I'm ready...

My sister informed me last night that it has been awhile since I last blogged. Yes I have been slacking on my blogging. Fall is here (such a cliche), and I am glad to not be sweatin' it to the oldies at home or at school.

Work has been very stressful. None of my stress is coming from students, but from everything else that happens. I was called into the principal's office, and while it wasn't a big deal, I was freaking out because well... I was called to the principal's office. I wasn't so much as called as I was emailed. Nonetheless everything came out fine, just an issue with parents. Then there are just the politics of the school that are starting to wear me out. Last week I stressed myself into three days of heartburn. This all lead me to the conclusion that I need a distraction in my life.

I spent the last three years of college wanting a dog. I watched everyone (i.e. multiple roommates) get dogs or cats. I knew college wasn't the right time for me because I led such an exciting life (I hope you can hear the sarcasm).

Now I need a reason to leave the building, and not work 15 hour days. This led me to the conclusion that it is time for a dog. I need something else in this apartment to make it feel like a home. I had a lead on a free small dog from a friend, but that probably isn't going to happen, which I am okay with. Then I started looking on petfinder. People want $200 or more for their mutts. No way. I would rather give $15o to the Humane Society which includes their first shots, they are fixed, and microchipped.

So today I got on their website, and started looking. I found two that I love! One is a male hound mix, and the other a female collie mix. Both are going to be bigger, clearly the hound mix is going to be a lot bigger than the collie mix. But I guess I will find out tomorrow! If I end up getting one I will be sure to post many pictures as I become one of those crazy dog owners.

Friday Fill In

1. My car needs an oil change.

2. Camping is coming up next.

3. Lately, things seem to be more and more ridiculous.

4. My apartment is one of my favorite 'hiding' places. (Even though some of the other teachers know where I live my students don't!)

5. What happened to good Saturday morning cartoons?

6. Cleaning my very messy apartment is not impossible!

7. And as for the weekend, tonight I'm looking forward to doing things not school related, tomorrow my plans include working like every day and Sunday, I want to go home to get my board games, and get things for camping!

A break..

I went into school this afternoon to work, and I lasted all of an hour. Apparently they scheduled the heat to be turned on in September...today it is 80 degrees outside. My classroom felt like a sweatshop, can't wait to get teenagers in there tomorrow and smell them. Some of them have recently discovered cologne, and I wish they wouldn't have because they are bathing in it.

Back a few months ago when I was in college and student teaching no one warned me that my student's first writing assignment of the entire year would be horrible. I do continually remind myself to not expect college writing, but some of the things that my students are missing are elementary school mistakes. And I am also going to blame texting/IMing. I am by no means a perfect writer (my mother already informed of typos in my last post), but I just can't imagine a student turning in a formal piece of writing as horrible as the ones I have been avoiding for the past seven days. Seriously I have one student that has passed it so far.

The school I am at determines a lot of things by these assessments (there is either a writing or multiple choice assessment every three weeks). Students that score a 75% or below on the assessments are placed into a remediation class. So most of (like 99%) of my students are going to be in a remedial writing class two days a week during homeroom. This will include the students that failed to turn in an essay at all. I am a little heart broken by the high failure rate. So like an Purdue graduate that went through their teaching program I find myself reflecting, and wondering what the hell went wrong.

I know a few things that went wrong that were completely out of my control. One being that I had three weeks to get them ready, and it is impossible to get students back into the habit of good writing in three weeks, and of those three weeks I have to follow their lesson plan model which needs some tweaking (there isn't enough time for me to go into my issues with this). Two I had no idea what type of students I am getting. I did not have the eighth graders as seventh graders and the seventh graders are coming to me from the elementary school. I am new to the area so I do not know the educational background of community.

