My name is Amy McMullin. I am an MSIT student in my 4th semester here at FSU. I live in Naples, but I work an hour away in Immokalee where I have taught Computer Systems Information Technology and Applied Cybersecurity at Immokalee Technical College for 9 years. Before that, I was a network engineer for 16 years.
Outside the classroom, I have 5 children, four of them teenagers still living at home. This is a picture of them when they were little and cute.
We also have 3 cats running around the house. I like to describe my home as managed chaos, but most people would probably find it just chaos. This is one of my cats and I this past weekend, very interested in a noise.
My “spare” time is spent on the baseball field either coaching my daughter’s little league baseball team or watching my son’s HS/travel teams. If you find yourself in southwest Florida with nothing else to do, check out our schedule and maybe you can catch a game!
In case you are wondering about the title of this post, it is pretty much 90% of what I get to teach my students and my kids to be successful at life. It’s not about knowing everything. It is about knowing how to find the answers.
I absolutely love your introduction and how you captioned the photo of you and your children when they were younger, and how they “turn into teenagers who want to borrow your car” that part made me laugh!
I also live in self proclaimed “organized” chaos. What are your cat’s names? I used to have a black cat named Midnight (my middle school self was very original). I was planning on getting a cat last year, but wound up getting my lovely hamsters. (Though a cat is not completely out of the picture.)
It is great that you use all of your “spare” time coaching for your daughter’s little league team. Are you and all of your children into baseball or other sports? I am not athletically inclined myself.
I love how you decided to conclude your introduction by explaining the title of your blog post. I am quite notorious for not reading instructions but it’s definitely good to take a minute and double check when you are having troubles. It would have spared me a lot of headaches putting together IKEA furniture if I took the time to!
Thank you for your reply. I will have to tell my kids that someone thinks I am funny.
My cats are Mink, Monk, and Mick. My kids’ names all start with M too, so it seemed fitting to continue the trend.
My oldest daughter played softball for one year, but the younger 2 girls and both boys have all played baseball for at least a couple years. My older son lost interest in high school and my youngest daughter only played for 2 years before finally admitting she would rather do something faster-paced. My middle daughter (9th grade) and younger son (12th grade) have played from t-ball through high school. But it really should not surprise anyone that we are a baseball family. Baseball was actually how their dad and I met. We’ve been singing “Take Me Out To the Ballgame” instead of “Happy Birthday” their entire lives.
I love how accurate the title of your blog post is. Not only because it is incredibly true for classroom instruction but because it applies to life, as you said. I may need to make a poster of that for the computer lab at my school and incorporate it into my lessons from now on!
Organized chaos is the only way to function, I think! At the moment I am currently reorganizing the k-2 section of the media center to fit into a kid friendly version of Dewey (mixed in with some basic understanding of genre-fying) and there are books everywhere! But that does not mean there is no sense to the chaos!
It’s so cool that you are a part of your kid’s athletic interests! I may not be able to catch a game, but I’ll be rooting for their team from over here in Orlando.