What would you do if you lost everything?

I am in my 6th year of teaching and I have to admit, over those six years I have amassed a lot of teacher "stuff." At first I didn't have anything--so when veteran teachers offered me stuff they were purging from their classrooms, I took it. Yes, I became a bit of a hoarder. Over time, I bought and made more stuff of my own.   Now I have too much stuff.  In fact I have so much stuff that I had to brings tubs of it home to put in storage here until I needed it, because I ran out of room in the closet,  And  I have been banned from placing any more of my stuff in our grade level storage closet. In fact, I think they started locking the storage closets this year because of ME!!!

But the point of this post is not me confessing that I have too much stuff....it is to highlight that right now there are thousands of teachers and hundreds of thousands of their students with any stuff. Hurricane Sandy hit the Northeast US pretty bad about a week ago, and while the news is covering the power outages, and people without homes, when those situations get resolved, the kids will have to go back to school at some point in that area, and they are either going to go to a school that has been wiped out of supplies and classrooms with no materials (or limited because most were damaged/lost) or to a totally new location because their school is not usable. Years of teacher created materials, supplies, tests, study guides, bulletin board items, etc. have been lost. Many  years worth of hard work and hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of materials are gone.

Last night on Facebook, I came across this post and it made me so proud that I am a teacher.  Because when times are tough, whether it is in your classroom, school, community, etc, teachers by nature of their profession and the compassion they have for students and each other, band together and help put.

Laurah, at The ESOL Odyssey is heading this effort up. She reached out to fellow teacher bloggers (especially those who are also active members of the TpT and TN community)  with a plea to help those teachers, students and schools hard hit by Hurricane Sandy. She has a link on her blog for those teachers who NEED help too. So if you are reading this and you can help out or you need help, please click on the appropriate link below and fill out the requested info.  Fellow bloggers, please blog about this to help us get the word out...there are almost 75 teacher bloggers signed up already to help where needed.

If you a teacher in on of the areas hard hit by Hurricane Sandy and you  need help (supplies, lesson plans, materials, etc) click the icon below:

If you are a teacher and a blogger and you are willing to help out by donating materials...click the icon below:

If you blog about this, please do not forget to go HERE and link your blog post up with The ESOL Odyssey blog.

Thanks for reading this and let's help these teachers, students and schools out.....