I am going to have to deal with the fallout of this assignment. I do not know how parents are going to handle their students getting Cs and below in my class, and Tuesday is midterms so there is no way I can muster enough points to get them to bounce back. There are students that are being retained with the option to be moved up to their proper grade that will not be able to. I figure that these students that should be in a grade above should be able to write way above their classmates if they are truly ready to be put where they belong. I have like 10 students that are retained, and I don't think will be able to move any of them up at the twelve week mark.

I already told one of my students this. He did not take it well, but I wasn't expecting him too. Part of me felt bad, but the other part of me knows it is for the best. Besides I think deep down he is okay with this. He seems happy to not be at the high school just yet. No one likes to hear that they are failing.

I am making a little bit more money now because I am tutoring a student that is homebound (he got kicked out of the junior high, and the alternative school). He comes in every Tuesday and Thursday after school to work with me. There is another student that does this, but works with Lukas. They are both good kids one-on-one. My student is hoping to come back to school in four weeks, but I am not sure if that is going to happen. I also don't know what is required of him to be able to be readmitted to the school. I think I am also going to "coach" academic super bowl. Finally my chance to be like Alex Trebek! And the other English teacher, Karen, does Scrabble Club. Hello geekgasm! (Yes, I just made up this term. And yes I am giving you permission to use it.) We are doing this on Fridays. I already have a tshirt idea in mind.

Actually this past Friday my students and her students played Scrabble. I am hoping we can do it again. The principal liked it so much he did our first observation on us, which made my day because there wasn't much of me teaching.

Finally I am getting to do things with the students that are not classroom related. There are not any clubs (with the exception of the two mentioned) at the junior high. I am hoping to remedy this because the students have nothing else to do besides athletics, and getting into trouble.

Okay well I need to get back to grading so I can start planning what I am doing this week.

Peace Out Reader(s)...

I put the s in () because I only know of one reader..my mom. Hi mom!

End of another week

Last week was rough. Between meetings almost every day (before school and sometimes during my prep..grr) and fearing that my laptop died I am glad that it is over, and there is a new week starting. This weekend I set goals to get more unpacked, but teaching got in the way. Saturday I spent 6 hours grading, and tonight I went into work to get stuff done. However I did just get my last box of books unpacked (yay!)

This included my first phone call to a parent. It was not an overall negative experience, but it will be interesting to see if anything comes of it.

Friday was payday..thank God! After work I went out with some teachers for an early dinner (like before the early bird special early) and some drinks. There are two groups of teachers at the school, the group I tend to hang out, and then the older teachers. I have nothing against the older teachers, but some of them are just plain mean. They are mean to students and other students. Right now I am trying to stay away from negative Nancys, and some of those teachers just need to move on with their lives. Not all of the older teachers are mean/grouchy. There are a few that I like, and enjoy eating lunch with them.

I picked a mentor teacher. She has been teaching one year longer than I have, but she is the teacher that I go to more than anyone else so I figured that she should be the one getting paid to listen to me. We are both teaching English. She has only eighth grade, where as I have a mix. We are planning on meeting at least weekly to coordinate what we are doing in class. I should also say that she is older than I am, and has three kids. So it is not like I am choosing someone that is only a year older than I am.

Okay well I need to pick a book to read during class...any suggestions?

my new place

I have recently relocated to a small town in Indiana. I have a great apartment that I can decorate as I wish. I have never been able to decorate just the way I want to, which is very overwhelming. The bedroom is already painted Boilermaker Gold. It isn't my favorite color, but for now I am not focusing on my bedroom, but the rest of the apartment that I spend most of my time. My awesome landlord is allowing me to use a love seat until I move out or by one of my own. The love seat is an olive green color. I really love the color green, and I am growing very attached to the color brown. I am using these two colors as the base for how I want to decorate. There is a little arch way between the living room and dining room that houses a closet and I want to paint that teal.

Above is the bedding I found at bed bath and beyond today. The bedding is from Nautica, which translates to more money than I wish to pay for pillows, or sheets. Since the rooms have hard wood floors and dark wood trim I am not going to paint anything brown in those two rooms.

