One of the things The Mailbox editors love to talk about is schools. We talk about the schools we taught in, the schools our kids attend, and the schools we attended as children. Of course we're school-obsessed: look at our choice of profession!

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Happy October! This is officially my favorite month of the year. I love the fall colors! I love the cooler weather! I love Halloween! Here at The Education Center, we have quite the Halloween celebration, including a costume contest, cubicle trick-or-treating, and a pumpkin decorating contest.

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If you're a regular blog reader, you know how much I love teachers. Usually, when I meet someone new, I can tell within a few minutes whether the person is a teacher. Teachers are just special like nobody else I know. What can I say? Who else can appreciate a teacher's job the way teachers do?

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Recently, a coworker and I were chatting about some magazine spot art. At one point I said, “Yes, I knew that because my dad used to raise guinea pigs,” and I waited for my coworker’s response about the art. But he wasn’t looking at the art anymore; he was looking at me. “Your dad raised…guinea pigs? Are you being serious?”

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Do you tweet? Do you post? Can't stop taking those crazy quizzes on Facebook? I know I answered yes to all the above. I must say, within the last year, I've become hooked on Facebook and have recently spread my addiction to Twitter.

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A few weeks ago, I asked editor Krystle Jones to give us some ideas from her first year of teaching. Because the first year is such an important experience, I've asked two more editors from The Mailbox® magazine to share memories of their first days in the classroom.

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This is a photo of my cat, Newton. She is my baby. (She would like you folks to know that the camera adds ten pounds and the photo was taken at an unflattering angle.) For the years when teaching was my profession, I would leave school and come home to Newton. In other words, my home life was pretty mellow. (I was working on my goal of becoming a crazy cat lady.)

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This is my pup, Lexie. Lexie has a delightful spirit. She’s sweet, curious, playful, mischievous, and very strong-willed. This latter trait has landed the two of us in not only one but three series of communication classes for pets and their owners! (We made some great friends along the way!) And here’s the thing: I paid a fair chunk of change to learn what I already knew, but I just hadn’t connected the dots between classroom discipline and doggy communication! I learned to be consistent, establish a routine so my pooch feels safe and secure, stay calm, acknowledge good behavior, have a sense of humor, and—most important of all—make sure my pooch knows I love her. Sound familiar?

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I don’t have to tell you what a busy, exciting time of year this is. But it is an especially thrilling time for first-year teachers. My first year gave me some of the most wonderful, terrifying, and humorous memories of my life! This is such an important topic that I’ve decided to run a short series aimed at first-year teachers, with memories and tips from those of us who've been there. For the first blog, I’ve asked my good friend, editor Krystle Short Jones, to share some of her thoughts with us:

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Yesterday was a great day. Fellow editor Krystle Jones was working on a reproducible partner game for The Mailbox® magazine, Intermediate. We had talked over the idea and were both sure it was going to be great. Then, when Krystle started working on it, several issues popped up. So we sat down to problem-solve. Boy! We hit one wall after another. Several times, we just looked at each other wondering if there was a solution.

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