This week was less than stellar, I am sure from my last post you maybe got that impression as well. I think for myself at least January and February are the harder months to survive in school, they just seem to drag by without an end in sight. I just keep counting down the days until March...
January is just cold and dreary and really after all the excitement of the holidays sort of a let down.
February is filled with 5 days of MOY's and Valentine's Day, said with a shudder. Valentine's Day is hard at the middle school, they are used to elementary where they celebrate it and give each other cards but in middle school they are told to ignore it. Cards, stuffed animals, flowers, balloons and candy are all banned, but brought to school anyways. By the way, its amazing how our students can't be expected to afford school supplies but suddenly have an unlimited amount of money to buy each other presents. So our front office looks like Halmark threw up in it all day and the students just act ridiculously crazy. We spend more time sending students to the office with their banned materials than actually teaching. Or dealing with the fighting and drama of the 'life and times of middle schoolers,' to say the least Valentine's is not a day I enjoy being in school.
Where is all this going you might ask, I began to realize that I was letting the annoying details of teaching and the humdrum routine of these past two months bog me down.
One of my new years resolutions was to take more pictures, so I challenged myself to a 365 day photo challenge and I have been less than inspired to take any pictures. I hadn't updated my page in over a month! Really when the only places you go are to school, home and grocery shopping picture taking can get mundane quick. So today I spent the time to unload my iphone of all of my snapshots and update my 365 Photo Page, which hasn gotten me inspired to snap more photos and try and break my routine some.
Also I am linking up with Life In Middle School for a View From My Hallway snapshot.
I thought this linky was such a neat idea, as at least most middle school teachers are at their door a few times a day depending on how many passing periods your school has. I have 6 classes that rotate in most days so this is my view...
Not very exciting I know!
But I am down a ramp and in a hallway with just myself and the Life Skills room. When you need a classroom as large as I do, it often means you are in corner far far away from everyone else.
Some positives: the only students I see are coming to me so I rarely ever have to deal with poor hallway behavior, bless the hearts of the teachers on our 2nd floor! And I generally have music playing that they hear as soon as they open the door and I can stand and greet each and every student as they come in.
The negative, I am literally all by myself. So I never get to interact with the other teachers on campus which is probably why I find it impossible to make friends with any of the teachers.
In an attempt to break out of my melancholy attitude I am also linking up with Rowdy in First Grade for Tell Me Something Good!
Something Good At Home:
On Thursday aka Valentine's Day, Mr B surprised me with a home cooked meal. Which included queso (queso is really the key to my heart, forget diamonds), Mexican turkey burgers with all the fixings, sweet potato fries and chocolate covered strawberries. And of course wine and flowers. Mr. B has been my Valentine now for SIX Valentine's Days and this is only the second time he has ever cooked for me, so it was sort of a big deal!
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| A close up of Mr. B's nerf gun I decorated for him! |
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| Mr. B loved his presents! |
For us Valentine's Day was long ago just named Pitchers and Catchers Report Day and we don't celebrate it in the Halmark style and I am pretty sure if Mr. B had it his way we would never celebrate it. But he loves me so, so he makes each year special in his own way. Wish we had a picture together...
Something Good At School:
Due to the MOY schedule I have had a bit more time to really think about upcoming projects, rather than just throw them together because I am trying to come up with three at a time, posting three lessons plans each week, three worksheets and three powerpoints...etc.
In Robotics we started our Robot Races project this week which I completely revamped and the kids HEART IT, think Ice Road Truckers but with lego Robots. I have been racking my brain with how to create a race track that can be used repeatedly, is easy to store and looks cool. AND I THINK I DID IT! For the low cost of $10!!! Woot! WOot! I worked on this most of yesterday and hope to share the finished product tomorrow.
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| The start of the track...more to come! |
This post turned into an incredible long babble session, but I think I needed it sometimes blogging can be therapeutic While most of you will be enjoying your lovely three day weekend, we will be having a mandatory professional development at my campus...here is to hoping I keep my zen mood all eight hours tomorrow...
- The Babbling Box!
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