tubing with family and friends

if you read keith's blog then you will know that he is not really a fan of tubing but i love it! i think that if it weren't for me the man would never have any fun (just kidding honey!) i like being in the water and going down the small rapids, getting in the water, laughing and talking, and going at a leisurely pace watching the scenery. i really had fun : )

we had a good day at church and with no church tonight, of which i'm not a fan of anyway, we had a nice restful sunday afternoon. i'm hoping we're going to sam's club tomorrow and see matt and tasha but keith doesn't want to go so we'll see. he has a lot of his mom and dad in him and i have a lot of my dad in me, meaning i like to go and do stuff and visit. he would rather stay home. like i said, we'll see. i'm pretty easy : )

it is one of life's little pleasures that we have a monday off. that to me is so nice to wake up and realize it's monday and you don't have to get up!!!!

hope everyone has a wonderful labor day.

sacs

every 5 years or so the state department of education in its infinite wisdom comes to schools with a committee to see if schools know what the heck they are doing. this group of people are known as the sacs committee. sacs stands for southern association of colleges and schools. before they come the school system that is lucky enough to be accredited that year has kittens and everyone goes "insane in the membrane!"

our school system will be host to this wonderful event the 2nd week of september. you would not believe all the things that we have to be sure we know. we have been told again, and again, and again ad nauseum to know the school motto, vision (i didn't even know we had one!), and on and on. we have these things posted everywhere, and when i say everywhere i mean everywhere, would you believe the bathroom in front of the toilet????? the one in our bathroom seems to have grown legs and it has become quite a game to "find the school vision in the bathroom."

my funny today at school has to do with this visit. apparently these people will be interviewing parents and students as well as school personnel. i chose 2 students from my room. i told them about this separately and their reaction was a stitch! i called one student to tell him about his appointment to the panel. he looked at me and his jaw dropped and in his inimitable way said," this week just keeps getting better and better!" when i told the other student, she took the paper with the "suggested questions and answers" and looked at me then dropped her head on my desk and said,"and who do i owe the thanks for this honor!" needless to say they are not very happy with me right now but they'll get over it (tee-hee).

rainy days and tuesdays

what a rainy day we had here in georgia. we probably had 5-7 inches of rain! everything has greened up again. it doesn't look like august anymore. we sure did need the rain.

as a teacher i love rainy days. the kids are somewhat subdued and seem to be quieter at least until recess. ha-ha, i don't have recess duty! smart woman! everything is going very smoothly. it's almost kind of scary. i guess that it's because i know these kids and they know me. like i said, we didn't have to learn the routine and sort of picked up where we left off.

i gave them an interesting writing assignment yesterday. in social studies we have been talking about scarcity and how that changes what people buy and prioritize in their life. their assignment was to pretend that they were on their own for 2 weeks and they had $100 to use as they wished. of course the goal was to have them see that if that is all the money they had then they had to spend it wisely. when they first heard that they could spend $100 they started talking about buying games, etc. then as they started thinking about it. they became pensive and really thought about the situation. they shared their writing today and surprisingly enough they, almost to every kid, they would spend the money on food, bills, pet food, they would conserve water, electricity. it was wonderful! these are the times that it is so cool to be a teacher b/c you can see their intellectual maturity growing!!!

in another vein, it is interesting to live in this environment we call school. it is like its own world. we have the leader, we have the peacemaker, we have the arbitrator, the comedian, the drama queen, the complainer, the questioner (this person drives me crazy b/c they always have that last question when the meeting is over and we are asked, "does anyone have a question?" and you KNOW this person is going to have ONE MORE QUESTION!!!) anyway, it is an interesting study in people and this microcosm world.

we finished our 2nd and 1/2 weeks of school. i have already graded 252 papers, scheduled 2 conferences, written at least 5 notes and put 5 students in study hall (detention). wow! but you know what? i wouldn't do anything else. i truly love teaching!

i had several "atta girls" this week from my principal! it was really nice b/c she doesn't give compliments all the time. we were asked to come up with goals for our teaching, what we wanted to work towards. i had actually been thinking about this this summer (slow summer ) so i was ready for this. they are ambitious goals to be sure but what's a goal that can be easily reached??? anyway, my principal was so impressed with them she e-mailed them to our curriculum director who wrote her back with "WOW!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

the other thing was about my kids. i am so glad i was able to move up with them. in social studies we have been discussing goal making and why goals are important. this is one reason i wanted to move to 5th. these kids are just beginning to have opinions of their own and understand what these mean and the importance of them. anyway they came up with goals of their own and they also wrote a class mission statement which was pretty awesome. my principal thought this was terrific also!

if you can't tell i am very glad to be working with 5th graders again and so far i have had a good start to the year. i think it will be a good year with lots of hard work on my part and my students' part. i told them i was going to work them hard and they could rest on the weekend!

i would like to share some things i have learned over the years as a teacher. keith is forever telling me i should write a how-to book but for now this will do. so here goes:

1. remember that each and every child you teach is someone's baby
2. you are not the most important person in a child's life but you can definitely be one of the important people in their life
   
3. always give a child a chance to save face, if you back a child into a corner they will come out fighting and you will lose
4. be enthusiastic and honest when you teach
5. never be afraid to say i don't know and then try your best to find out the answer

more later : )

birthday and a funny moment

we went to jim and bonnie's to celebrate jim's b'day this evening. we love getting together with them. it is so good to have good friends. we always have good food, laugh until we can't laugh anymore and just enjoy being together. matt, tasha, keith and i got jim a tent. yeah, i know it's a strange gift but it is practical for what he needs it for. jim rides a motorcycle and at the end of this month he and other riders will be taking a trip for about a week. they will be camping for some of the time and he didn't have a tent thus the tent.

