E-E-EHS

Go Maroons!!

Off to EHS for the weekend with R&WP. Go Highschool!

I have 5 minutes....

To all you teachers out there...

I have been lucky enough to be deemed one of the more flexible, go with the flow (shocking I know), try new things Kindergarten teachers at my school. Just a few weeks ago, I had our Technology assistant come up to me and ask if I would like a SMARTBoard in my classroom. I of course just assumed it was a rhetorical question or perhaps she was taking a poll. We had just bought 1 with school funds that resided in one of our computer labs, but I knew for a fact, not many people used it. When I said, of course, I love using them in my grad classes at night, there are so many interesting and fun things you can do with them, etc etc... she responded with: "Fabulous, could you stay a few minutes after school today and I'll bring it down?".. SAY WHAT!! So for the past 2 weeks, we rearranged, discussed with the class, eased ourselves into it's use, and had a lot of research time for Ms. T at home trying to find fun and interesting, Kindergarten appropriate activities. There is a plethura of materials out there, so I shouldn't really need to ask, but my mantra as a teacher truly is "don't reinvent the wheel".

Do you have any fun activities that could be used, do you have experience using it in your classroom, what has not worked, let me know! I'm so excited and right now we're still working out some kinks of where to have it (life would be SO much easier if I had a ceiling mounted projector), etc etc! THANKS!!

E-E-E-H-S and a haircut

6 days until I get to go back to the 'Holy Hill' and relive some glory days. I'll be sure to have the camera up and running by then :)

Before all that, I've been pining away for a haircut. Money is super tight, so I've been holding off and shelling out the dollar dollar bills for it. The difference this time, is that I want a real haircut. I feel like I need to grow away from the long straight hair with nothing to it. Once upon a time I suppose you could say I had long layers in it and those swoopy side bangs, but everything is long grown out and just plain LONG. It's so long. It's at that point where if I don't see someone for a week or so and they see my hair, without fail they comment on how long it is. It's exhausting, it's heavy, and it takes forrrrrreevvvvvveeerrrrr to wash and dry. My whole life I've been in the roller coaster trend of hair. It gets long, I chop it off and then grow it out until I chop it off then grow it out.................

So my question to all you out there, I want to keep the length, but I want to put a little something something into it without requiring a lot of effort to maintain. Does that make sense? So what would I tell the stylist to make sure I'm getting my point across?

H20 Overload

This morning while (very lazily and slowly) getting ready for school, I was watching Good Morning America. They had a short segment about a young woman, mother of 3 children I believe, that entered a radio contest. The contest was to see who could drink the most water and last the longest without peeing. The winner would go home with a Wii. The contestants all drank about 2 gallons of water in about a 3 hour period without going to the bathroom. Before the end of the contest, this young woman was already complaining of difficulty breathing, a headache, and being lightheaded. Nurses and others were calling in to the radio show saying you could die from water intoxication. I had never heard of this. I had been threatened as a young child that if I did not pee before a long trip (and my parents were not going to pull over if I didn't atleast try before we left), and I held it for a long time, my bladder could explode. Well, this put a whole new twist to it. Just hours after the contest, this young woman dies at home. Now, I'm not writing this to try and ruffle some feathers or start a debate about whether her family should have won a settlement or not, BUT just to point out another tidbit I've mulled over in the past. They tell us to drink drink drink drink drink water. And yet, you really seriously can drink too much. They say to take vitamins everyday! but you can seriously take too many. I think when it comes to your health and what you should do, you should, just like any other information, take it with a grain of salt (and a margarita if it's handy), and do what feels right for you. May we all find the middle ground, the perfect balance, a healthy lifestyle, and a good glass of wine.

Can you tell this teacher is in need of an adult beverage?? And it's only Monday... oh me..

Priorities and The Pig

Two big fat P's seem to be hanging over my head lately. Priorities: I should be working on my homework that is due tomorrow and Wednesday evening in both my classes, but it almost seems too daunting and I just don't know where to start. I came home and knew I needed to get right to work, but was easily swayed by the idea of a 'short' cat nap. 2 hours later, well, it was dinner time, isn't that a priority. So here I sit, still procrastinating (another darn P), but atleast I have my notebook, books, and syllabus in front of me. It's not that I don't want to do it, or that I can't do it, I just seem to be a little burned out from the past 11 months of grad school that I know I'll get it done, so why stress. I wish I was getting the grades in undergrad that I'm getting now and I wish I had the freedom and time I had in college. Always greener....... But atleast I know this 'P' is of my own creation, I do have control over it, and I better get my act together. The other 'P', however, is sadly far far out of my control. The Pig (aka: swine flu): I had the regular flu about a month ago. I shouldn't have been at school on Monday, got the fever that evening, did not break the fever until late Wednesday night, went to school on Thursday for about an hour, and then came home with another fever (I know I know), before actually almost staying the whole day on Friday. I still used much of the weekend to recuperate, so it was a solid 6 days for me. Now fast forward 3 weeks. Picture my classroom. I'm so anxious for the kiddies to come in and tell me all about the end of last week and their weekend. I was out Thursday and Friday (a later blog) from school for a wedding and missed our very first field trip. Though some very interesting things happened that I'm not sad to have missed (projectile vomitting), I was anxious to hear how they felt about it. But last Wednesday we had 8 students out of my 22 absent. Yes, over a third of my class, sick. AWESOME. So I was hoping they would all be healthy, happy, and present. Well, not so much, atleast there weren't AS many absent today. Atleast, in the beginning. I sent a student home shortly after lunch with a fever, so we were back to 8 absent. UGH... I know they do not ALL have swine flu, but it doesn't matter!! We wash our hands, with soap, and we count. We use tissues, we wipe down tables AND chairs, we don't use the water fountains in the halls (we have one in our room which we wipe down and have practice NOT touching with our mouths (I can only control so many)... So why is my class dropping like flies. Most other classes have at most 2-4 kids out. What am I doing wrong?!?! It's driving me NUTS!!! This is NOT a fun post, and I hate that, but I'm working my way back into this so.. well, Baby Steps.. Now whenever someone says that, know it's just a bunch of BS... clever aren't I????

Enough is enough...

I'm coming back.. I thought we were phasing out, but I just can't do it anymore. I miss writing. Whether people actually really read and/or enjoy my writing, I enjoy it, and we all need to have something in our lives, that we can claim to be completely selfish about. I (sometimes) like knowing that I need to set aside a few minutes to sit down and write.... This all came to me last night when I was finishing up some homework and decided I just needed to get away from it all. I threw on some unnecessarily dark clothing (need some new running clothes if I keep doing this at night), threw the phone on the bed, grabbed the IPod and ran out of the house. About an hour later (I KNOW RIGHT?!), I came back in to my exceptionally warm house (it was gross to be honest), and felt amazing. I'm not saying I ran the whole time, let's not get ahead of ourselves now. But I enjoyed walking/running around my (new) neighborhood and seeing all the Halloween/fall decorations. I figured enough is enough. Get my act together, on so many different fronts, and let's get moving...

Here's to fall, getting our acts together, and enough simply being enough

Can you tell I'm back in school????

I miss y'all so much!! I have so much I've been wanting to write about and just never have the momentum to do it!!! Until that time, listen, watch, and enjoy my 'new' favorite song.. I jam out to Otis on my record player to my papa's "Best of Otis Redding" album, but thanks to youtube.....




PS: to all you teachers out there, I only have 22 in my class thus far.. phew.. But it's only the first week of school. Pray for me that our numbers don't get any bigger. I have a friend in the same county, Kindergarten as well, that has 27. jeez louise