Ready for Advent

Advent is already here! Wow, time sure flies! Liam is ready with his chain although I helped him make it as you can tell. Connell is still trying to perfect his.

Time gets away from me....

Sorry I haven't posted in ages. Time just flies by without anything too exciting to report. I've been very stressed at school with the end of the trimester being a week from today. Everyone is scrounging to get make-up work in and I am busy creating final exams and getting everything ready for grade reporting. I did have a 3 week stint with a cold and laryngitis and so I am glad to be over that. I did not miss any school -- I simply loaded up on cough drops and Kleenex and tried to relax every evening. But I have also realized that I talk too loud and strain my voice and will constantly have the voice issues regardless of illness. I am trying to drink plenty of water and save my voice whenever possible. It's hard with some of the chatty classes of 39 students when it's so tempting to shout. But it's hard to believe that the school year is about 1/3 done already!

My school year has been challenging in other ways as well. 1/3 of the students in one of my first year Spanish classes are special education students. Unfortunately I don't get any help a special ed teacher since I am an elective class (i.e. in the core subjects, a special ed teacher will co-teach the class with the regular ed teacher when there is a large number of special ed students in the same class). So I am struggling with these 11 kids many who struggle with English skills (reading, writing, spelling, comprehension, recall issues, etc.) in trying to teach them another language. So I have had lots of concerned parents and special ed teachers and have been having to have constant communication with all parties involved in addition to all my other duties.

Happy Thanksgiving to everyone!

School Pic '10-'11

Of course every year at school we get our pictures taken for free by Lifetouch and we get the most basic package to keep. This year's photo turned out pretty well. In fact I was very impressed by how the lighting did not make my hair look as grey as it is in real life. I have kept an example from all the years that I have been teaching and so they span 17 years now although I don't have one for the years of the extensive maternity break. It was fun to show the boys the pix in order though and see how I've aged :-)

Happy Halloween!

This is the first year that the boys' costumes do not go together. But I did sew and craft them from thrift store finds once again.

Mid-October

Well, not a lot of news to report mid-October. Everyone is looking forward to MEA -- although I am not sure that I will actually enjoy two full days home with the boys now that I am used to not having to entertain them for very long! It's almost mid-term at school and so parents and students are starting to be concerned about their grades. Conferences are only 2 weeks away and so the end of October will be busy when you combine that with Halloween.

Connell has been a part of the "run club" at school which means that certain days of the week during recess, instead of playing on the equipment, he can opt to run around the field a number of times in order to get punches on his punch card. This past week he hit the 10 mile mark and said that according to the chart, he was the first 1st grader to hit that mark -- and there are well over 100 in the grade. Of course not all are so goal-oriented and so most have chosen to just play on the play equipment and hang out with friends instead of continually run. But we are happy that Connell has been getting the exercise while the weather is nice!

Life in general

Life is going well. The boys are adjusting to school/daycare and I am as well. I have gotten quite used to all the new equipment in my classroom.

I did have a week filled with ups and downs as my ceiling mounted projector quit working in the middle of the day on Monday. Since everything (worksheets, presenting of information, correcting sheets, etc.) is reliant on the projector, I had to improvise for the rest of the day. Then I created a Tuesday lesson plan that avoided its use. By Wednesday I had been able to secure a traveling projector on a cart to hook up and use. Unfortunately I didn't realize that I needed to change the settings on my laptop to use it (mirror imagining or something?!?!) and so I needed the IT lady to bail me out in the middle of the first hour I attempted to use it. Later that same day, the AV guy came and changed the bulb in the original ceiling-mounted projector and so I was back to the old one. He suspects that there is a mechanical problem with the projector and that within a month it will go out again prompting its removal for weeks (shipping it off for repair). So I am holding my breath every day hoping that it won't happen. One day at a time...

Boys

My mom had been asking for an updated photo of the boys. I realized that the last cute one I had taken was from May 2009 and so I attempted to take one yesterday. This was the best shot of them.