new classroom

Last year my classroom was really, really small. 

Like, really small. 

Thirty-four junior highers did not help.

Over the summer I got the most amazing news: the school was knocking out a bunch of unused offices to create a brand spanking new classroom... for Algebra! 

That's me! Yes!

This is what my new room looked like back in July:

There was a lot that needed to be done.

Last week when we were in Catalina, I was getting picture updates from several people. The last wall got knocked out! The dry wall's done! The carpet's in! 

On Friday I went in for a 9am meeting and ended up staying till 2 moving stuff over from my old room. A couple of wonderful guys brought over the furniture for me, including NEW stuff. Ikea bookcases! A kidney desk! Tables for the kiddos instead of desks! I'm in heaven.

After training tomorrow, the plan is to put that room together officially. I got confirmation today that the boards are up, which is what I was waiting on to start decorating. For now, I'm off to sew up some more pennant banners for my room!

Oh, 28...

Tomorrow I will be 29, which I'm not very happy about. I don't feel 29. I certainly don't think I act 29. So how is it possible that I'm 29? I just don't get it.

In an attempt to be more cheerful about it, I've looked through my pictures over the last year to see what I've accomplished. It hasn't been that bad of a year. And at the same time, it was the hardest year of my life. I live a paradox.

What I did in my 28th year:

1) Celebrated turning 28. Chris turned our garage into a ghetto birthday room where our friends and family enjoyed food and drinks and some old school Nintendo.

2. Left my amazing job of 3 years to move on to my very own classroom. I will always be a Woodmanite at heart, though. I've gone back about 3 times this last year just to eat lunch with everyone like old times.

3. One of my best friends, Jenna, got married. This is not Jenna. This is the giant teddy bear that sat at our table with us.

4. I started my first year of teaching. This is what I looked like the first day. Too tired to even change out of my school clothes. This teaching year was by far the hardest thing I've ever done. But I totally did it.

5. Oh, yes. This year I learned how to make bomb salads.

6. Saw Les Miserables. It fully rocked.

7. We got real adult furniture finally. I can say now that our house is actually furnished with new items, not our college items.

8. I spent many a night at my desk looking at this kind of scenario: a lesson plan on the right, and a good episode of How I Met Your Mother on the left.

9. My team won the coveted gold at the school Olympics. Take that first year!

10. We started drinking green smoothies.

11. We vacationed in Santa Barbara for a week. Took the train up and walked everywhere. It was delightful.

12. Snuggled with this guy. Repeatedly.

13. Tried to love running. It did not work.

14. Started Project Life.

15. Got my wisdom teeth out. This event is represented by Jack, who stayed with me during my bed rest and caught up with Once Upon a Time with me.

16. Attended my good friend Jeremy's wedding. Sorry, Jer, I was too far away to get good pics of you. But here's a cute one of me and Chris! (Did I mention this was two days post-wisdom teeth?)

17. Celebrated every half day like it was Christmas break.

18. Went kayaking with Chris for the first time.

19. Stayed home by myself for an entire week while Chris was gone at a conference. (I'm such a big girl/I hated the whole week.)

20. Actually grew things this year, to the point that we could actually harvest and eat them. Huzzah!

21. Saw West Side Story with the T family at the Pantages.

22. Welcomed a new baby Cowen...

23. ... and a new baby Holz.

24. Said good-bye to my first class of students.

25. Went to New York!

26. Saw Newsies...

27. ... and Matilda

So... yeah. All in all, a pretty packed year. Didn't realize I'd seen four musicals this year! And we had two vacations! And this summary of events really makes it look like I didn't spend almost every waking moment prepping for school. Retrospect, huh?

September is Coming

Yep. It's almost time again. Summer's remaining weeks are meager at best, and it's time to face the cold hard truth: school will be upon us all too quickly. (If this were Game of Thrones, we would all be ominously staring at each other and proclaiming, "Winter is coming.") So I've been slowly stockpiling ideas and pinning my pins and spending a couple late nights rearranging my overall curriculum plan. It's a little daunting this year. Last year I was new to this school: I had no choice but to go into my classroom blindly and just try to wade through the brand new curriculum as best I could. I didn't know what to expect of it. I didn't know what worked well, what didn't, and what I could do better. I didn't know what supplies I would actually need and what I could make myself and what I could forego altogether. 

So this year's going to be much different. I'm revamping the structure of my curriculum in a way that makes more sense. I'm continuing to make more of my own specific units and assessments to get the results I want. I'm putting in my requests now for things that will make life in my classroom go more smoothly (i.e, tables instead of eternally-tipping desks). 

But, dang, it takes a long time to do all this stuff. Kind of takes away the fun and relaxation of summer.  

So here's some of my ideas for this year:

Absent Folder Crate: I don't know if this was just because of the group of kids I had last year, but there were a LOT of absences on a daily basis. And trying to keep track of all those kids and what they needed to turn in or what they missed each day was capital C Crazy. So in an effort to maintain my goal of "Work Less than the Children," I'm passing the responsibility over to them. You were absent two days ago? Great! Why are you asking me what to do? Go to the crate. I think this is going to be great for keeping everyone on track... at least the kids who want to stay on track. 

