Spring Break!

My allergies and I have been on the move since my break started. I am carrying my sneezes from town to town. I am over them and looking forward to them being over with me. Allergies can make you feel like you have a bad cold, or even like you can't breath. When they are severe it seems like your whole body is struggling to operate it is sluggish, and feels weighted.  Right now I have the itchy water eyes and skin. My nose constantly itches/hurts/tingles. I visited the dentist this week and warned them that a sneezing attack could occur. Luckily for both of us I managed to get through the appointment without such an occurrence. This is a fairly mild allergy time...but when it drags on for days it gets old fast. Also, when you are on antihistamines it does wonderful things to your digestion.  Okay moving on from my allergy whines.
I have gotten a lot accomplished this break visited with new and old friends.

 What is on my mind is the choices people make. I feel some people have multiple chances to live in the light. They may have a mental illness but not severe enough that makes them unable to understand right and wrong and their own insufficiencies. They may have enough to make life a struggle but not unwieldy.   If they choose the dark path to walk down it only gets darker. The lack of life there gives them a sickly sheen. They may have moments of acknowledgment of the edge they walk and still walk further into darkness. It sickens me. The impact it has on all the people around them makes me sad. These aren't people who lack choice, or lack the knowledge to stay out of the pit. Yet it fuels them in  a way that keeps them going. The cost for themselves is great and the cost for people around them can be high as well.  The choice was their own but many people suffer the consequences. The only way to keep apart from this darkness is to keep apart so your own spirit can stay clean. It is a sludgy stain.

Moving on to brighter cheerier things :). I have done a million errands, and visited good friends. We made a pot of soup and I grilled some chicken for mom's fridge.So she is stocked up for a little while. Pineapples seem to be in every store. I love a smoothing with strawberries, blueberries, and pineapple. Yummy! So I have a couple of pineapples. I didn't need to purchase two but that is a craving I can accede to. I've heard rumors that some folks way down south of the border soak their pineapple in chili powder. Ummm I don't think I could do that. I do like the pineapple though. I have some more errands to accomplish this week. When I have some down time I also have a stack of papers to grade and a curriculum to read.  I may fit that in somewhere!

Water, Water, NEWS

Apparently some person(s) broke into the county water supply this weekend. Their is some concern that the water supply may have been contaminated.  Certain areas are on "boil water" restrictions. We are on an automatic call list for school and they called and announced this to all district employees and  students. Now I'm not saying my colleagues are impaired, but we had to have a directional conversation. North of such and such street had to boil. South of such and such etc.  They were pointing south for north etc. I mentioned the cities that were to the south and to the north to help them  get a little insight into where they are in the world. I hope they are only impaired in their sense of direction.  Oh my!

We received our reading curriculum today. Kindergarten has been piloting it and they have been saying again and again how they can't believe the results they are seeing. So that is exciting. I will have some reading to do before implementation. I am okay with that. 

My students were discussing how they miss art and music just ended for the year. I said well I could easily do some art lessons but you are going to have to earn it. How can you earn it? So we negotiated  and came up with a great list for them to earn it. I was talking to a friend about it. She said we should get permission to paint a mural in the school. We are a "bucket-filling" school and so I asked if we could paint a mural about that. So I talked with the vice-principal today and she liked it. The principal gave me a tentative agreement. So the last couple of weeks of school we may be working on that. I may live to regret it but I think It will be fun. I hope. :)

I am getting ready for our spring break. It comes late around here. I was a little nervous today because I had a little bit of a sore throat. I was screaming "NOOOOOO" inside my head because so many of my colleagues have been home sick with strep. I have been sneezing with watery eyes so I am going to say it is allergies and my sinuses are draining. I refuse to accept any other alternative. I am trying to catch up on laundry, dishes, etc. So I can leave guilt free.  Well off to not boil water because I am south of the restricted area. HA! 

Ssshhhhh!

I think I hushed my student's oh approximately a gazillion times today. Poor kids. They had to be quiet because all of the upper grades are working on their state test. It is painful to be so quiet for so much of the day. They even go to a different area for recess and they don't feel like they can spread their wings.  We are going to have to have some extra brain breaks tomorrow because they really felt like they suffered :)! Two more days of state testing for the upper grades.

We had a planning meeting today looking at the rest of the year. There are less than 30 school days left. It is sooo crazy to me. This year has flowwwwwwn by.  I am looking forward to our spring break. I think everyone is ... it falls so late here that by the time it arrives you almost can't stand it.   We have been working on data and graphs the last couple of weeks. The students have been plotting their own graphs. It has been quite interesting to see  them survey their friends for data to plot. It doesn't always make sense to me and we have to adjust but it makes sense to them.

We have a "Tattle Tale" monster in my class. I keep the "tattles" because they are gems! I need to remember to bring that home soon to share some of the best with you like this one  " Every day __________ acts like a bird!"     Today  " ______ told ______ **** and ****.  There was four stars written on the page. So apparently one of my students realizes that stars stand for bad words. I can only speculate what those words were. Maybe the student has been reading Beetle Bailey! I don't remember when I realized all those symbols stood for curse words when Sarge yelled at him. Anyhow, those are the tattle tales I can remember right now. Not all of them are entertaining some sound remarkably like my childhood " he's breathing on me" and the like.  Well I am off to find my pillow! G'nite

Changes

yep... leave it to me. Sprain my knee while cleaning a closet. Sigh. It doesn't feel very good but it is better than it was a couple of days ago. The school has an ice machine and I had plastic bags so I could elevate and ice easily. Not sure how well it will go being on my feet at school all day. Oh well.  I worked on my classroom a lot this weekend. Now that I've been here almost a year I have a better idea of what resources left in my room I need and those that can go.  Hence the closet cleaning.

A colleague came and kept me company and helped a little. I've had this document camera and faux smartboard system in my classroom because my colleagues didn't want to set it up. So we set that up today. I don't have it completely figured out but it will be fun to keep messing with it and see what it can do. It doesn't work as well as Promethean or SmartBoards... but it is what I have. For you non-techies it is like a modern day overhead projector that you can write on digitally, show documents,  have students input data and way more.

I have been waiting all weekend for lesson plans from a colleague. She seems to think receiving them in the morning will work just fine.  She's going in early in the morning. Our e-mail system is down so the only way I can receive them is for her to get them to me. She has the only typed copy. It is sooo frustrating.
This colleague is going to kindergarten next year. I am hopeful about what we can accomplish with a change. It has been all about change at work lately. I think this could be extremely good for the school. We are waiting quite impatiently for our reading curriculum to arrive.

I have some plans to make my classroom a nicer place to spend my days! I will be spending some quality time with some paint cans.

Change

Well I've had a great couple of days of training. My  brain is on over-load right now. It is good when you attend a training of great quality. I have to figure out what I can implement soon. Anyhow, it was a good couple of days and felt very worthwhile.

While at the training today we got a message that we had to attend a staff meeting at school today. We were speculating a little (of course) what the meeting would be about. I had heard a rumor a couple of days ago but I took it in stride because there are always rumors. It turns out this particular rumor was factual. Our principal is leaving us to head to the high school. It sounds like our vice-principal will stay in that position and they will advertise for a new principal.  Our principal addressed any rumors related to her leaving and stated why she was making the change. Some of her reasons were personal and some were because she didn't feel like she had the skills to help us make the next steps in our growth.  This is the second time I've felt I didn't have leadership invested in the teachers. I really hope that we will have someone invested. It makes a huge difference.

I don't know why being in training is more tiring than being w/ kids all day. It just seems like it is.  It sounds like my students were on task and well behaved.  So that is good.