Hello December!

Thanksgiving break came and went WAY too fast! I had a professional development day and a work day which I was very thankful for. I ended up leaving all of my work at school which allowed me to actually relax during break! 

J and I traveled to North Carolina to see his family. Besides the fact that I ate too much dessert, I had a wonderful time! I even convinced J's mom and sister (and J) to go black friday shopping with me! 

It was very difficult to get up Monday morning but it ended up being a great first day back. A lot of my Forensic students seemed happy to see me and it was nice to have students ask me how my break was. I wasn't looking forward to today since I have freshman all day, however, today went by fairly smooth. 

The next 3 weeks are going to FLY by! I love this time of year. 

Until next time

In the mind of a teen..

Today was an interesting day. I got to see into the mind of a teenager from an adult's perspective. 

I have a student named "Jo" who has not been doing very well. First quarter he scraped by with a 60%. The reason why he is doing so poorly is because he is very social. He likes to talk a lot and he can not sit still. In class, I do ALOT of labs but many times he (and other students) do not listen to the instructions and then have no idea what they are doing. These students are extremely frustrating for me. 

Anyway, Jo's parents contacted me today by email explaining how thankful they were for me having the patience and time to work with Jo and that they were going to be much more involved in Jo's education now. So I called Jo over to my desk to let him know that I was sending his Dad an email back and Jo said "I hate my parents!". For that split second I remembered what it was like to HATE my parents. I remember thinking "They don't know what I am going through. They don't understand. They are mean. I didn't do anything to deserve this". So I had Jo sit down and we had a conversation. I told Jo what his Dad had said to me in the email and that his dad wants the best education for him. I feel like for once I might have gotten through to him. I also told Jo that 10 years from now he is going to look back on his high school years and be very thankful that his parents were there to help support him. 

After the conversation, I sat and thought about my own high school experiences and the fights I used to have with my parents about grades and going out to hang with friends and homework..etc. It made me realize how much I have grown up (and love being a grown up). I love my parents and everything they have done for me. Without their support, who knows where I would be. I am very thankful! 

Dreaming

J and I were talking about how fun its going to be to one day have a nice house with nice things that are nicely decorated. (This is after we win the lottery of course). We decided that we are going to have a  finished basement (with a bar and a big screen tv) and it is going to be decorated completely in NC State gear. Here are the fun things we have put on our wish list..

Hey! A girl can dream cant she!?

    Love my Wolfpack! 

Until next time... 

P.S.- One more day of students and two work days until Thanksgiving break!! WOO HOO

complaining

My list of complaints for the week...

FIRST of all, why don't we have off school for Veterans day?! I would love to honor our Vets by having a day off of school.

Secondly, I strongly dislike the Matter and Energy course of study. It cuts out all the fun and interesting things in Chemistry. For example, they want me to teach ionic bonds but they don't want me to go into detail about metals and non metals and oxidation numbers and dot structures and all the other things normally you would need to know in order to understand ionic bonds.. It's such a waste of time (in my opinion) to just "touch" on a topic that they won't understand without all the other details.

Also, its 30 degrees out in the morning.. WHY haven't we gotten the heat turned on in our building!?! I seriously wore my coat, scarf and gloves all day on Monday. Ridiculous!

and another thing... why do people involved in education create so much unnecessary paper work. I hate paper work!

Lastly, I would just like to complain about the lack of quality I received on my forensic research papers. They are so sad to read because 90% of my students did not follow directions. The works cited pages are in completely wrong format, there are no citations in the paper, the only thing worse than the really bad grammar is the horrific punctuation. I can't believe these students are in 11th and 12th grade!

On a more positive note... I came back to school today with almost all good notes from the substitute!! Yay! My freshman babies are growing up!

Until next time...

p.s. I can't wait until I have more interesting things to write about besides school..

Cooperative Discipline

I did not go to school today. Instead I went to a professional development seminar on Cooperative discipline. So I am on lunch break and decided to write a quick post!  I figured.. hey what the heck if i don't get anything from it at least I get a paid break from school!

For all of you that are not in the teacher lingo, Cooperative discipline is the idea that every student chooses to misbehave for a reason. It is my job as the teacher to pin point WHY the student is doing the wrong behavior and then react accordingly. For example: Many students act out because they want attention from either their peers or the adult. During the morning session they gave me a lot of intervention strategies for how to deal with someone who is acting out for attention. I had a class on this kinda stuff in college but it is more relevant now that I can actually apply it to some of my students..

On to other news.... I was picked to be the Matter and Energy "Team leader. Basically, I run our content meetings and organize data from our team to report to the assistant principal. Its more work for me but I figure it will put me in a great position to take on bigger roles in the school (Like department head?! maybe one day... Maybe...!?)

Until next time