Weekly Stamp Sheets: This is something I was already doing last year. They get a sheet each week that has room for all our in-class assignments and homework, as well as the grade for homework, and space for a stamp at the end of each class. The stamp is for behavior in class, and I have to admit I was too free with the stamp last year. I really hated feeling like I was passing judgment at the end of each class, because, really, getting a stamp or not was completely subjective, and I didn't have time to explain to kids why they weren't getting a stamp that day. This year I plan to make it an all or nothing stamp. No homework, no stamp. If you need a warning during class, no stamp. If their stamp sheet isn't done correctly and neatly, no stamp. (I really want to stress neatness this year.)

Interactive Math Journals: Super excited about this one. I've found so many foldables and fun ideas online, and I think it will really help the kids when it comes time to study. They'll be able to add touch into their learning in a unique way, and they get to have a creative outlet at the same time. Win for all of us! If you check out the link, you can see all the fun foldables I've been pinning.

Student Jobs: This is something I wanted to do last year but didn't have a good way to implement with four different class periods. I just figured the only way it would work smoothly would be with one class of kids. But by the end of last year I finally caught on to the fact that, despite my overemotional, overcrazy, overloud, somewhat attitudal eighth graders, they sooooooo want to help. Even with the lame jobs. So this year, instead of just assigning tasks arbitrarily, I'm going to set up a job system. I'll have to come up with some more tasks, but I think overall it'll be good for overall organization. And great for me to have specific kids doing specific tasks every day, especially during homeroom. I'm planning on passing off attendance and lunch count so I can focus on getting the kids settled and working first thing. Hurray!

Assignment baskets: I already had these last year, but this year I'm revamping with the addition of the record sheet. One of the student jobs will be to organize the assignments in numerical order (planning to do more with student numbers this year, too), and another will be to record the numbers that are missing. That'll take up a lot less time entering grades.

There's other stuff happening, too, but those are the big ones I've been thinking on to make my classroom run more smoothly this year. Now I just have to wait until my classroom is finished so I can actually start decorating and putting these ideas into practice. Unfortunately, it'll be a few weeks still. They've finally got all the interior walls down (my new room was formerly four offices), but they still need to put up drywall, paint, put in the carpet, and place the smart board, white boards, and bulletin boards. I really have no idea what I'll have in there. So for now, all decorating is in my mind and is completely subject to change. 

Two more weeks! :S

New York: Day 1

Saturday, July 6

Who's ready for a trip to New York! Okay, here we go!

Ryan drove us to the airport early Saturday morning to catch our first flight from San Diego to Nashville. This has been our first trip in awhile. I think the last was two years ago when we went to Vegas for the T family reunion. One thing to note here, so I will always remember: the Southwest corridor of the San Diego airport stinks. There are literally no restaurants, so you're forced to go to the one little snack area to buy gross sandwiches and water bottles that total $30 for two people. $30! Somehow we always forget that, and we just figure we'll eat breakfast once we've checked in, and we always get screwed over that way. So future self, when you read this, get breakfast at home!

Okay, on to New York.

Our first plane was crazy full and we were in the last group to board so we didn't even get to sit together on the longest part of the trek. Luckily, we were in the middle of a group of kids and adults from Nashville who were returning from a Mexico missions trip, so that entire part of the plane was both sleepy and super nice. The flight was over three hours, but I'll admit it seemed to go much faster. I must have nodded off at some point because I was shocked to see (on the new Southwest tracker app that one of the missions trip chaperones showed me) that we were approaching Nashville already.

After a quick layover where we found ourselves in a real airport with real food (hello, Quiznos, I love you and your under $10 meals), we were back in the air for the second leg of the trip. The airplane gods were with us on this one, because for the second time in our lives we ended up on a super empty plane, so we were really able to sprawl out for the last two hours of the trip. 

Chris edited. I watched free TV shows on the Southwest app, monitored our progress to New York, and leaned over him frequently to look out the window.

We found Sarah waiting for us at La Guardia. Hurray, we were there! I pulled on a sweater since it was now evening and, you know, the east coast is obviously colder than California. Then we stepped outside and got hit with Palm Springs night weather. If you've ever been to Palm Springs you know exactly what I'm talking about, and if you haven't it's hot and sweaty with no wind and leaves you thinking, "How can it possibly be this hot at night?"

I took my sweater off. (And didn't put it on again all week.)

We took a taxi into the city. Taxi's have gotten fancy, we discovered. They now have credit card readers and TVs in the backseat. Using my maps app, I tracked our movement from the airport to our little accommodations in the city. Down Queens. Over the Manhattan Bridge. Up Mulberry. And there we were.

So... it wasn't all that great of a place. We were on a dark, cramped, one way street. The building across the street was completely covered in construction. The street was strewn with dumpsters and trash that hadn't made it in them. Chris had told us that we weren't living glamourously, we were just renting out a simple little two-bedroom apartment in Nolita. What he did not tell us? It was a fourth floor walk up with no elevator. (What I did not tell him? I will be requesting full descriptions and photos next time we rent out a place. Question # 1: How many flights up is it? Question #2: Elevator?)

