Cheat Sheet: Untangling SER and ESTAR

I think of all the subjects to be mastered in the Spanish language, the SER and ESTAR partnership cause students the most headaches! They both mean “to be”, but how do we decide which to use and when?

To help, creating a cheat sheet on this topic seemed to be a good solution. Many schools of thought classify SER as relating to PERMANENT things in life and ESTAR as relating to TEMPORARY things. Sounds easy enough, but in reality that ‘black and white’ solution has a few grey areas…