Sunday, October 30, 2011

Day 183-October 30th: Trying

I'm trying my best to continue to work through stuff. I finally had to force myself to finish my lesson plan tonight (since I'm teaching it tomorrow for a final grade.) That wasn't stressful at all.....not! But I just finished it and printed it out. I'm hoping with everything in my that teaching for the next two weeks will convince me that I'm doing the right thing with my life, but I'm not sure. Everyone always says that your occupations isn't who you are, it's what you do. That's just not true for a teacher. If I become a teacher it will be WHO I am, not just something I do. I'm either gonna give it my all or I just won't be able to live with myself. Anyway I'm super far behind in work since I spent 3 days doing essentially nothing.

Day 182- October 29th: My day off

I took today off of work and had a day date with my best friend. We had a really nice long talk over lunch about our lives and where they are going/lack of direction. And we had chinese which was incredible, followed by Dairy Queen which was also incredible. I listened to more music and this was the song that got me through.

Also, I had the best costume ever tonight. I was Mrs. Aaron Rodgers. I love playing pretend :)


Saturday, October 29, 2011

Day 181-October 28th: Kegger!

So today was a bit better than yesterday. All the sugar I had really messed me up, and I was on edge for the majority of the morning but I received the following text from a friend over my lunch hour: "Trees don't grow tall without quite a bit of rainfall." Even though I texted back that I was drowning this made so much sense to me. I'm growing and all I can do is keep trying not to drown and grow taller.

We had a party at our house tonight and I'd like to say that I think I'm sufficiently done with my college partying days. I just haven't had fun with it recently. Anyway I posted a few pics below.


Thursday, October 27, 2011

Day 180-October 27th: My Uncertainty

I had a major freakout today. I know I said I had a major freakout on Sunday, but that was nothing compared to today. I'm not exactly sure what made me click, but suddenly on my way home from class it was just like "What the hell am I doing with my life?" I've just reached a point where I'm so uncertain what I want, that I started doubting my very existence. I came home and tried to do homework, but I was shaking so hard I literally could not hold my highlighter. So I baked, and I ate cookies. 5 to be exact. Then I went for a walk to my thinking place and nearly threw up because I was sobbing so hard. After calming myself for a bit I kept walking and my music helped a bit. I came home and finished a bit of homework and decided to take the night off. So I did. I watched TV and ate lots of unhealthy food. I had a great talk with my roomie about life, and I feel a bit better, but I still feel like crap. I looked through a lot of my quotes and some of them really helped me realize what I need to change, but one in particular made me realize that I'm doing a lot of things right. Here it is:

“Faith is the ability to find beauty in all circumstance. Will is the ability to follow faith where it leads each individual and make something out of the randomness.”- Daryn Christenson


 Really, all I can do right now is have faith that I'm making the right decisions for my future, and that everything will work itself out. 

Day 179: October 26th: MN History Center

Today was a weird day. I had a bad morning in class, as I officially got back my first paper with a C for a grade :( I've lost all hope of receiving all A's this semester, but I've come to terms with it. There is too much going on for me to worry about getting a couple of B's in grad school.
In the afternoon we went of a field trip for Social Studies (best class ever!) While we were there we had to create a lesson plan for a group of students that focused on 1 or several components of Social Studies. We went to the "home" exhibit, which shows a home through a span of 80 years and how it changed. It is an actual home in MN, and it was so cool. For our lesson plan we decided we would have the students take the perspective of a robber, and decide which 3 things they would steal from each room and write about why these 3 things would have been valuable in the time. Then we would go over the progression of value through that time period and try to figure out what types of things were similar.

Day 178: October 25th: poor little civic

I got in my car this evening to do homework and poor little civic was making a weird noise. I have to take him to the shop to get fixed. My precise words to him were, "Civic, you can't do this. Mama doesn't have time to deal with you right now." He didn't listen...

Monday, October 24, 2011

Day 177-October 24th: Green Eyes

I spent the majority of my evening finishing up my  first draft of my science lesson plan and doing more reading. While working on the lesson plan I listened to music and this song came on and made me extremely happy :)

Day 176- October 23rd:acomplishments

More work on science lesson planning in the morning, work in the afternoon, and butternut squash soup making in the evening along with reading. It was a day of great accomplishments.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Day 175-October 22nd: Breakdown

I had one of the worst days ever. My day at work started by driving the minivan to Golden Valley to drop Sam off at basketball practice at the courage center. I was then suppose to use the GPS to find a nearby target to take Hannah to. There we would pick up some things needed for the house and partake in Hannah's favorite past time (feeling bottles.) The GPS first kept telling me to turn down streets that didn't exist. An hour later when I arrived at "Target" I discovered I was at the corporate offices. I found the next nearest target on the GPS, and it took me downtown! It was only my second time driving the minivan, and by the time I would have parked and walked with Hannah(who moves very slow) I would have had to turn around to pick Sam up. So, I just headed back to the courage center. Once there I had a major freakout thinking I had locked the keys in the van. Luckily they were just in the side pocket of my purse.