When we'd finally lugged our suitcases up those stairs, we were all (more) sweaty and exhausted. 

The apartment was muggy when we finally got inside, so we cranked up the window coolers and did what anybody would do at 10pm after flying all day: we headed to the Empire State Building.

 So here's the deal with the Empire State Building, and this is something Chris told us beforehand: It's not that great. You wait in line for a long time. I'd read that the best time to do it is early morning or late night, which is why we decided it might be good to just get it out of the way the first night. It still took 4 hours to get to the top and back down. And really, the view isn't that great. (When we went to the Rockefeller Building later on that week, the views were much better and we didn't wait in line at all.)

We made it back to our apartment early the next morning, delighted to find that the window coolers actually worked and our little New York apartment was nice and cold. We decided to never turn them off all week, so it would always be cold when we returned. (Did I mention it was HOT?) We all had to take showers that night because we were so gross from the heat, and we discovered the shower had pretty much no water pressure. It was more of a dribble, which made trying to get all the shampoo out of long hair super fun. (Question #3: What's the water pressure like? And that and elevators are really the extent of my criteria for a rental.)

After that we hit the sack for a full day of New York, and I learned my first New York fun fact: Construction sometimes happens in the middle of the night on small, cramped streets in the city. Thanks, guys.

Home.

We're back from NYC! Oh, you didn't know we were gone? Yep! Details and more photos to come.

Bride + Groom + Bathtub = Awesome

We had our first wedding of the season this past Saturday up in Rancho Bernardo, and it was an amazing one to kick off the crazy summer wedding season!

Jessica and John were so fun and playful. When they tentatively asked if we could take a picture in the house's awesome bathtub, Chris and I were like, um, yes! We love taking weird photos! Weird photos always end up being the best photos, and come on, this photo is ridiculously epic. 

Also wanted to point out the chevron table runners. Man, I wish chevron had been a "thing" back when we got married! Ugh, it would have been awesome with our yellow and gray color scheme!

The end of the year.

At our last staff meeting of the year, we were asked to write two things on "the wall,"  a giant piece of butcher paper that serves as a sort of teacher exit ticket after each meeting.

The first thing we were to write was what we learned about ourselves this year.

I wrote: "I can do it." Big emphasis on the can.

The second part was what we learned about our students.

"There is good in them."

Sometimes it takes me awhile to come up with good, thoughtful answers for these type of things. But for these, I knew my answer within seconds. I was third to the wall to write my answers, only because the first two people were sitting right next to it.

How in the world did I get through this year? I still have no idea. For all practical purposes, someone like me, who hates to be in front of people, hates to be in charge, hates conflict, and, did I mention hates being up in front of people?-- someone like me shouldn't even consider teaching as an option. And yet I did, and I got through my first year, with the most ridiculous, crazy eighth graders to boot.

There was drama. There was conflict. There was a lot of me putting my foot down and having to put my  "mean teacher" face on to get them to settle down and learn. And there was a lot of me being in front of people. 130 little-ish people, every day.

I did it. For a whole year, I did it.

(But thank the Good Lord it's summer time now. I don't know how much more I could take.)

The part about their being good in them... I had my doubts for the first half of the year or so. I know the first year is generally the hardest for a new teacher and all, but I can confidently say this was no ordinary class. I've heard stories going all the way back to second grade of these kiddos and their shenanigans. These kids gave me grief every day. They were defiant. They talked back. They talked during lessons. They skulked and became sullen when they were required to work independently ("what do you mean, no talking?!"). They got angry when they received discipline for doing the most ridiculous of things that you would think no one would ever dream of doing in Algebra class.

This was no ordinary class of thirteen-year-olds. 

But now, and this may be the last week of school euphoria talking, I can say I really have enjoyed these kids. Despite all the craziness and the sleepless nights and frustrating arguments, there really is so much good in them.

They are helpers to the extreme. Anything that needed to be done, they all were raising their hands to volunteer. Or asking me ahead of time if I needed anything done. I didn't have to pass back papers, clean the board, or take out the recycling all year. (Super bummed I did most of my own filing though. Didn't think of doling that out till last week!)

They are super bright. They asked questions I would never have expected of 8th graders. They asked questions I'd never thought of. They came up with new methods of solving problems on their own. They cared about their grades (albeit some only when test day came along).

They're quirky and ridiculous, which is great because I'm quirky and ridiculous. They have said and done some of the funniest things I think I'll ever hear. I will forever remember the time in fifth period where someone said something that was just so random I couldn't help breaking my straight-face, down-to-business mode and the kids were just thrilled when I had to pause to laugh at the ridiculousness. I just stood there shaking my head and trying not to smile, but it was just too funny.

We have exactly one week left of school. Two more days of lessons this week, and three days of 8th grade activities, ending with the moving up ceremony next Wednesday night. And then they're gone. These 130 kids, whom I've fought with and fought for the past 9 months that have seemed more like 9 years, will move on to high school, and most of them I'll never see again.

That's so weird.

So here's to one more week of school. One more week of picking battles, practicing patience, and enjoying the laughs they bring.

One more week.