Hello, my name is Sammie or Sam (you can call me either one)!! I am SO excited that you have come to check out my blog and would love to tell you a little about myself, the person behind Fantastically Fourth Grade (FFG) and how my journey with FFG was started!
The Person Behind Fantastically Fourth Grade
I currently live in North Carolina and love it here. I am only a couple hours from the beach (my happy place) and a couple hours from the mountains (I hate to admit that I have only been to them once). Michigan is my home state and will always have my heart too! I absolutely love being outdoors! You can often find me going on a hike/ run, laying out at the pool or sitting on a patio with family/ friends and an adult beverage. At the same time, I love a good Netflix binge, especially when it comes to any kind of crime show.
My Teaching Journey
Since I was little, I knew that I would someday become a teacher and when people ask me why I chose teaching, I tell them that I believe I was born to be a teacher. I am in my 9th year working in education. I started off as a Kindergarten teacher in a charter school. I quickly found out that Kindergarten is not the grade I was born to teach (bless any of you who are kindergarten teachers!). After my first year, I made a big move from Michigan down to North Carolina, where I taught 7 years in 4th grade, in public schools. Through this I learned that upper elementary is my jam and 4th grade is the best!! This year, my 9th year in education, I have transitioned into a teacher coaching and intervention role. A coaching job is my dream job and the intervention role allows me to still work with students too. I love working with the kiddos, but love coaching and supporting teachers as well. This position is the perfect transition for me out of the classroom!
The Story Behind Fantastically Fourth Grade
Now that you have a little background about my education journey, you are probably wondering how Fantastically Fourth Grade (FFG) came to be. Believe it or not, I started Fantastically Fourth Grade 5 years ago, but for the first couple years, I did not do much. Then, in 2017, I decided to start an instagram account to encourage me to grow FFG and share my ideas with other teachers. I would have never imagined that it would grow like it did and that so many teachers would be interested in my resources! This helped me realize that I should share more and create more resources. So, that is exactly what I did! FFG has grown so much over the years and it is all because of teachers like you. Teachers, like you, that are looking for resources that have been proven to be successful and ideas that have been tried out in another teacher’s classroom. Through my instagram account, many teachers have shared how they love hearing from another teacher who can relate to what is going on in the world of education today! Instagram has become my main way of communicating all of this with other teachers around the world (that still blows my mind!) and I am excited to be able to reach even more teachers through this blog.
One of my biggest passions is helping other teachers, especially now! I hope that this blog will be a way to connect with even more teachers, like you, and share with all of you what I have learned (and am still learning) through my education journey. Check out my welcome post here to hear a little more about what you will see on the Fantastically Fourth Grade blog!
