This week I was at school for a total of two days. Monday, being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, was a day off, of course. They called school off yesterday due to the snow that was coming. The snow didn’t arrive until about 9:30 or so, but they did the right thing calling it off. It is a disaster to have to leave school early if it’s snowing a lot. This makes travel dangerous for the buses. Well, we got a few inches of snow so school was cancelled today also. Yay! Yesterday I spent pretty much all day working on my painting for the Magical Mythical Makings course on Willowing. Here’s what I’ve gotten finished so far:

I haven’t worked on a larger canvas in a long time. Also, I haven’t drawn in forever, so I am way out of practice. For a first attempt at a Goddess I think she’ll turn out okay. Maybe not exactly how I want, but okay enough.

Things have picked up over at The Quilting Bee here lately. If you haven’t already joined…well, if you haven’t, why haven’t you?!

I have no excuse other than school started back thus I have been obsessing over lesson plans and such. School is better this year now that I don’t have to do my internship. I have a great group of kids this year (overall). I also have a smaller class – 18 this year – which is totally awesome. I sometimes miss all the time I used to spend on Twitter, my website, and the internet in general but I really do enjoy teaching and spend a lot of time planning lessons and such.

Right now we’re in the middle of the Gingerbread Girl craze. She ran away on Friday. The kids were even more excited about it this year than last year’s group was. It’s really fun. We’ll be making gingerbread ornaments, and cookies, and cakes this week. Fun times! My mom made another gingerbread house around my classroom door and it is even cuter than the one last year! Way more color this time around. I’ll have to take a picture of it this week.

Christmas is right around the corner. I have a lot of shopping left to do. I also have many crafty things I am working on. I am working on adding items to my Etsy shop which has been ignored for a couple of years now. I am going to be adding some major cuteness to it, and I can’t wait!

For now I leave you with this yummy treat I baked up at Thanksgiving. More on my Flickr.

And the layout… it was coming along well, but then I got busy. And now I think I may have a new idea.

My last day with the students was on Friday. Since we missed so much school due to the ice storm, the teachers have to work until June 9th. We have three days of district curriculum mapping to get through and hopefully the rest of the time I can spend organizing my room and making preparations for next year. I am already excited about next year. I will be at a disadvantage next year in one way. This year I pretty much know most of the kids in my class from having them in computer lab. Next year I will know a couple of students by name, but I don’t really know what to expect from them. The kindergartners were a rough group this year. A LARGE group too. So large in fact that a second grade teacher is moving down to first so we’ll have four and a half first grade classes.

Since my summer is pretty close to actually beginning, I am hoping to have more time to work on my websites and to blog more often. I had to attend a school webmaster training the other day and they gave us a new digital camera and flip video recorder that I am dying to put to use.

Oh, in other news, Colin and I have found a house! Now, nothing is totally official yet (we’re still waiting on the final news from the bank and for the loan to go through), but if all goes as planned we could move into our house on July 19th! I really hope everything goes okay with the loan. I guess it’s freaked the bank lady out that she found out Colin is Canadian. Whatever.

Hopefully I’ll be able to catch up on the blogs I like to visit and get back in the swing of internet things. It’s going to be a busy summer!

So my husband finally has a Twitter account. He’s also been reading a lot of library blogs and he says he’s gonna start a LiveJournal where he anonymously will write about his job without using real names or places. I would love to have a completly anonymous blog where I tell what really goes on in my classroom on a day-to-day basis. Future teachers should know what to look forward to! College classes and practicum experiences do not prepare you for teaching.

Anyway, now that I’ve mentioned it, it’s not completely anonymous. Because now you know that I want to do it. And if I did, then you’d know about it. Hmm. Maybe I won’t tell any of you if I do it or not. Then no one will know. And I’ll just be talking to myself. Sort of like I am doing now…

My ear hurts.

I mean, technically I have been a teacher for four years now (even though two of them didn’t count as being a “teacher). As of March 10th, I have passed my internship. It feels good for it to be finally over. The final meeting didn’t last long at all. I basically walked in, got some hand shakes and congratulations, and then had a little chit chat. No one even looked at my portfolio one last time. I feel good that now I have at least one tiny thing gone I don’t have to worry about. All that’s left now is to take a copy of my committee report, a copy of my time sheet with my resource teacher, and a $35 check to the Board of Education so they can mail it off and I can receive my teaching certificate.

