Hi, I'm Patti
I am a coffee loving, wine drinking mom of three who also is a teacher in Ontario Canada.
My journey in education began in 2008 when I graduated from teachers college and started teaching the following September. What I learned then was that I was wholly unprepared to teach a real class. But as a young teacher with endless amounts of energy and free time, I could dedicate the hours it took to create the resources I needed. This was before TPT so if we couldn’t find it in our classroom we made it ourselves. I simply felt this was the reality of life as a teacher.
Eventually, I discovered teacher blogs. An amazing miracle that inspired me and gave me ideas that I could use right away in my classroom. I was hooked. these blogs were pure gold. Better yet, these blogs served as a way for teachers to connect with other teachers all within the robust comments sections of each post. It was the connection with other like-minded teachers, teachers that pushed into new ideas, methods of teaching. They strived for high-quality learning and shared it with the rest of the world. These were my people.
As I was growing in confidence as a teacher I was also doing a lot more adulting. I got married, bought a house and finally got that full-time permanent job in my third year of teaching, and decided to start a family. I was living the millennial dream.
My daughter was born in 2011. My world changed. As September started and I stayed home with my newborn that did nothing but eat, and eat and eat. I had endless hours to browse the ever-growing landscape of teacher blogs and early Facebook. It was when my daughter was 6 months old I discovered the blog Runde’s Room. This blog, run by Jen Runde was different. It was a blog about teaching, but she was Canadian. It was then that I felt something was missing. So many of the teaching blogs I had been reading, and following on Blog Lovin’ were of American Teachers. They were my people but something was missing. Their experiences in education were American. What was missing was more Canadian Voices in the teacher blog space. So it was then that I declared to my husband while nursing a baby on our basement couch one evening that I was starting a blog. Not only that but I was calling it Madly Learning. A name that was a combination of my two identities Mom and Teacher. Madly was inspired by the chubby little baby I spent my days with – Madelyn.
After a few months of blogging about my teaching ideas, a few posts of my comments section were full of requests to purchase the resources I was blogging about. One comment even asked if I sold it on Teachers Pay Teachers. This was another turning point. I once again jumped right in and said sure I can sell you that. So I created a TPT store, made a logo with a cartoon owl and maybe some chevron and I was ready to go.
When my husband came home again from work I had a new announcement again. I told him I was starting a business and going to sell my teaching resources. Maybe the sales from my ideas could justify the hours I had spent creating these resources. Well, I uploaded a few resources and that was that. My maternity leave ended, I went back to work and left what was happening on TPT alone. I continued to blog a few times a month when I had time after managing my work life and home life.
Two years later, in 2014 I had our second daughter. Once again I was on maternity leave. I enjoyed the mom life and would keep my mind busy by creating resources during nap times or evenings. Now that Facebook groups were a thing I joined with some of my new Canadian teacher blogger friends (our numbers had grown over the last few years). You would recognize many of these women today as leaders in the Canadian teacher space. It was also this year that the Ontario government decided to implement a new curriculum for social studies to start in Sept 2014. This curriculum was full of inquiry, something new to Ontario education. I used my time completing AQ’s this year to learn more about Inquiry and what it meant in the classroom. It was then that I decided my next resource to create would be social studies units for grades 4 and 5. Creating these would mean that I would have a resource that I could use in my classroom upon my return at the end of my maternity leave. I posted the first unit that September. We were in Disney on a vacation with my parents when we realized a week after it was posted that I had just created a business that could support teachers across Ontario and later Canada with high-quality resources.
Since that day in Disney, life as a teacher has not been the same. Helping other teachers save time and energy by creating engaging, resources full of high yield strategies is what I love doing. Teaching daily and supporting my students, sharing what is working and not working, and coaching teachers on how to best support their students is the best job I could ever have.
Since that eye-opening day in Disney, Madly Learning has continued to grow and help more and more teachers. Through resources that range from grade 3 to grade 6, covering topics from science, social studies, math and language arts we’ve got you covered. But beyond just the resources, we know that teachers also need a safe place to get support. Support that is free from judgement or the scrutiny of your admin. Our now thriving community and support team help to coach teachers through email, free Facebook groups and a monthly paid coaching program.
Over the last year, we have continued to grow to be able to support more teachers. Madly Learning is now a team of amazing educators that help me to execute my vision of creating resources that can help more and more teachers each month.
Madly Learning is my passion project, a business that I love, and a community of amazing educators. When I started teaching this is not what I envisioned my career would look like. It has taken a bit of a hard left turn. However, I know that this is exactly what I am meant to do and I wouldn’t change it at all.
