About Me!

Hi everyone, thanks for stopping by!  I started blogging on our family blog about 5 years ago after getting married and wanting to keep our families updated with our lives and found that I really enjoy it!  With blogging, I started following various bloggers, such as other teachers, and decided to try blogging about teaching too!  Since I am a two-time graduate of the University of Maryland, College Park and a terrapin at heart, I decided to call my blog The Terrapin Teacher!

I am a teacher's kid with my mom teaching elementary school for 30 years so I grew up with everyone telling me that I would be a teacher someday...to which I said, no way!  At age 5, I decided I wanted to be a veterinarian and proceeded with that dream until college.  I worked part-time for a vet for 5 years and decided to attend the University of Maryland College Park (GO TERPS!) since they had a partnership with Virginia Tech's veterinary school and I thought that would help me get in.  I majored in Animal Science and loved my major but during my junior year of college, I knew that my heart wasn't in veterinary medicine and that it was in fact in education. 

 

This is me and Roxy, a lamb I showed my freshman year at Maryland Day.  We won second place!

 

Graduation day!

Since I was so close to being done with college, I finished with my B.S. in Animal Science with the intent of applying to graduate school to get my master's in education.  The plan was to enroll the following year but a few months after graduating, my boyfriend proposed and I decided to focus on getting married first!  So I worked in the animal science world for two years while getting married and then applying to graduate school.  UMD offers an intense one-year program for career changers to get their Master's of Education, so that is what I did.  I was in grad school and interned full time in a second grade classroom for the year and after completing my Master's in Education I was lucky enough to get hired as a first grade teacher in the school where I interned.

 

My Master's graduation ceremony!

So here I am!  I have been a first grade teacher for three years now and love it!  It is my absolute favorite grade.  First graders grow in leaps and bounds over the course of the year and they love to come to school.  Learning is still cool to them and they give the best hugs!  I hope I am in first grade for a long long time!

Personally, I have been a wife for five years and a mom for four months.  It has been interesting going back to work after maternity leave and finding the balance of home and school but I wouldn't have it any other way.  Check out our family blog, The Alvarez Family!  Thanks for visiting and I hope you'll come back!