As the summer came to a sad end, the back-to-school hustle and bustle has been in full throttle.  You can’t go to any place that sells paper, composition notebooks, pens or pencils because the lines have been outrageous and the crowds unnerving.  Yet there’s nothing like that smell of school supplies.  Teachers are a significant part of those crowds buying their own supplies on a limited budget.  In fact, in certain districts, teachers are just being asked to confirm their addresses in order to receive supply money in a few weeks, which would put us in October and they’ve been in school since August and haven’t even received paper.  You do the math (just in case math isn’t your strong suit, by now some teachers have spent an average of $500 of their own money for this new school year alone).

Teachers have to constantly make magic happen for supplies and educational resources.  Many schools and classrooms have been without textbooks, but teachers are still being held accountable for the learning happening in the classroom despite not being provided with the basics needed to teach. Thank goodness for Google and that teachers are resourceful creatures.  There are websites that are major supports, and I would like to acknowledge them at this moment and perhaps explore their effectiveness individually at a later time.  Ed-Helper has a wide range of printables available in many subjects and many grade levels, which you can customize; this is a wonderful site and a huge life saver.   Pinterest provides a wealth of how-to’s to build your classroom, for lesson plans, you name it, Pinterest has it, and often it will take you to another useful site, Teachers Pay Teachers.  There’s also Discovery to help build and teach science lessons, Khan Academy to reinforce a variety of subjects, and  Read Think Write.org and Share My Lesson that offer a wide variety of standards-based lesson plans.  Let’s not forget the often unsung heroes who help tremendously: YouTube and Google!

So there you go…some useful sites if you’re expected to pull a rabbit out of a nonexistent hat!