Introducing Triple R Teaching – my new podcast!

Hello, Hello! I am absolutely thrilled that you have joined me for this brand new podcast. We're going to call this one episode Zero, because this is where I introduce myself and help you see how this podcast is going to make all the difference for you in your teaching.

I am a mother of six children, but I can honestly say that the hardest days of parenting do not compare to the mental drain and exhaustion that I felt after a challenging day of teaching. 

Through this podcast, I will give you what I wish I had when I was a classroom teacher: straightforward advice, troubleshooting tips, and loads of free resources that will save you time and energy so that even though you are a passionate and committed educator, you can have a life outside the classroom, too. 

You can expect a new episode of Triple R Teaching every Monday morning. I will take big concepts and simplify them so you can take a look at what you’re doing, make small changes, and see big results.  

My name is Anna Geiger, and you may know me from my home base, themeasuredmom.com, where I have been blogging since January of 2013. My site is known for offering creative and practical resources for teachers and homeschoolers, but that actually isn’t how it started.

A little backstory for you...when I began the blog, at the time I had four small children. My daughter, my oldest, was in kindergarten and her three little brothers were 4, 2, and 1. And if you think that it sounds like we had a little bit of a crazy house, you would be absolutely right.

When I created my blog my intent wasn’t to start a business. I was just creating an accountability space for myself.

What I was finding was that even though I was intentional about reading a lot, and doing a lot of pre-reading and reading activities with my oldest two kids, I wasn't doing as many things with my younger kids. That's because, as our family grew, the laundry piled up, dishes piled up, it seemed like I always had a baby to nurse, or a pregnancy to get through, or a toddler hanging on my leg and crying while I was trying to cook dinner...It was just hard to stay on top of things. I felt that if I had a place to record the things I was doing with my kids, I would do more of them. 

As I thought about what kind of mom I wanted to be, I knew that I needed to be more patient, I needed to be more thoughtful and more intentional--more measured. So I created themeasuredmom.com as a space to record the things that I was doing as a parent and as a teacher of my children.

I saw what other mom bloggers were doing and I thought, "That's what I should do!" I started posting recipes and parenting tips and realized very quickly that those were not things that I was good at. Honestly, it was hard enough to get meals on the table while the baby was crying or a toddler was hanging onto my leg, much less make the food beautiful and take a picture of it before we started eating.

I probably posted fewer than ten total recipes on the blog before I realized this was not something I could do long term.

One day I shared a very simple printable that I had created to use with my children. It took me hours to make, it actually wasn't even that pretty, but people loved it. And I realized that while I love being a mother and am very thankful for this role in my life, I am also passionate about teaching. 

So, I stopped sharing recipes, and stopped sharing parenting advice (because honestly, I wasn’t then and still am not a parenting expert) and started using my blog as a place to support teachers and homeschoolers.

That’s why, all these years later, hundreds of thousands of people visit my site each month to download my education resources and read my blog posts about teaching.

Now I’m going to take you back in time even farther to talk about my teaching background.

I have wanted to be a teacher since I was in kindergarten. At the time, I would use anything I could find to play school in my bedroom or in our playhouse in the backyard. I would create class lists and I would do the talking for me and for my students. I had to create all my own worksheets, and we didn’t have a computer. I didn't have a lot of extra paper at home, so I could not wait for the last day of school when we would get all of our workbooks to take home, and I could reuse my workbooks with my pretend students.

I remember the last day of 4th grade, though. The teacher had this gigantic, black garbage bag at the front of the classroom, and he had us come, one by one, to the front of the room to throw our old workbooks in the garbage bag so he could take them out to the dumpster. Everyone was cheering and clapping--they were super excited to get rid of their workbooks, and I was just devastated! I couldn’t believe we were throwing away all these wonderful things I could use to teach with. After school, I just collapsed in our station wagon, and just cried and cried over the loss of those workbooks.

The years passed, I graduated from college with a bachelor’s in education, and I started my career teaching a combination class of third, fourth, and fifth grade. 

A few years later, I switched down to first and second, and I spent most of my 8 years of teaching in the primary grades, which is truly where my heart is. That's why my blog, my online membership, and this podcast focus primarily on resources for pre-k through grade 3.

Toward the end of my career I earned my master's in education with a  focus on teaching reading. Then, a year after that, I gave birth to our first child, a girl, and transitioned out of the classroom into the role of stay-at-home mom.

I have to be honest with you and tell you that that first year of parenting was really hard for me. Whenever people ask me, what was the hardest transition in terms of number of children, I always say from zero to one was the hardest.

Switching from being a full-time teacher to being home with my daughter (who, let's face it, was beautiful, but cried a whole lot) was just hard mentally and emotionally. So, you can understand why it took me about 5 years of getting my feet wet and figuring out parenting before I was finally ready to start themeasuredmom.com website.

Now our six children are ages four through twelve, and I absolutely love being their first teacher. I like teaching them at home for preschool, and then they begin school in kindergarten at our church's parochial school.

I’m here to be your cheerleader, but more than that, I’m here to challenge you. I will encourage you to reflect on how things are going in your classroom or homeschool, to refine by making small, simple changes, and to recharge when you see those big results.  

You’re invited to visit themeasuredmom.com and join my free email list. That’s where you’ll learn all the ways I can serve you as an educator. 

If you’re ready to starting learning, subscribe to this podcast so you’ll be notified when I release new episodes.

(c) by Anna Geiger - Triple R Teaching - themeasuredmom.com