Welcome to Pass the Apple

At Pass the Apple, our main goal is simple: to connect educators with the teaching supplies they need to have more balanced classrooms across the country. However, our goal extends far beyond helping teachers find tangible education materials like big books and whiteboards. We think it’s also very important to connect educators with reputable resources that include practical tips and tools from experienced educators who know what it’s like on the front lines of teaching. With our blog, officially named The Apple Seed, our hope is to make it easier for teachers to do their jobs well, because we understand just how tough this job can be and what high standards educators have for themselves. Beyond helping you find the educational supplies you need to run your classroom, we also want to provide you with ideas, motivation, techniques, and tools to help you make the most of the resources that you have available. We’ll also feature a new teacher every week on the Apple Seed, sharing the teacher’s unique story, photos, and more. Some topics that we intend to cover in our blog include:

• Organizational ideas and strategies
• Tips for surviving the first year of teaching
• How to maintain a good work/life balance
• Strategies for dealing with common teaching struggles, such as challenging students
• Advice on handling difficult parent-teacher conferences
• Creative ways to stretch your budget to its limits
• Effective classroom management
• And much, much more…

Reinvigorating and Inspiring Passion for Teaching

The sad truth is that about half of all new teachers leave the profession within the first five years. Some teachers go in expecting to only teach for a couple of years, like those who participate in Teach For America. Yet, many more young teachers come in with a passion for teaching and a real desire to help improve the lives of their students. Unfortunately, this passion has a tendency to get flattened due to a lack of support, impossible expectations, and limited resources.

As an educator myself, I believe that the best and most reliable resource that teachers have today is other teachers. It is vitally important that we share our experiences, our trials, and our triumphs in order to help teach one another what we’ve learned and inspire one another to do our best in this most humbling and honorable of professions.

As you use this site to find new classroom and homeschool materials, we hope that you will keep in mind all the people who have used these materials before you and the experiences they have to share. We sincerely hope that this will become a community of educators dedicated not just to making teaching materials available to one another, but making their wisdom and inspiration available to one another, as well.

Please check back regularly for more advice and encouragement, and share this resource with your teaching friends. Together, we can make it easier to enjoy the vast rewards of teaching by collaborating and sharing our unique experiences.

Also, if you have any great suggestions for blog topics or themes you’d like us to cover, please leave a comment below. We’re always open to new ideas as we hope to make this blog a leading resource for educators across the country.