Hi, I’m Charmaine, the educator (and chocolate lover!) behind Chocolate for the Teach. It all started when I set out to document interesting findings while substitute teaching. I’m enjoying sharing my journey of subbing with you all, as well as my exit from teaching full-time and my entrance into motherhood, business, and other family and life goals. Thanks for being here!
More About Me: A Dive into My Timeline
When I made this timeline using my expert graphic design skills, I didn’t realize the cheeky explanations I had crafted for each monument on the line would turn out so tiny it was unreadable.
I’m not a fan of wasting, and that includes words I worked really hard on instead of tending to my indoor plants (somewhat neglected but survivors nonetheless!).
Here’s an elaboration:
2014— Cue the stately graduation march tune and the unfettered dreams of a recent graduate. I had earned two degrees, back to back. My second degree offered what my first (in journalism) didn’t: endless job opportunities and the chance to make a difference in young people’s lives. I would be a teacher.
Later in 2014— School job interviewers didn’t seem to care about my multiple degrees from a highly regarded state school or the fact that I’d spent the span of a gradeschool career being patted on the head and told I’m smart– they wanted to ensure I could command a classroom. To demonstrate this, I was to teach a “lesson” to a gaggle of summer school students admin somehow roped into sitting at desks and listening to a wildly nervous college grad ramble about math. Stunned by the performance, or perhaps just desperate to fill the position, I was hired on as a first-grade ELA teacher a full three days before the schoolyear began.
2019— After three years teaching first grade, I took a two-year hiatus to substitute, travel, find myself, etc. Inspired to have my own classroom again after sitting at dozens of other teachers’ desks, I returned to teaching, this time to third grade. This commenced a memorable two-year period of teaching upper elementary, enduring sudden campus closings, embarking on online instruction, muddling through hybrid instruction, and getting married!
2022— I left teaching again (see the teaching era I was faced with in previous entry). We moved, I had a baby. When she was six months old, I stepped back into someone else’s classroom to substitute teach.
2023— This is the year I fired up this blog to tell my tales. My teacher self still remains, though I am mostly at home slicing blueberries into really small pieces for my one-year-old. Through writing these posts, I hope to inspire, to teach, to give words to the things maybe some of us think that aren’t said aloud (for instance, my Taco Bell admission). My favorite blog topics include: the everchanging balance of work and family life, motherhood, subbing/freelance teaching/nomadic educating, and leaving teaching (twice!).
Thanks for visiting the site. If you read until the end, you get a gold star! I have license to give those out randomly because I’m a teacher!