A few other things worth mentioning that have happened lately:

1. One of my students transferred to another school. I hated to see her go because she was one of the “good” ones- very quiet, smart, and well behaved.
2. One of my other students who has been a source of stress all year long has finally been formally identified as having an emotional and behavioral disorder and will be going to the EBD unit at another school (the school my mom works at actually). I hope the EBD class works out for him and that he can learn to control his behavior. His last day was Friday. It will be a whole new world in my classroom without him there.
3. My grandma had her surgery. Her right breast was removed. The doctor couldn’t even see a tumor or anything and said that it was completely surrounded by tissue so he’s fairly certain he removed it all which is great news. She may still have to have radiation but we aren’t sure yet.

I’m down to twenty students in my class. The other first grade classes have 22 – 23. This means that whatever new students come in to our school will be placed in my room. Hopefully if we do get any new ones they’ll be “good” ones.

I can’t wait for spring break to get here! I have so many things I want to do: clean, organize, plan out the rest of the school year, relax, have fun and work on hobbies. Have the rest of you out there had your spring break yet?

Let me tell you how the ice storm went down. School was canceled on the Tuesday. Colin also didn’t have to go to work. It’s rare that they close the college for weather. It certainly never happened the 4 years I was there! Colin woke up before I did because he had to find out if he had to go to work or not. Well, when I got out of bed awhile later, he said we had no internet or cable. I was okay with that. I thought it might come back a little later and at least we could still watch DVD’s. (I’m Roswell obsessed right now. I got Season 1 for my birthday!) Anyway, around 12:00 that morning/afternoon, our power went off. I mean, it went off and stayed off. It was off from Tuesday until the next Thursday.

So in total, the power was out for 10 days. It seemed like the lights would never come back on. We have natural gas in our apartment, so we were able to cook on our stove top. We also used the burners for heat during the days until we got a kerosene heater on Saturday or Sunday of that first week. (We got the last heater by the way. Score!) Tuesday night was rough because it was so dark. I didn’t have many candles around the apartment, so I could hardly see anything. We only had one flashlight too, and it wasn’t the greatest either. On Wednesday, we drove to Hopkinsville and went to Wal-Mart, Big Lots, and the Dollar Store to get candles, batteries, flashlights, a cooler for food, etc. Candles and flashlights and batteries were wiped out!! We DID manage to get some candles and things though. We found some here and there. Wal-Mart had a pretty big collection of “Jesus candles.” You know, those tall religious themed candles. We got three of those not knowing how good they’d be. (They ended up not being that great.) Wal-Mart was limiting the amount of purchases. They still had power in Hopkinsville in most places, but the computer systems were totally messed up. We had to pay with a check or credit card in increments of $50. It was crazy. People everywhere. We got a cooler to keep on our balcony and bought hot dogs, bologna, bread, and things like that. It was so good to be in Wal-Mart because they had LIGHTS!!

We returned to Hopkinsville several more times to buy candles and food and things. NOTHING in Madisonville was open – no stores, no gas stations, no nothing! It really looked like a disaster zone out there. Like army tanks plowed down our trees or something. Katee ended up spending three nights with us. My parents live out in the middle of nowhere and do not have natural gas. It was way colder in their house. They had some very old kerosene heaters, but since they are so old they don’t give off much heat. We finally went to Nashville to look for a kerosene heater or generator (because every place around here was wiped out of everything like that). We found nothing in Nashville (except some candles which came in handy!!), and we ended up going to Bowling Green from Nashville to get a generator at the Home Depot. I found my kerosene heater at the Lowe’s there. My parents also wanted a heater, but they weren’t able to get one until three or four days later.

Going from store to store and not being able to find things we needed was so depressing. It really makes you stop and think about things you might take for granted. My hair was a mess because I had no way to flat iron my hair or fix my bangs. I felt like a total hobo. But… I had it a LOT better than some people who couldn’t afford to spend hundreds of dollars on candles like I did. People who couldn’t get a kerosene heater or didn’t have natural gas. My dad had to drive a school bus over to a church shelter that lost power so it could sit in the parking lot with the heat on so people could get on and sit and warm up. He had to drive people from a nursing home up to Indiana in a bus because they had no power. My parents had it really bad because they live out in the woods practically, and their road was COVERED in trees. It took them one whole day to cut their way out of there. It’s just unimaginable.

