I have successfully made it through my very first week of teaching on my own in middle school!!!!

I love Canyon Ridge Middle School! The students there are great. The other teachers, overall, are even better. I absolutely love my co-workers. They are absolutely, posititutely the most supportive and friendly bunch I have ever met! I feel so blessed and lucky every single day I am there that I stumbled across this job.

The only really bad day was Friday; it all started when my car battery was dead in the morning when I wanted to head out a little early. Fortunately, Jared was still home and our cars live next to each other, so he jump started mine and I made it to school in okay time. Then…. Language Arts classes had to take the students down to get pictures, so I had to go through that drama 3 times and my last class acted like a bunch of monkeys. My head started to really really hurt, and I had to tell them off when we all got back to class. Fortunately, they listened well after that. Each time we did photos though, it took a good 45 minutes out of class, so that was frustrating too. It’s better to over plan than to under plan, though.

Yesterday was the best though. Friday night I crashed about 9:30 and slept until 8:30-9:00 the next morning. I must have really needed my sleep to crash like that. After getting ready for the day and just hanging out and relaxing with Jared, we went out to lunch to one of our favorite places, Texadelphia, which has to have the best cheese beefsteak sandwiches ever. Then Jared surprised me and took me to the nearest Apple store and we used my teacher id to get me a new macbook!!!! We got a really good deal–We got the macbook, $100 off, iPod touch for free, and a printer for free.

It was a really big purchase, but I am really excited. My laptop has been a good, sturdy lappy for 5 years, but it’s getting old. Jared’s laptop is even more decrepid than mine, so it’s nice to have a reliable computer. 🙂 Especially because I’ve wanted a macbook for ages! 🙂 My husband is the best.

So, as you all can probably tell, it’s been a good week. I am really excited for this school year, and I think as long as I can get my headaches under control, everything will be really good!

Well, it’s been a bit since I last posted, but with good reason. The past two weeks I have been in training with Leander ISD. Apparently, all the new to the district people have an extra week of training, and then this past week they had all teachers doing some time in the school and reviewing curriculum. I can understand where the district is coming from, but I really wish they didn’t feel the need to cram loads of information into my head right before the school year starts. It hasn’t helped me prepare for the REAL reason I want to be there in the first place-working with the students!

The upside of the training is that there were a lot of other new to district teachers at Canyon Ridge, so I got to make friends with a lot of people I probably wouldn’t have been able to get to know otherwise. I also have a “mentor” as I am considered “New to Profession” (first year teacher) whose name is Carie. She’s been a lot of help in watching out for me and giving me good ideas for the beginning of the year. We’re actually going out with her and her boyfriend Mark for dinner tonight, as they both have been in Austin for a lot longer than we have and know some good places to try. 🙂

Anyways, My birthday was great, thanks to the wonderful man I married. I don’t know what I would do without him. He had to work a lot that week, but he still made the time to come home early and take me out to try sushi! I had tried cheap sushi once before a long time ago, so I was really nervous, but we went to downtown Austin and gave it a go! It was great!!! I can’t wait to go back there again. We had the Godzilla; “Salmon, Avocado and Cucumber drizzled with spicy teriyaki sauce, covered with tempura flakes.” MMMMMMMM!!!! the other one we tried wasn’t as good, but it was still a great experience.

Afterwards, we walked for about 5 minutes to Congress Bridge, which apparently is well known for housing a large colony of bats in the summertime, and the best time to see them out and flying around is in August. We thought we might be too late to see them as it was getting pretty dark, but we weren’t! there were thousands of these tiny bats swarming around under the bridge; it was really neat to see. Afterwards, we came home and ate some great Costco monstrously large chocolate cake that Jared bought. What a great guy he is!

and now, as for me, I am lesson planning. I have a fairly good outline of next week already planned, and I’m excited to get started and actually meet my students for the year. I only wish that I could get rid of these headaches.

I can’t believe how fast time flies. Two weeks ago, I got a call offering to interview with the Leander ISD, and two days after that, interviewed with the principal of Canyon Ridge Middle School and was offered a position teaching 7th grade English. I’m still waiting for all the paperwork to go through, but yesterday I met with a couple of the other Language Arts/English teachers and got the key to my room so I can start organizing things! It’s just amazing to me how things somehow fall into place.

I am a bundle of excited nervousness. The way the school is assessing the students is really new and uncommon. Everything gets a grade of 1-4, and assignments focus on only one or two “traits” like “focus” or “mechanics”. A “1” is that the trait is not evident. “2” is that it’s basically there but not quite solid; “3” is that they are proficient, and “4” is advanced. It makes sense, but it’s going to be kind of strange to work around that… I don’t know how I feel entirely about that. Also, the scheduling of the periods are different than anything I’ve ever been involved in. It is exciting to note that the class sizes are really nice and small- compared to my class of 35 and 36 while student teaching, the largest they allow here is 25, and last year, some of the teachers only had 3 classes of 15 or so…. so no more than 50 students total! I’m definitely not in Utah anymore.

Now I just need to figure out what the heck is wrong with my health, we’d be pretty much good to go.

In other news, tallying up the votes I got (some were emailed to me), the Pink bag is in the lead by one vote. If you have an opinion- vote soon (unless, of course, you already voted…)! Jared refuses to give me his opinion on two such girlie bags. 😉