You're my national monument

In one of my classes I have a group of 3 boys who are best friends. They are great but they can get a little chatty. They are the 3 amigos, or at least that's what I call them. Anyway, I did this activity at the beginning of the school year where students pick partners for various places around Washington, D.C. and when I want to do a partner activity I can just say, "okay, meet your partner at the white house or the Jefferson memorial or whereever." One time I said, "meet your partner at the national monument," and one of the boys said to the other, "you're my national monument." The way he said it was so adorable and I couldn't help but laugh. I think it's great that 3 guys can be so close and not feel stupid when they act silly. It's great. And, not to mention, I think "you're my national monument" is a great compliment to give a significant other. I'm also partial to the phrase, "you're the cheese to my macaroni," from the movie Juno.

For fun, here are some pictures of my classroom. I actually had a horsehoe set up last week and loved it because it's a great way to walk around and cut down the talking, but we're having IOWA testing this week and when we aren't testing, I don't like rows so this is what I have this week. I love my room! I even love the foldable acordian walls because they are magnetic and it's easier to hang stuff. Also, it's kind of fun to hear the other classes sometimes. Our 8th grade is a cozy little family :)

Watch for falling objects...

I neglected to post last week, surprise, surprise. First year teaching is rough. I love it but it wears me out. Although the guy I', dating has been out of town for two weeks so it's been really nice to have down time and more time to relax. Haha, as much as I love spending time with him, it's hard to make time for other people right now so I feel like I've accomplished a lot more lately. I've finally been able to get a caught up (I felt so behind, but I wasn't really) and get ahead of myself, which is a great feeling in teaching. I do have a funny story to tell from last week. I was teaching my students about precincts and voting districts and I used one of my handy wall hanging maps to demonstrate. When I went to put it up, the whole thing fell on me if front of my class and made a huge crashing sound. Haha! The weird thing is I didn't even put away hard, it just came crashing down. To top it off, like 3 teachers came to see if everything was okay. That was nice they were concerned but how embarrassing! Well, I wasn't that embarrassed.

The next day, someone from my homeroom went into my room and either farted or let a stink bomb off because eww....it stunk so bad in my room during homeroom. To solve the problem, all I could get my hands on was Axe cologne. Haha! My room smelled like a teenage boy who hasn't learned how to gauge the amount of cologne to use yet. When the other students trickled in they would say "it smells like axe in here," which sounds a lot like something else. That made for a lovely morning.

Let's see, I think that's the higlights from the last 2 weeks of teaching. I love my job so far. My students are great and I think it's going to be a great year. They seem to be really into the elections and politics so far and that's always nice to have students excited about the curriculum. Back to school night was last night and that went really well too. Yay!

One Week Down...a lot more to go!

As I mentioned in my previous post, I just finished my first week as a first-year teacher. The picture to the right might show how I feel, I'll let you read what my eyes say. Or, at times, I feel like the one to the left...My emotions are a combination of scared, worried, stressed, excited, unsure, nervous, happy, etc. I am also constantly thinking about school, which I guess is good but it keeps me awake at nights. And, on the occasion that I might wake up in the night to go to the bathroom (dang it), I can't fall back asleep so I just pull out my laptop and work. That happened once last week, I got up at 3:00am, tried to sleep and around 3:30am I gave up and figured if I'm up I might as well get some work done and start putting my thoughts on paper.

Wow, the first week was exhausting! Luckily for me, I wasn't the only one who felt completely drained. Apparently, it's pretty normal for the first week of school to be like that and by Friday we were all dying for the week to be over. I'm just glad it was a 4 day week because I would not have made it one more day. The funny thing is the first week is pretty much house-keeping stuff and getting ready for the year but it wore me out. So far, my sister's prediction was accurate in the fact that I would be at the school a lot. However, I have chose the route to go in early instead of staying late. That's pretty funny too because I hate mornings but since I'm not sleeping well I figure I should just get up and go in early. I get more done. Plus, once I start my after school activities I won't want to stay there until 6pm.

I'm teaching 8th grade and as we all know, that age is full of drama. Already on the 3rd day of school I had a girl "cat" fight in my room. It was not phsyical but it happened in the morning when kids were coming in for homeroom. I don't need to get into details but things were resolved peacefully and nothing got out of hand. I think the girls had some unresolved summer issues. Drama, OMG! I won't really get into more detail about it but what a great way to start the year :) Haha! Actually, so far, so good. I really like my classes and I think it's going to be a great year. My classes are pretty small, with an average of 14 students each, except for one with 18 (or 20, not sure yet with schedule changes). That class is small compared to a lot of school districts but it feels huge to me. I think it will be my challenge class, not because the kids are bad but just the time of day. Also, in that class, the kids don't seem to care that much and my other classes have a lot of students excited about politics...at least for now since our first unit is elections. We'll see how it goes, I think it's going to be a great year.

Tomorrow we kick off our first unit of elections and we will discuss voting procedures and statistics and all that fun stuff. I have a few tricks up my sleeve to make it interesting and fun.

I'm a "real" teacher now

Well, I've successfully completed my first week of teaching as a "brand-new" teacher. Well, I should say, survived! I put "brand-new" in quotes because I have had teaching experience prior to my first year but I was not a contracted teacher so they don't count it. Oh well, at least it gave me some ideas and I learned to help me in my first year.