I bought hundreds of tea lights. I had a tin can that Girl Scout candy came in and I used it as a sort of candle holder. I could fit 16 tea lights inside the tin with the lid off, of course. Well, one night Colin and I were sitting on the couch. Colin said, “It looks brighter in the dining room for some reason.” Well, it was!! Those 16 tea lights caught fire!! There was this big flame rising up from the tin. I was freaked out. Colin did the first thing he thought to do which was dump a pitcher of water on the whole thing. (Not the best idea, but it did work.) A big puff of smoke went up from that. Another time, I had bought some stick on lights and stuck a couple on the back of the stove so we could see to cook. Well, the burners being on caused the stickyness to melt, so the light fell down into the burner and caught fire. I burned myself twice on oil lanterns. I will have a scar from one of the burns. No severe damage though.

We did go to my parents’ twice after they got their generator. We got to see some TV and that’s when I wrote the other blog post about what was going on. I felt totally cut off from the world! I’ve been without the internet before, but I was without internet, TV, radio, and the news! I had no idea what was going on out there in the world. Colin finally got his old mp3 player that has a radio to work so we could listen to the radio for the news.

So what did we do? Played board games, played our Nintendo DS’s until they died, read books, went out to buy supplies and whatnot. I went to a teacher store to get some books to plan things with. (No power and I’m still obsessed with teacher stores!) Colin’s portable DVD player had 2 hours on it, so we watched episodes of the first Survivor until it died. (We couldn’t watch Roswell because it was stuck in our DVD player!!) When the college power came back on, Colin got a couple of laptops from there and we watched DVD’s on the laptop. (Oh, and Colin took our DVD player and we finally got our Roswell DVD out of it. Hooray!)

I know I am going on and on, but so much happened and it was the weirdest thing that’s ever happened to me. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I hope it never happens again. My town was declared a federal disaster area. It’s going to look pretty rough around here for a long time. So many trees have been destroyed. The evergreen trees are so bent over from ice, I don’t know if they will ever straighten back up. Branches are still piled everywhere. It is unbelievable. I have lots more pictures on my Flickr account.

Going back to school was tough. We went back on a Thursday (which was the 100th day of school), and then Friday was the Valentine party. We don’t know yet how many days we’ll have to make up. Right now it seems like we’ll be in school all summer. I don’t think they are taking our Spring Break away thank goodness. I’ve just been so absorbed in school that once again, my blog has been neglected. I really want to blog more, but how can I find energy to do it?? I wonder….

I realize this post is kind of disjointed. I skip around here and there to things, but it’s really hard to put it all into words. It was the worst ice storm Kentucky has ever had! The rumor is that in March we are supposed to get another ice storm that will be worse than this one. I sure hope we don’t!!

The first week back I had an observation. Lesson went great. Then, on Sunday night, I started feeling icky. I went to work Monday with the hopes of only staying half a day. Well, I messed up and got the substitute for the next afternoon instead of Monday afternoon. I had to cancel the Tuesday afternoon sub because I had to go to school Tuesday since I was being observed that afternoon. I decided that I would definitely take Wednesday off though. Not only did I miss Wednesday, but I missed yesterday and today as well. My nose is like swollen so it’s hard to breathe. I’ve been breaking out in hives (not due to any medicine because I haven’t taken anything new or exotic). My ears have been sore. The doctor gave me an antibiotic and some nose spray. Since there is no school Monday due to it being Martin Luther King Jr. Day, I am lucky enough to have an extra day to get myself together. I enjoy time off from school but not when I am blowing my nose for most of it.

I’ve been out for three days, and my kids have had a different sub every day. From the reports I’ve been given though, they’ve been pretty good considering which I am happy to hear. One of them got carried out by two adults kicking and screaming, but that’s nothing really surprising. *sigh*

I hope I’m feeling better soon so maybe I can have at least one “fun” day before going back to work on Tuesday.

