All Done!

I spent today putting the almost finishing touches on my front room. During Thanksgiving Break, I went to Ikea with my friend, Laura. We bought a few things to help redo my room, I put half of it up that weekend, but couldn't do anything with the curtains until I had a curtain rod. I wanted a double rod and since my window is quite wide, they are a pretty penny, so I was waiting for a good sale or something. I finally decided enough was enough and went online to look at my options. I found one at Target that was a decent price but I wasn't sure about the color, so I convinced Steven to go to Target with me. He helped me find the exact same rod on clearance for only $20! So today was spent making the curtains from the fabric I bought two months ago. Here are some pictures of the almost finished product:

It's only almost finished because I'm still looking for some larger picture frames I can paint yellow/black and have my sister fill to hang above the bed.

This chair was found on the way to the check out, it was only $5! I think it was a good purchase.

Would You Rather...

Would you rather teach a classroom of pre-teens or a classroom of adults? Today my answer is the pre-teens. I'm still teaching the Sunday school class in my ward and after the last few weeks of trying to get people involved, I am just really discouraged. Today we were talking about Luke 2, the story of Christ's birth and no one would answer even the simplest of questions about a story they've heard all growing up. When my 6th graders do something like that, I know how to fix it, but I can't do what I would do with my 6th graders with the adults...they wouldn't like being treated like children, but that's how they're acting! I get so excited about my lessons every Sunday and think, "this will be the week!" and then I feel like I'm shot down week after week. Come on people!

I survived parent-teacher conferences this week. I had two more tell me that they are planning on moving...one next week and the other in May. It's hilarious how it always works out to be someone in my class but it always happens to be the best students.

I've been working on deep cleaning/organizing my house the last couple of weeks. I feel like I'm digging myself out of the holidays. So far, I only get to one room each weekend, but they're the rooms that are most important to me to be clean at this time. My bedroom is now a safe refuge again, the only thing is that I don't spend very many waking hours in there, but I need it to be a place that I can always be organized. The next is my office/guest room...the double doors are always open so everyone sees inside the room. It suffered all the excess from my bedroom as I removed anything that was not bedroom-related now that I have an "office" space. Next will be the kitchen and living room. After that, it will probably have to start all over again.

Survivor

That's what I feel like for this last week, a survivor. I had one of the hardest times getting back into teaching and at first I couldn't figure out why. After looking back, I hadn't really taught my class in about 8 weeks! I had my student teacher for six weeks (I taught off and on but gradually left it all to her), the week before Christmas Break I taught two days then had to be in SLC for two days then came back on Friday, the next week we "taught" on Monday (it's really more like babysitting that close to Christmas) and then we had a surprise snow day on Tuesday which started our break a day early. I finally came back a week and a half later. My students had "forgotten" all of my expectations and are more social than ever, I felt like a big meanie-head all week, but it should be better now (I hope). To top it all off, I have a sub tomorrow so I can do some reading tests with my students and the term ends on Thursday so I have parent-teacher conferences on Thursday night.

I got a new student on Tuesday, he seems like a great kid so far. I was really impressed with him the first day as he walked in to my room, right up to me and told me he was the new kid. He's definitely not very shy, but good-natured and polite. I then lost another student on Friday, this is the second one I've lost this year. My co-workers and I laugh about it because I always end up losing students so I always get any new move ins.

On a plus side, we started science this last week. Since science is tested and social studies is not, we choose to teach social studies for the first half of the year and then switch to science so they can more easily remember everything before taking the test. After testing is done, we go back to social studies. I love teaching science (almost as much as I love teaching math)! I think it's more of teaching them how to think and to take information and using it to answer more questions. This last week, we started with science process skills. This upcoming week, we start our main units and I am teaching microorganisms this year. I usually start the unit by telling my class that they will never want to eat ice cream, yogurt, bread, and a whole lot of other foods they love ever again and they will want to brush their teeth and shower all the time but not want to use any soaps or toothpaste. It really intrigues them and they start wondering why they would never want to participate in so much deliciousness again. I like to gross them out, but in the end, they play around with it as much as I do.

Happy New Year!

Welcome to 2011, I hope you enjoyed 2010. This last year has been pretty good. Let's see...I was nominated for and became a finalist for the PAEMST (no I haven't heard the final results yet, it will probably be another 5 months before I do), I got "rid of" my roommates, I've gotten a new calling as Sunday school teacher (which I love), successfully finished another year of teaching and started a new one, I survived having my student teacher, I made some new friends, gained another co-worker, have gone home a couple of times, visited Newport Beach and Lake Tahoe, had my first snowday ever, participated in writing curriculum helps for teachers all over the state, taught summer school, visited Montana again, had friends stay with me for two holidays (4th of July and Thanksgiving), started decorating a bedroom/office, and planned a work Christmas party. I'm sure there are many more things I did over the last year.

As for the new year...I haven't really come up with any resolutions. I have a couple financial goals and a personal goal or two, but of all the things I need to "fix" or make better, I've known about them and have continuously worked on them for awhile. I will continue doing that so it's not like it's anything new for this year. We'll see what this year brings!