Welcome

Hi there!  My name is Amanda. I'm a teacher.  It's more than my job though, it's a big part of who I am.  Yes I have a job teaching high school, but I also teach swing dancing.  I'm President of Denton Swing Dance Organization. I'm a DIY blogger and write tutorials over at Handy Mandy's Project Emporium.  I've never had a hobby or a job in which I was not in some way educating someone else.  I can't imagine doing anything else with my life!

My perfect day would, of course, be a Saturday.  No one should have to work on a perfect day. It would begin with someone I love making me cinnamon rolls. Then we would build something together. Lunch would be some kind of Italian food, and we would spend the afternoon watching a musical. Dinner would be fondue, at the Melting Pot, and then we'd go swing dancing until the wee hours of the morning.

If I could get one message across to people, it would be that kindness costs nothing. Being kind to people is simple and easy, but so many people don't do it.  You'd never imagine how much people need you to be kind to them, and you'd never imagine how something that small can be of so much value.

In one of his more interesting TED talks, Sir Ken Robinson makes a passionate and well worded argument that creativity is one of the most important resources students bring to their own education, that school systems around the world systematically repress creativity in children, and that we need to radically rethink the way we educate our children. I really like the analogy he uses to compare the current education system to the strip mining industry.