers and you know what that means back to having less time.  In an effort to save money, when my husband and I first got married back in 2005 we started making weekly dinner menus.  Being new to having a dinner menu for the week was an odd concept to me because I did not grow up that way.  However, when working full time I now have one less thing to think about during the week.  Since we go married, my husband made me CEO of Menus and Food Budget with a $450 monthly budget.  I have a yearly calendar on my computer that keeps track of the menu and there is a framed white board (which my wonderfully hubby made) in our kitchen which I post the weekly menu on and it is also a place to write down items we need at the grocery store.  The saying in our house is, "If it's not on the list, it's not being bought."

Creating the weekly dinner menu has allowed me to only go to the grocery store once a week.  Yes, I said "Once a Week".  By going once a week it helps me stay within my monthly budget and by Sunday night you already know what you are having for dinner that week.  My groceries for this week cost us $93, that includes 3 meals/day for a family of 3.

Here is a run down of this weeks menu:

Sunday - Pork Tacos (4 ingredients: chili powder, garlic powder, salt & pepper to taste)
Monday - Sausage Spaghetti
Tuesday - Left Over Pork Tacos
Wednesday - Meat Lovers Orzo Pasta (from July parenting magazine)
Thursday -  Baked Potatoes
Friday - Tortilla Crusted Tilapia & Mexican Rice
Saturday - Turkey Burgers & Sweet Potato Fries

***My disclaimer: My groceries would have cost us more this week, but I do buy my meat/fish in bulk or on sale and I already had the following in my freezer: sausage, pork, spicy italian sausage, tortilla crusted tilapia, and turkey meat.  Understand that even though the meat/fish was bought in bulk or on sale and was already in the freezer, I still stay within my monthly $450 budget.

If there is anything you want more information about I will post pictures or tell you what I do.