In the evening I spent the majority of my time working on my science lesson plan, which is becoming more and more frustrating as time goes on. After 6 hours of work and feeling like I had accomplished nothing, I began sobbing on my boyfriend couch. He immediately put on Ryan Adams for me and cuddled with me. Then we looked at funny pictures online and laughed our asses off for awhile. He is so wonderful to me, and I'm the luckiest girl in the world. :D

Saturday, October 22, 2011

Day 174- October 21st: Roomie dinner

So I had this really great idea when we all moved in, that once a month or so we should have a dinner where all the roommates pitched in. In September Becky's mother cooked us dinner one night, and I decided we needed to do one in October, and that we should carve pumpkins. So we did. A few pictures from the night:




Day 173- October 19th: About the learning

Good old happy hour with the brother today was wonderful :) Also, one of my teachers said something that really opened my eyes. We were watching a video in class and someone asked a question (I was zoning out, so i don't know what it was) and she replied with, "Well you have to remember that it's not about the teaching as much as it is about the learning." Amazing how little things like this still get me.

Thursday, October 20, 2011

Day 172-October 19th: Winter Clothes

Today I received my box of winter clothes, so I spent my evening looking through and sorting them as well as putting my summer clothes in storage. Super excited for my warm sweaters in my freezing house.

Day 171- October 18th: Chilly Billys

Tonight after finally getting some reading done me and John treated ourselves to Chilly Billy's. And they had delicious pumpkin flavored frozen yogurt. Yum :)

Monday, October 17, 2011

Day 170- October 17th: new list

So today as I sat watching one of my favorite YouTube video's in Social Studies I decided I need to make a list of things to remind about why I'm doing what I'm doing. Every once in awhile I sit and wonder to myself if this is too hard of a job for me and if I will be successful. Here is my list:
1. Think about all the wonderful teachers I have had in my life, and the way they changed me.
2. Read the poem "The Road Not Taken" by Robert Frost.
3. Listen to the song "I Hear Them All" by OCMS and remember that every kid matters.
4. Think about a success I had with a student (AA finally understand the number line method in math, YP telling me he loved the book I read aloud to him.)
5. Watch this video.

Day 169-October 16th: from funny to serious

Today was a fun play day. I was supposed to read 140 pages and only got 25 read, but it was a wonderful day. I started out my morning with Becky and Erik drinking bloody marys at Legends and "doing homework." I actually did accomplish 25 pages of reading during this hour and half, but that was just not good enough for me. Then I proceeded to watch the Packer game and part of Forest Gump. John came over to do homework but we ended up going out to dinner with his sister and then spent some serious time cuddling. By this point it was already 9:30, so I just went to bed.
best way to study ever!

Day 168-October 15th: work/play

Today I worked 7 hours and luckily they gave me sunday off so I got to play tonight. playing isn't as fun as I remember it. I think I should have just gone to bed or tried to get caught up in homework.....

Saturday, October 15, 2011

Day 167-October 14th: Inservice

Today we had inservice. It was really super dumb. We spent more of our time talking about data we hadn't seen and the achievement gap. Yes, we all already know there is an achievement gap. Let's spend our time looking for solutions rather than looking at the data we already understand. Dumb.

Thursday, October 13, 2011

Day 166-October 13th: Hear a song

I found this scribbled on a page in a super duper old notebook. I was cleaning it out to use for school purposes and most of the pages got thrown in the garbage, but this one got saved :)

"There is a moment in everyones life when they hear a song and feel it everywhere. It moves through them and for awhile they feel like its their own and no one else's. In that moment they feel what it is to truly be alive and whole."

I'm glad to have had so many of these moments in my life.

Day 165-October 12th: BWW

Today was a super exhausting day, for whatever reason. But me and my man took the night off and went out for dinner. We got wings and onion rings from Buffalo Wild Wings. It was great to just hang out and talk about our lives. Great night :)

Wednesday, October 12, 2011

Day 164-October 11th: new CD

Today the new Ryan Adams CD came out, and my boyfriend was nice enough to drive me to get it after I was done with all my after school meetings :)

Monday, October 10, 2011

Day 163-October 10th: best song ever!

So I was debating what to write about in my blog today since I had such a great day of school teaching, but I also really enjoyed seeing my boyfriend as well. Luckily as I got in the car this song came on and answered my question for me. Love this song, and I super felt it tonight.

Day 162-October 9th: Aunt TT again! or just TT....

So I found this out about 6 weeks ago, but we were keeping it secret. I'm going to be an Aunt again. So excited!

Day 161-October 8th: camping with my kidos

I went camping with 2 of the kids I work with this weekend. It was a blast, but 44 hours of work after a 40 hour work week plus school work really puts you out. My thought it that now I can afford to take a few sundays off in November/December to keep up with school work. It rained for the majority of the weekend, which was hard, but we survived. When we did get to walk we found some cool stuff. First we found a Beaver Dam and then we found a frozen snake. Pretty cool if you ask me. We also created some crafts, and I became a professional fly killer. For real though. I think I killed more than 100 flies this weekend.
Jen, Jess, and Me prepared to kill all the flies.