I didn’t sleep at all last night. I just couldn’t sleep. Needless to say, I am very tired tonight. I’m being observed tomorrow. I’m doing a lesson on nickels, so Colin is busy right now helping me make a nickel memory game for tomorrow’s lesson.

My new domain I purchased for my Project 365 photos is finally functioning properly. Hopefully I’ll be able to finalize the layout this weekend, and then I’ll post the link up here so you can check out my fabulous photos. Ha ha ha.

This is kind of a short post, but I’m just so tired and have things to do. Hope all of you are still having a good 2009.

We finally caught our Gingerbread Girl.

Two weeks ago we started this Gingerbread Man theme in my class. The kids absolutely loved it! We read tons of different versions of The Gingerbread Man and made lots of gingerbread man goodies. We created a big Gingerbread Girl out of brown bulletin board paper. We folded the paper in half to make her so she would be symmetrical. I actually traced the body from one of the other first grade teachers’ Gingerbread Man who had to hide in my file cabinet. Well, because I traced hers, then mine also looked like a Gingerbread Man. One of my students told me to give her a rainbow skirt so she’d be a girl. I happily complied! I even gave her red hair because in the book the Gingerbread Girl she has red hair made out of licorice.

When the kids went to specials, our Gingerbread Girl left!! We found lots of her hair in the hallway. We don’t know how she escaped since our classroom door was locked. She left us clues each day. My mom came and decorated my classroom door as a gingerbread house. The whole first grade was in on it though. We had a missing Gingerbread Girl, one of the other teachers had a missing Gingerbread Man, and the other had a missing Gingerbread Baby. We even made Gingerbread House traps to try and catch the baby. I think the baby is still missing.

We found our Girl in the special ed. teacher’s room on Wednesday. She turned back into paper and left us some Gingerbread Man cookies and gingerbread man tattoos. The whole thing was so hilarious. The kids told the funniest stories. One girl said her bus driver ran over one of the gingerbread people. Another girl said she saw the boy and girl on her street and she tried to catch them. Another one said he dreamed that all gingerbread people would come to life, and then they did! They were really so into it.

One week left. This week is going to be crazy. I’ll be glad when it’s over.

I miss my website. I miss free time. I don’t have much free time these days like I used to. Being a first grade teacher just really takes away any free time you may have I guess. Lesson plans are almost always on my mind. Let me just say something to all of those people out there who think teaching is easy and that you get summers off and get to go home at 3:00 p.m.: you are idiots. Seriously, if you are someone who is thinking about going into the education profession please talk to as many teachers you can and go and spend time in schools. It’s crazy times in education these days.

But enough with the negativity, I do like my job overall. My class definitely has some stinkers in it (that’s putting it nicely). I also have some really funny, sweet, intelligent kids as well though. They are so talkative. The whole first grade group is actually. The only time they are truly quiet is when I am reading them a story. (Maybe I mentioned that fact before?) It could always be worse though. (And some days it seems like it is.) I am looking forward to the upcoming winter break though. Our last day is December 19th.

Although… my time off won’t be all fun and games. I’ll have to be working on several things for my portfolio. I am having to complete Cycle II of my internship in January. That’s almost insanity. To give you an idea why, I did Cycle I from August to December. So yeah… I am going a whole cycle’s worth of work in one month (which includes three observations). It’s going to be very hectic for me in January. On the plus side, my internship is going wonderfully thus far, and I forsee no significant problems arising.

I’m hoping to have some time during my break to spruce up my site a bit. I think there’s a lot of junk on here I could do without. I’d also like to blog here more often. Maybe if I do, I won’t have to repeat my many school stories as often. Maybe my husband could just read them here and save me the time and breath. Hee hee!

I am hoping to take some great pictures tomorrow at school and post a truly hilarious post tomorrow. Stay tuned and watch for it. It has something to do with a certain cookie-esque character who likes to run….

One more week to go until Fall Break. Thanks God. I need a break. I haven’t really had one. My Friday evenings include me and Colin working in my classroom until 7:00 at night and my weekends are spent working at home on lesson plans and whatnot. Oh course, I will be doing some work on my break, but it won’t be as stressful I don’t think.

