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Hi, I'm Heather.
Welcome to my one-room schoolhouse online. I am so glad you are here. I am the "one-woman show" behind Once Upon a One-Room Schoolhouse and I am fortunate to be able to spend my time doing something that I truly love-supporting teachers. In addition to creating classroom resources for teachers, I also teach teachers how to implement organizational systems into their daily routines that allow them to lesson plan more efficiently, so they can spend more time enjoying life outside their classroom door!
ABOUT ME
I was born and raised in Southern California and have lived here my entire life. I can't imagine living anywhere else, except maybe on a beach in Hawaii but who hasn't had that fantasy? I love to visit new places and have traveled all over the US as well as to China (twice), Costa Rica, Canada, and Mexico. I met my brilliant husband during my first year teaching, and over two decades years later, he is still my favorite person to hang out with. We have three sons who are a constant source of pride and hilarity. (All my fellow "boy-moms" know the unique brand of entertainment that comes from raising boys...).
HOW IT ALL STARTED
I've been a teacher for over 20 years (yikes...that's a tough number to admit to. I must've started teaching when I was in elementary school, right!?). I've taught every grade from kindergarten to middle school and I still love it as much today as I did when I first started. I graduated from San Diego State University with a bachelor's degree and I have a master's degree in educational leadership.
My adventure as a teacher-author actually began years before I opened my shop. I was a teacher struggling with how to teach writing. I had no idea where to begin. I understood that my students needed to know how to write, but I knew that there had to be a better way than writing a prompt on the whiteboard and setting a timer.
Two years later, after finishing a writing lead teacher training program, I became an instructional writing coach helping teachers who were struggling just like I was. I started doing demonstration lessons in classes across my campus and creating writing lessons and units to share with teachers at my school. I believed (and still do) that the key to planning engaging and authentic writing is to use the reading, science, and social studies lessons that are already being taught as a springboard. And, in 2020 I began offering my teacher resources on TpT, so I could help other teachers teach writing too.
MY ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE
The idea for my one-room schoolhouse was something I'd quietly dreamed about for a while, but I have my boys to thank for making it happen. I was spending 12-14 hours a day (weekends too) planning, prepping, returning emails, making copies...you name it, yet I was never done. One day, I was looking at my sons and I noticed how much they had grown (cue the tears...). It was like I blinked and ten years flew by. I realized then and there that I was missing it. I was spending so much of my time tending to my school life that I forgot to tend to my actual life--my family.
We began construction on my one-room schoolhouse in 2019 and now I teach struggling students and create engaging, easy-to-use resources for teachers to help make teaching a little easier. My hope is that my resources will help busy, hardworking teachers to feel more confident in their abilities so they can have a rich teaching life as well as a fulfilling personal life without feeling like in order to have one, the other has to suffer.
I would love to get to know you, hear about your teaching journey, and share some of my classroom resources with you. Thanks again for being here.