Friday, October 7, 2011

Day 160-October 7th: Chaos

I can't wait until I get to the point in teaching where everything does not feel like complete chaos. Some chaos will be acceptable, but not so much. Today I was put in charge of the students for the last hour of the day(with a sub) and it went okay. She said she thought I did a wonderful job. I thought it was a bit chaotic, but I was doing an assignment for the U. An assignment that I thought was not appropriate for our students. 25 spelling words is just too much for our students to sit through all at once in a large group. but that was the way I was supposed to do it, so I did. Next week I hopefully will get to do a bit more teaching :) but for now I'm off to a 42 hour work weekend! hurray for camping!

Thursday, October 6, 2011

Day 159- October 6th: how to get over your doubts

Every once and awhile as I sit in my classroom or work with students, or most commonly when I'm put in charge of the students, I think to myself, "Oh my god, I cannot do this, I'm going to be the worst teacher ever." Today was one of those days. I was put in charge of the students for a mere 15 minutes, so I could complete one of my assignment. Unfortunately, among all the chaos of writing papers last night I forgot to prepare how to give the directions. This is something that takes a lot longer to learn that you would thing, especially when you have English Learners in your classroom. Chaos insued: I forgot I was suppose to take one of the groups on the side to read the questions aloud to them, and forgot to ask my cooperating teacher what she would like them to do when they were done. After discussing this with my teacher we decided that it would be best if for my assignment tomorrow I write out directions beforehand. Additionally she is giving me the last hour of the day to be completely in charge of the students while she has a sub. Exciting! and nerve racking! But how to get I over my doubts? By trying more and more to prove to myself that I can do this. This is what I want to do, and I'm not a quitter. So I turn up my music, then I force myself to take time to run. I only ran for 10 minutes, but it helped. Then I look up inspirational quotes. This is the one I found today.

"Experience is not what happens to you; it is what you do with what happens to you."
-Aldous Huxley

So that's my plan. I'm going to take what happens to me and use it to grow and learn.

Wednesday, October 5, 2011

Day 158-October 5th: group discussion

Today I got to start my assignments in school. My goal was to write two 5 page papers tonight, i wrote 4 pages of one and 2 pages of the other. I did an interview with students today about social studies. They didn't know hardly anything, and it made me very sad, because our school doesn't teach social studies. They don't know the difference between cities, states, and countries. When I asked them about famous people from other countries one girls response was "I think Katy Perry is from California." I also got the response of Michael Jackson and Hannah Montana. The fact that they could only list pop stars makes me very sad. They also did not know how someone became the president, or about any other government figures. When I asked about taxes they said they were used to pay rent.

All in all it was a long day. The children all were misbehaving and I had a migraine for the majority of the day. Here is to hoping that tomorrow will be better :)

Tuesday, October 4, 2011

Day 157-October 4th: I know what it means!

Today during Readers Workshop I was asked to pull 4 students of my choosing to read to me for 7-10 minutes and then to do a short reading conference with them to tell them about their strengths and what one reading goal (or strategy) to work on. The last student I pulled happens to be one of our lowest readers and he was reading a Dr. Seuss book. I find these books wonderful examples for rhyming patterns, but hard to follow. During our session I taught him to look for rhyming words for hints and to always think about if, when he got to the end of the page he understood what the page meant. During our math class he volunteered to read our story problem, and at the end of finishing it exclaimed "I know what it means!" I love my job. I also had to do way to much discipling of students today, so i hope they are better tomorrow since I'm starting all my assignments :S Hello chaos and reflection/analysis papers.

Monday, October 3, 2011

Day 156-October 3rd: Back to School

Today was my first day back at my elementary school. It was amazing to see how much the kids have grown in the last 2 weeks (at least most of them.) As I was looking at some of the kids today I was thinking about where they might be in 10 year. Some of my thoughts were utterly scary. But I decided I'm going to push all the bad thoughts out of my mind and pretend like every single student will grow up to be a doctor or lawyer, or engineer, because who is to say that they won't? certainly not me....

Sunday, October 2, 2011

Day 155-October 2nd: done for....

So today was originally the day I was supposed to run 10 miles, then it was the day I was supposed to attend the Packer game at Lambeau. I did neither. I just ended up tracking a few of my friends updates online about running the twin cities marathon, and I watched the packer game. at this point in my evening (7:30) I'm ready for bed. I had a bloody mary and 1 beer and I'm done for. That's all.

Saturday, October 1, 2011

Day 154-October 1st: Diploma!

This finally came in the mail today :)

Day 153-September 30th: Love is Gray

So today I was finally able to spend some time running (did i mention i twisted my ankle last week?) I was able to do a glorious 2 miles. This song came on while I was running and these lyrics seriously hit me:

"There is so much more in love than black and white...."

If there is anything I've been learning A LOT about since I've come to college it's love, and how many different kinds of it there are. There is no such thing as "one true love." I love a lot of people, and most of them in many many different ways. There is no one explanation, and no one definition. In fact, I decided to look up the definition in the dictionary. There are so many versions, 9 for the noun, and one for the verb to be exact. And none of these even begin to describe what I personally think love is.