Going back to my previous post and some of the comments made, I can’t really switch my schedule around too much. Our literacy block has to be 90 minutes, uninterrupted. I can’t fit reading and math in the morning. However, I may try to fit writing in the morning and do calendar time in the morning so that will leave me to do 60 minutes of math in the afternoon instead of 90. Then, hopefully I’ll have some time for Social Studies and Science in the afternoon as well.

As far as my internship goes, I have had one observation that went quite well. My second one is tomorrow. The principal is coming to observe a math lesson. I’m not too worried about it. Whatever happens just will. I’ll be fine whatever the outcome.

Things have been going okay overall. My class is still so needy and talkative, and I really don’t think those things are going to improve very much over the year. I’ve gotten three new students since school started (can’t remember if I mentioned any of these). One is a student who was supposed to be in my room originally but was told he couldn’t come to our school since he was out of our district and is a behavior problem. Well, he’s back in our district, so he’s mine again. One of my boys has been suspended like 5 times since school started. Another one “speaks bird.” One cries just about every day multiple times. Fun times. Never a dull moment.

The long term sub that has been at school since day 1 will be leaving next Friday. It’ll be her last day and then the real teacher will come back. She’s been out on maternity leave. I will really miss the sub. She’s taught for 35+ years, and she and I have been good buddies this whole time. I get along really well with the other teachers I work with too. It’s really good.

I’m always busy or have something to do. This is because I have to do a internship portfolio and since I never taught first grade before, I’m having to learn as I go. Next year should be a lot smoother. On fall break, I plan to get together with one of the first grade teachers so she can show me how she teaches with themes instead of following the textbooks so closely. I am excited.

I straightened my hair yesterday. I borrowed my mom’s flat iron. It took me like two hours. I like it though. I haven’t brushed my hair since 9th grade probably. I have to pick it out or comb it since it’s curly from perms. However, I think I may try the straight hair thing now. I bought myself lots of brushes today and my own flat iron. I’m excited to see what the teachers and kids say about my hair tomorrow.

Hope everyone out there is doing just fine and enjoying your weekend. I can’t believe it’s October. It’ll be Christmas soon!!

My class usually has pretty good mornings. We do reading in the morning. After reading, we have lunch, recess, and then specials. After all of that, the kids are done. They are ready to go home. This means that writing class and especially math are very difficult. The kids have difficulty focusing, concentrating, and generally just following the rules in the afternoon.

I spend my entire weekend planning lessons and centers. It’s a lot easier to plan lessons on paper than to carry them out in class. I have a select few students who cause disruptions for the whole class therefore not allowing me to teach how I want to and how I feel I should. I feel so bad for the kids who have to constantly listen to me call others down.

I’ve gotten tougher, but it’s still hard. I’ve been advised to be “mean” and “put on my big boss panties” but it’s easier said than done when that is not really my personality. However, I am learning I think. It comes to a point where enough is enough though.

I’ve had one student in SOS (a sort of in-school detention) three or four times. He was actually suspended for half a day too. I have one girl who cries at the drop of a hat about everything. One girl is totally spaced out most of the time. The kids can’t sit still. They constantly pick at themselves and bleed. One student of mine got sent back to kindergarten (he only completed to months of kindergarten anyway), and I have already gotten a new student. I may be getting another student next week who was originally supposed to be in my room at the beginning of the year but then went to another school. He’s a handful and has a disability, and he may stress me more than I already am stressed.

I’m just so tired. I need a vacation. Thank God I finally got paid the other day. That made it a bit better. I know things will get better. I know it takes time, but I am totally exhausted. :shame:

I don’t even really know where to start! I have 21 students enrolled in my class. Two were new students that showed up the first day. School supplies were everywhere. Transportation was crazy. I’d had bus duty. I’ve only had half of my planning time two of the three days. I only eat yogurt for lunch (the first day I didn’t even eat anything for lunch). Some kids I thought would be behavior problems aren’t, and kids I thought would be fine have behavior issues. My special education student is hardly ever in my room. Doing arts and crafts with first graders is insane. My kids are basically still kindergartners right now. Many don’t know all of their letters, sounds, numbers, etc. It’s going to be a challenging year (especially having to do my internship over again), but I am excited about it all and I know it will get better as each day goes by. I feel a lot more organized this time around. I have more support. I actually spend my lunch time with other teachers and enjoy myself. It could definitely be a lot worse overall.