the other thing i wanted to write about was that as i said earlier, i wanted to find something to laugh about everyday. today was a good one. in my language class we are learning about sentence fragments. i was explaining to the kids that you don't start a sentence with the word "and." i asked them to tell me what part of speech "and" is. one of my students very enthusiastically told me it is a conjunction! god love him, he doesn't often get things right so i told him excellent! that it is indeed a conjunction. to make sure he understood what a conjunction is i asked him what a conjunction does. he got that deer in the headlights look and then, you could see the lightbulb go on, he tells me, "it conjuncts!" funny stuff for this english teacher. it made me laugh!! yeah : )

laughing all the way

i now have a copy machine in my classroom! for those of you who teach you know how awesome that is!!! for those of you who don't teach you probably would never understand how great this is and how much better my professional life will be when i'm not looking for a copy machine that works.

how it got to my school is my funny story for the day. keith loaded it in the van last night. when i pulled out of the driveway this morning the darn thing shifted on the back seat where it was sitting. the seat was folded down and it slid back until it was resting on the back door. i got to school and parked in the back parking lot. i thought, "i'll gently open the back door and push it back onto the seat." well, when i opened the back door the thing slid even further out the back! i carefully lowered the door and opened the side door and got behind the it thinking to pull it back onto the seat. oh no! that would have been way too easy! instead when i got my hands on either side of it it proceeded to start sliding out of the car!

now this wouldn't have been to bad but there was absolutely no one in the parking lot at the moment! i was really stuck! i couldn't move the machine and i couldn't let go! our p.e. coach pulled up a few minutes later as i was pondering what would happen if i screamed my head off. to make matters worse he had his radio up to about volume 100. i began to wave my foot out the door hoping he would see me and realize i needed help. he waved at me! i started hollaring like crazy for him to help me. he proceeded to park his car, thankfully he parks next to me everyday. i started screaming at the top of my lungs at this point and he finally knew that i needed help, he even asked me!

well, long story short, he helped me get it back in the van. when i asked him did he see me waving my foot out the door he said that he thought that WAS odd!!

anyway, alls well that ends well, the copier has found a new home in my room : )

trying new things

as many of you may know i am somewhat technically challenged but i have found that if i keep at it i can pretty much figure things out orrrrr really screw things up. anyway, i am trying to learn how to upload pictures. i'll let you know how well that goes!

not a writer

i realized today that i am not a writer! and yet i am teaching writing to my students, yikes! actually there are several of my students who are really good writers. i also realized that my sons are good writers, i guess they got that gene from their dad and mamaw. but they got their sense of humor from me!!

my goal this year at school is to find something to smile, laugh, or sing about everyday. i'm sure that this will be very challenging on some days. the thing that made me smile today was this, one of my students has horrible grammar! he regularly uses ain't, double negatives, can for may, and yeah for yes ma'am, which he knows is a no-no in my class. anyway, i constantly have him repeat what he said with proper grammar or with the respectful yes or no ma'am. after being reminded several times to say yes ma'am he looked at me with his endearing quirky smile and told me " ah thank ah'm gonna have to write that on my hand!!!"

well, as i tell my students, the only way to get better at something is to practice it, so, i will continue to write : )

i love saturdays

what a beautiful day here in the north georgia mountains. puffy clouds, low humidity, and temps in the 70s for the day and 50s for the evening. we haven't had our air on all day.

i love saturdays b/c it is like a free day! you can do whatever you want on a saturday. it's your choice. it's like a mini vacation. yeah, i know there are some saturdays where you do have responsibilities to take care of but on the whole it's still saturday!

good-bye skip

i just read nathan's blog tribute to skip caray.i felt that i also wanted to write something to mark his passing.to me he was mr.braves. i knew next to nothing about baseball when i first started listening to skip call the braves games back in the day. like nathan said, skip made the game understandable, even the infield fly rule! my favorite thing that skip did was to tell the people watching or listening to the game where a fan was from who just caught a foul ball or a homerun ball in the stadium. there were people who really thought skip knew where these people were from!!

he will be missed.....

ps i'm with nathan, larry munson IS immortal, right???????

buh-bye summer

well, in 7 minutes summer comes to a screeching halt as summer is officially over. i will be going to bed at 10:30 for the first time since june 1st. school starts for us teachers tomorrow at 8:00.

i think that we teachers secretly love the beginning of school as much as kids. i bought new school supplies and new school clothes that i can't wait to show off. we get to see our friends that we haven't seen all summer and we are really eager to learn new stuff just like our kids. let's just keep this to ourselves, shall we??? if it wasn't for getting up early i'd really like this job (tee-hee).

well, the coffee is ready to be put on in the morning, my cereal bowl is waiting to be filled, my make-up and hair stuff is all laid out and my new clothes are laid out, too, so i guess i'm ready. good bye summer, it was fun.

thankful

i had my mammogram done today. as i was waiting i saw a lady i work with, she was there for a biopsy. they found a suspicious lump and they were pretty sure it was cancer. this is one of my secret fears. thankfully for me, i was fine and for her they have found it early and it is small so her prognosis should be good.

this made me think, as did the trip to west virginia, i have so much to be thankful for. i need to be reminded of this when i complain about getting up in the morning, i have to cook dinner, clean house, etc. i should be remembering when i couldn't get up in the morning, that i have food to cook and a house to clean. i hope and pray that we are all aware of our many, many, many blessings each and everyday.