In other news I now have a nice queen size blow up mattress for guests. Yay! My parents came up this weekend to help me unpack, and we got a lot done. There is still a lot to do such as my office and the rest of my clothing. I have chairs for my patio, which is awesome.

Okay well "Planet Earth" is on so I am going to watch that, and maybe write some lesson plans.

I guess I need to up date

Well I got the job. My position is going to the school board this morning, and then I will sign my contract. This was the end of my first week of full time employment. I am very pumped to continue this year. This first week has been me struggling to tread water in the deep end of the pool so to speak.

The schools are redoing their English curriculum which is causing the three middle school English teachers (including myself) to try to figure out what they want. Luckily the school is open to helping me and I am trying not to stress out too much.

The students are great. The community is small, which is also different for me. When I first drove downtown to see my new apartment I thought of the towns in the UP minus the lake. I literally have a Main St. address which I love. In other big news I got cable this week and internet so I feel reconnected with the outside world.

I have opened up and unpacked like 6 boxes. Mom and Lynn are coming up this weekend to help me unpack and bring up more of stuff. The place has hardwood floors how awesome is that?! The one down side is that there is now AC, and until last week that wouldn't have been a problem. But of course once I got rid of AC the temps hit the 90s. Today it is beautiful outside, and I wish I was sitting out on my balcony, but alas the door knob fell off the door and I can't get out there. Did I mention the building is on the older side?

I really like the staff at the middle school. They have been really nice and welcoming. I am making friends with other teachers, and such. I am hoping to get involved with extra curricular soon.

Well I've to get stuff done!

Avoiding

So I might possibly have a teaching job, but nothing is set in stone. Regardless I have the text books and the curriculum mapping and I need to start writing lesson plans. I hate writing lesson plans. I know I make them more difficult than they need to be. For example I have everything timed out down to the minutes. Each activity has very detailed instructions, because one never knows when they are going to call in sick. Instead of writing lesson plans I have decided to blog.

On an really exciting note I bought the complete collection of "School House Rock." Now I am not old enough have seen them new, I am most definitely old enough to see the repeats on ABC's Saturday morning cartoon lineup. I miss cartoons in the morning. They had some great shows, like science court, and Pepper Anne. Where did those shows go?

And here I go again talking about TV....back to real life...

In preparation for this possible job I started looking for a new place to live because I would have to relocate. I found a great place to live should this all happen. And it was a garage that I can park my car in. It is a very cute place, a "Juli" place. If this happens I will post pictures of the final project because I get to paint and decorate as I wish.

In one of my education classes we had to write a paper about our "writing processes." Which involved thinking about what you do to start writing, what you do while you are writing, editing and then the final product. I never thought of myself has being picky about how things are done, but I definitely have some quirks when it comes to writing papers, lesson plans, short stories etc.

1. I need the TV on or my iPod. I cannot work in silence.

2. If my room is messy I have to clean it before I write. This is probably more of an avoidance, but it is just part of it.

3. I have to be in comfy clothes.

4. I ALWAYS handwrite my first draft. I know a lot of people can just sit down and start typing, but I have to start by hand writing. This comes in handy as an extra editing step as I type it out. I prefer to write in a notebook so I do not lose pages. Today I had to run out and buy a notebook to put my first draft of lessons plans in.

5. Regardless of what stage I am in the writing processes I have to have something to drink, and usually something to munch on. While I was at Purdue this usually involved a trip to the Discount Den. Any of you (even though I am pretty sure I have no readers) that have been a student, or lived in the West Lafayette area know all about the Den Pops. They are giant sodas on the cheap, and on the walls are different recipes for mixes students do. Basically if you like soda that is the place to get them. I deeply miss the Den.

6. This is my last step I wait until the last minute to print off the paper. Yes I am that person winded in class clutching my paper. I could never find an open lab to print off my stuff, and I refused to use my printer unless I had no other choice.

Okay well I think I have avoided lesson writing more than enough for today.