Highs and Lows: Week 2

Last week I decided to celebrate the highs and the lows of the first week of school and I felt the need to ride that wave on out to this week. 

For me I think it is healthy to celebrate both the success and the failures, because being completely honest I left work Friday feeling stressed, overwhelmed, mind blown at the lack of comprehension in my room. But looking back over the week and finding a few of the positives certainly made me feel like not all was lost. 
Also the Friday night nap and margarita probably helped change my attitude.

Plus sticking to a topic is hard for me, so a random list makes my brain happy...it's the little things.

one. It was a four day work week, enough said.

two. On Friday we did our first weekly email. All students are required to email me their work for the week using their school email address. Did I receive 100% of the emails, no. But I did receive close to 80% so I consider it a success. Here's to hoping they remember how to do it this Friday.

three. My Web Design class was required to create a social media about me page with twelve sentences, all about themselves. In the past this has been rough, sort of like pulling my hair out or beating my head against the wall. BUT this group of kiddio's knocked those twelve sentences out of the park and created some really great About Me pages two days before the due date. Time to start over planning.

four. In Robotics we created a Be, Do, Have Collage and it let me learn SO much about my students. It's basically a large collage filled with images of what they want to be, do and have in their life. 24 images to be exact. Not only do I now know where my students technical skills are in each class but I also have some really great wall art for back to school night tomorrow. Hopefully I will share some pictures next Monday.

five. The curse of 7th period continues, this is a topic for a whole different post, but I will say this my head and heart hurts for the class. 30 students with over half ELL. Eight eighth graders who get 'it' and 22 seventh graders whose immaturity rivals my seven year old brother. The groups hate each other. To say it's not going smoothly would be the understatement of the century. 

six. Thursdays. Sigh, our school runs a block schedule and I only see even classes on Thursdays for ninety minutes each, plus my homeroom class. I kid you not: no one in my fourth period class spoke the whole period, no one in my sixth period class spoke and no one in my eighth period class spoke. If it wasn't for my homeroom I would have gone insane. Scratch that, I did go insane in eighth period and started begging them to talk to each other. Crazy teacher party of one.

seven. A new student joined my 7th period class, as if the class needed any additional bodies, and her name looked oddly familiar. I taught her in her seventh grade year, my first year...so if I did the math she should be in the ninth grade and not in my class or even at my school. Oh but she is! Apparently only attending 60 days of school means you have to repeat the year, who would of guessed. Maybe one day I will tell the horror stories I have of this student but right now I am just trying to be Susie Sunshine and not upset the beast.

eight. I finally signed up to be an Advocare distributor. I have been taking their products for over ten years, figured I was committed enough and all. I probably will make a separate post all about it, but for now I will say if you have any interest in buying let me know!

nine. The Longhorns were stomped into the ground by BYU, it wasn't pretty, I pouted. 

ten. The mister and I were off all weekend together. This never happens so I was tickled pink. Friday night we went out to a late dinner, Saturday night we finished up Orange is the New Black and I even cooked dinner for us. Sunday we got up at the butt crack of dawn...aka eight...and went to something called Coffee and Cars at The Oasis. It was very neat to check out all the tricked out cars, my favorite were the older cars but I will say I wouldn't shed a tear if the Rolls Royce ended up in my driveway. 

eleven. I spent most of Sunday making something special for my Robotics class. I wanted a activity mat that we could use to practice driving the robots, turning the robots(parking), racing the robots and delivering parts to an automotive store. I also didn't want to keep making a new one each semester. 

Insert publisher, my favorite program. I set the size to 4.4 feet by 7.4 feet to fit the middle table in my classroom. I used shapes and a few clip art pieces to build a road, parking lot, race track and automotive store. I already knew that the average robot is about seven inches wide so I used those dimensions to make sure my road and parking spots were the right size. I then grouped all the images and saved it as a jpeg.

I figured vinyl would be able to the easiest material to keep the mat clean with no issues. I did very little internet research and found a company who would print it and have it to me by Wednesday for 100 bucks, for something so large I figured it was a deal.

All and all I am very excited about how the whole image turned out, I am a little nervous to see how it looks printed but my fingers are crossed. The teacher in me can't wait to start using the mat, we will have so much space for activities! I can have multiple groups practicing different skills at the same time, pretty much a teachers dream.

twelve. Because I hate odd numbered lists, did you check out my post over the weekend about Sons of Anarchy...the eye candy is worth taking a peak. Only 24 hours until the season premiere.

Linking up with: Sami, Bre, Carly, Logan, and Tara.

- The Babbling Box!