I'm teaching 8th grade Civics and Economics, which is my area of expertise (the Civics part). I love the material that I get to teach but wish I had more time to get more in depth on some topics. My county puts out a really nice curriculum guide for us to use and follow (not necessarily verbatim), which I like but, there is so much material that at times, it is hard to imagine getting deep into a subject. Oh well, we'll just touch the surface of government this year and they can go into it further in 12th grade...I'll cross my fingers that at least they'll remember we have 3 branches of government :)

Let's see, what should I write? There is so much but I don't want to be boring. My older sister taught U.S. History I (Colonies to Civil War) at the same middle school I'm at now. She got married and moved with her husband to Kosovo to teach history for two years. Her blog about her experiences are fun to read, check it out at here. Before she left she laughed and told me that I would be going to the school early in the morning and staying until 6pm every night my first year. I laughed back and said, yeah right! I had been a long-term sub before in math for 8 months and had all the same duties as a regular teacher and I wasn't staying late or coming in early then so I didn't think this time would be that different. Well...

I started work on August 13th and went to a million workshops on "how to teach," which I find hilarious since most of us there had just graduated from programs where we learned all about that for 2 or 3 years. However, I did get a fwe pointers I liked. I started a week sooner than the returning teachers and when they came back it was even more workshops. I am meetinged (is that a word?) out. The fun part started on August 13th when there was an electrical fire at my home school and it literally melted the main electrical box. That resulted in 2 and 1/2 weeks of no power in our building. The county brought generators in to get us some emergency lighting and our administration bought us flashlights so I got my classroom ready in the dark. We didn't get power until the Thursday before school started. The admins were nice enough to open the school up to us on labor day weekend so from Thursday-Sunday, I lived at the school. I was there until 6 or 7pm each night! I'm very happy with my classroom and am happy to finally have my own room. I'll take some pictures once it's all finalized. It's done but I have some extra books leftover and I want that to be out of the way before I take photos. I'm lucky my sister moved because she left me a ton of posters to put up. I didn't hang up everything because I decided I don't like a cluttered room but at least I have a lot to change around in the future. I'll post about my first week in another post.

We Got 2nd!!!

Two posts ago I said I was stressing because of school and the after-school work I was doing with the step team. It's hard on my patience at times to stay dedicated to helping the girls my step team stay motivated because they range from 11-14 years old and have other things on their minds. To the left is my team...plus some other students that help out a lot. Tonight my team, aka, "Dip-Set" competed in "The Ultimate Challenge" at one of the nearby high schools. It was my teams first competition and they rocket it. We won 2nd place in the middle school division. Below is the video of my teams routine. They were awesome and I'm so proud. I felt like a Mom or something. Haha...but seriously, I thought they were great and they got a lot of compliments from other schools. They couldn't believe it was their first time performing. We have a show in April and I think we have what it takes to get first next time around. Stay tuned. Do it Dip-Set!!!


The High School next to us has a special relationship with our school and our step team has become their mascots. Over the last few weeks one of the "D-Block" steppers came to our practices to help us out. I couldn't get all of their routine on video because my memory card was full but here is a clip. They rocked it too and got 2nd place in the high school division...they should have got first but I wasn't judging. Go D-Block!!

I'm stressing!!

I am leaving next Friday for a cruise with the family. We're having a little family renunion and I'm super excited. There's 28 of us going on the cruise, which sounds like a lot but being that my Dad is 1 of 10 kids it's not that many. Nine of the his siblings are going (one aunt couldn't make it) and some of my cousins but there's a good amount not coming...which saddens me because there's some I've never met, let alone know their names. It's actually pretty pathetic but my Dad's never been one to stay in touch well with his family so this cruise is a pretty big deal and I'm looking forward to getting to know some of my aunts, uncles and cousins better. Although, my cousins that are going I grew up with so I know them, I just haven't seen them in a while.

My immediate family, plus Joe (my sister's boo) will be leaving Virginia on Friday afternoon and making the nice long drive to Miami...it's 18 hours if you didn't know. I guess it worked out cheaper to drive together than flying. Personally, I'd rather fly but I don't get to make those kind of decisions, being that I'm the youngest. Going on an 18 hour car ride scares me a little because I haven't done a family road trip in at least 9 years...this should be interesting. My brother has a big Ford F250 with lots of space so we should fit comfortable. I fully intend of staying in the bag sleeping on the mattress we're putting in the whole time...away from everyone. I'm sure in the long run they will appreciate it because my family brings out an interesting side of me that I like to keep locked away. Stay tuned for posts on that drive! My family road trip is not what's stressing me out though.

Next week starts off my traveling adventures. I will be in and out of town for the next four months, only home for a week or so at a time before I head off to my next trip. As fun as it's going to be, I have A LOT to do before I go and I'm worried I might not get it all done. Thankfully, I've become a gym goer so that reduces a lot of my stress (and probably takes too much time) but I can't seem to shut my brain off at night to let myself sleep because I'm too busy worrying about all the things I have to do. I am a graduate student in my last semester so I have that to worry about. I'm also taking 2 online classes I need to finish up to qualify for my teaching license and it's seriously pure torture for me. I'm a huge procrastinator and each day that passes is less time I have to complete the courses and more work I have to do...it officially sucks. And the classes are so boring...economics and the history of England, ugh! I need to just suck it up and finish them already! They've been hanging over my head for months and I just want them done. Also, I'm the step team coach at the school I work at and we are competing this Friday. The team has been practicing hard and I think they are going to do great, we might even win, but who knows. I'll be posting a video of that this weekend. And also, this weekend I'm going to be performing some hula dances with some girls in my hula group so I have to practice those dances as well. Add all those things up what do you get? One very stressed out and not very fun to be around Amy!!