I woke up this morning with a sore ear and sore throat. I am hope I am not getting sick already. I’ve gotten home around 5:00 each day so far. Colin actually came after school on Wednesday to help me sort through supplies and everything. :love:

It’s going to be tough keeping up with everything though. I am going to be so busy. I have new teacher meetings every month at the board office. I have special meetings with the director of elementary education every month. I have to spend so many in class and out of class hours with my resource teacher. I have to manage the school website as well as my own. I have to lead the technology committee, and I am a member of another committee as well. Oh yeah, and I have to teach first graders! It’s going to be crazy I tell you!

I may start writing some password protected posts. I don’t want to share any personal information about my students, but I probably would like to just comment on a general issue or something that’s happened. In that case, I will probably password protect certain entries just to be on the safe side. I’m still working on my classroom website, and when it’s more finished I’ll post a link to it here.

I’m tired. I have a lot to do this weekend though. Not having to wake up at 5:45 or 6:00 this morning was nice though. :content:

I’ve just been super busy getting things ready for open house tomorrow night and then school starting on Wednesday. Things have been a little crazy! I’ve met all of the teachers new to my school except one. The one next door to me is really nice, which is great.

I’ve also been assigned my intern resource teacher. I got a good teacher! She’s really excited to be working with me, and I’m excited too.

I got my hair done on Thursday, and I actually made a video afterward or me talking about my hair and stuff. I tried uploading it, and it kept timing out. I’ll try again once I get some time. :star: I got a lot of my hair cut off and got a curly perm.

My flash drive should be here tomorrow. I am a little disappointed with Mimoco right now. It took them SIX days after I made my order to get my package to UPS. SIX DAYS! I didn’t pay $10.00 for shipping just for my package to sit around for six days. It bugs me too, because on their site, it said my order was complete. Well… it wasn’t complete if it sat there for SIX DAYS!

Colin and I saw Stepbrothers last night. Funny movie.

At the beginning of the summer, I honestly had plans to work a lot more on Rainbow Stuff. I was working on a new layout and came up with a cool logo. I had planned to catch up on some of my favorite blogs that I have fallen behind in reading. I was also going to try to blog more often. What happened? Well, life happened I guess. When it became official that I would be teaching first grade this upcoming school year, I spent like two straight weeks at the school every day, all day working on my classroom. When not at school, I’m usually shopping for things for my classroom or working on stuff for school. If I’m not doing anything school related, I’m either playing Wii (especially Mario Kart. I so need to unlock Dry Browser!), doing Quilting Bee things, or… just doing nothing and trying to chill! School starts in a little over two weeks, and I feel like I haven’t even had a break. People who think teachers have it easy by having the summers off are sadly mistaken.

I do want to include a little eye candy for everyone out there who is kind enough to stumble upon my website and read this commemorative 200th blog post. The below picture is the picture of the calendar image I created for our school calendar page in the district calendar. It’s pretty much the same idea as the one I did last year. Instead of a corkboard feel I went with a chalkboard feel. It’s pretty good I think. (Apparently I don’t have a copy of the final calendar image on my computer at home. I’ll have to get it from school on Monday.)

The second first picture is of my classroom door at school without the fabulous curtains I made with my mom’s help. I did post some pictures on Flickr of my classroom. A LOT has been done in my classroom since I took those pictures, so on Monday I plan to take some new ones. And the third second picture is of Pouncy just because. She had her 18th birthday at the beginning of July (the 5th).

So, as I have mentioned twice now, I will be going to the school on Monday. Why? I have an interview at 10:30 on Monday. Not an interview for me though. I will actually get to be on the other side of the interviewing table for a change. Our first grade special education teacher got a job closer to where she lives (gas prices are a killer), so we need a new special ed. teacher. Since I am going to be working with this person, I was invited to come and take part in the interview. I think only one person is being interviewed, so it must be someone good or someone that someone else knows or something. I’m not sure. Anyway, I’m sort of excited that I get to take part in interviewing someone else for a change.

Let’s see, what else is going on? Well, tonight my dad is racing. It’ll be his second time racing this season and my first time getting to see him this season. Hopefully I can get those pictures I mentioned on Monday and post again then. I’m not making any promises, but I will certainly try. I hope everyone has a great rest of their weekend!