Last Friday a group of 30 fabulous Virginia teacher bloggers {including myself!} descended upon the Jefferson Lakeside Country Club for an afternoon of networking, laughs, food, drinks, and some incredible swag and prizes! It was an incredible time, and well worth all of the planning and logistics that went into it. I want to share some of the experience with you!

First of all, I have to tell you how absolutely AMAZING all of our sponsors were to work with. If you are making any back-to-school purchases this year, I really urge you to consider purchasing from these businesses and individuals — they truly value teachers and aren’t afraid to show it!

A HUGE thank you goes especially to Educents (one of THE best companies around!) for helping with the costs of the meetup and providing some FANTASTIC swag! Make sure you check out their new Educents Wallet feature to get all of those resources for your classroom at a steep discount! If you sign-up for a new teacher wallet account you’ll receive $10 to spend on your classroom — who couldn’t use $10?!

GoNoodle provided us with a great tote to carry all of our swag in, as well as lanyards. I’m *super* thankful for the lanyard because mine broke during summer school and I did not want to rock a lame lanyard the first day of school!

We had over $4,000 in prizes thanks to these fantastic folks! I have to say I was torn between two prizes: one of the Ellison die-cutting packages and the SitSpots giftcard. I am SUPER excited to report that my raffle ticket was pulled from the SitSpots bag, so I’ve got yellow brick road SitSpots coming my way — WOOHOO!

Check our our FANTASTIC sponsors:

[Educents] [GoNoodle] [ESGI] [Learning Resources] [Ellison] [A+ Images] [Science4Us] [SNAP! Learning] [VocabularySpellingCity] [SitSpots] [Classroom Friendly Supplies] [Kasefazem] [Really Good Stuff] [Planbook.com] [Teacher Created Resources] [Jessica Saunders, ThirtyOne]

And some AMAZING TpT sellers that contributed raffle prizes or digital swag:

[Teaching in the Tongass] [Janiel Wagstaff] [Kimberly Geswein] [Polka Dots & Pals] [Laugh, Eat, Learn Designs] [Whimsy Workshop] [Jewel’s School Gems] [The Joy of Teaching] [The Teacher Studio] [KristyBear Designs] [Chalk & Apples] [Teaching in Progress] [There’s No Place Like Second Grade]

1. Seeing everyone milling around, getting to know each other while they played their “Find Someone Who…” for an extra raffle ticket was so special. Many of us had never met each other in person, but you didn’t see a lonely person in the bunch! I love our group because we are so diverse but also so welcoming and collaborative. {Have I mentioned we’re starting a Virginia collaborative blog?!}

2. Seeing everyone’s face when they saw the prize table and picked up their swag bags! No one except myself and my fantastic co-hosts knew about the swag or prizes. We wanted our fellow teacher bloggers to be pleasantly surprised and they certainly were! So many of my colleagues walked away with incredible prizes that will help get their years off to a GREAT start.

3. We had a HUGE Oprah moment at the end of our meetup. You see, our incredible sponsor Learning Resources worked so hard to get our swag there on time but we weren’t sure it’d make it. Nikki’s husband and son were on the lookout for the FedEx man and they brought it to the meetup site as soon as it arrived. We got to play Oprah — “YOU get a set of magnetic border! YOU get a set of magnetic border!” — it was SO MUCH FUN.