Seven Things Sunday

1.  On Friday we gave out uniforms for 325 girls and 60+ coaches.  We also sorted and bagged 200+ shirts for a give away that we did.  Needless to say, it was crazy.  This was all done in my living room.  At 10:00 P.M. because the uniform company got behind and weren't able to have the uniforms ready in the afternoon like they planned. 

2.  On Friday the kids and I crash cleaned the living room and kitchen.  (See #1) I wonder how long it will stay clean.  Related: do not look in my room or the laundry room because they are a mess.

3.  Opening Ceremonies was yesterday.  Most of our girls showed up and we are excited to get the season started tomorrow.

4.  I have no idea what we are going to do for Easter.  It is the last holiday that I have left in my year of firsts without my mom.  It is also hard because I have fond Easter memories from when I was a kid.  The Easter bunny always hid my eggs while I was asleep and then my dad would BBQ and we would spend the day outside. 

5.  I took two Benadryl last night for allergies and now I feel like I am in a fog.  Ugg.

6.  Meagan has the next competition in her Bible Drill today.  This drill, called the Association Drill, will determine if she goes on to the next level.  She did great two weeks ago so I have no doubt that she will do well today.

7.  We went to a housewarming party last night where they served the most wonderful brisket.  I need to get their recipe.  Yum!

Bonus! 8.  We are planning our next vacation and have lots of various ideas but I am so unsure of myself when planning.  What to do, what to do.  I hate the thought of spending so much money and then it flops.  I also need to realize that it needs to be fun for all of us, not just for one or two people.  Double ugg.

Random photo time: 

This is a bulletin board that I created at work this week.  It outlines the TLI grant that our district received.

Sunrise in Pensacola, FL in November

Mmm. . . no explanation needed right??

DARE to be a beautiful, smart kid

Meagan's school had an awards assembly at the end of the year. Here she is receiving an award. She was the third top reader in A.R. in the fifth grade, was the Top Lanugage Arts student, she made all A's all year, and she was recognized again for being in the Lone Star Challenge.
Fifth grade students also participate in the DARE program all year though their social studies class so they wear their graduation t-shirts to awards. DARE stands for Drug Awareness and Resistance Education. A local police officer comes into the schools and does lessons on drug awareness and resistance.

Meagan we are so proud of you!

Taking a deep breath . . . .

Here's why I haven't been blogging:

• Friday was the last day of school for kids and Saturday was the last workday for teachers for the 2008-2009 school year
• Reading Specialists are in charge of organizing summer school for all of the elementary schools in town
• Meagan finished her first year of middle school
• Meagan's birthday is coming up in just a couple of weeks
• Garrett finished kinder - sob, sob
• I helped to make a scrapbook for a staff member who left our school after 8 years
• I finally moved all of my stuff out of my old classroom
• I spent about $2500 (not my money!) on books/supplies for next year
• our kickball team had 5 or 6 games in last three weeks
• our kickball team won the last 10 games they played
• our kickball team won their 10th straight game in the bottom of the sixth inning to become the JUNIOR CHAMPIONS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

So, I've been a little busy. I have kept up (well, a little anyway) with my Twitter posts so I will have to reread them to work on blogging all of the things that have been going on around here the last couple of weeks.

All I've done the last couple of weeks in my house is the bare minimum. You know, washing spoons as we need them, making sure we have a clean uniform for both kids for the next day, making sure people have socks and underwear, and washing our kickball uniforms repeatedly.

Today I am cleaning house and then going to a meeting with Jimmy to pick the ALL STAR JUNIOR TEAM! Because, as the coaches of the team who won FIRST PLACE! we get to coach the All Star team and take them to the state tournament in Austin, Texas over the Fourth of July weekend. But, I promise, I will try to start blogging with some sort of regularity (is that even a word?) soon.

(I'm a little excited about winning first place in kickball - just in case you can't tell.)

Bronze, Silver, Silver

Please excuse the cookie - competing makes a kid hungry!
For most of the school year Meagan has been studying for the Lone Star Challenge. If you are familiar with Academic Decathlon or Pentathlon, it is very similar. It is the comperable activity for fourth, fifth, and sixth grade students.

If you are new to all of this - think athletic decathlon but with academics instead. Students study information on a given theme and then compete by testing in several subjects: math, science, social studies, reading, and essay. To complete the whole contest there is the Super Quiz event. This is a relay race of sorts but instead of running laps, students are answering questions.

The theme this year was Pop Culture of the 60's and 70's. Cool - in my opinion anyway.

Meagan won three medals: Bronze in essay, Silver in Individual Super Quiz (she got four out of her five questions correct), and Silver in Team Super Quiz.

We are so proud of you Meagan! Keep up the great work!

Surfin' U.S.A.

On Tuesday night Meagan performed at her school's P.T.A. program. They sang four songs: Let It Be, Surfin' U.S.A., a song in spanish, and another song that I can't remember right now.

I took this picture before we left the house.

This one was taken in between songs.

And here's one of Garrett. He did well during the meeting. I let him look through the pictures I have saved on my camera. That kept him quiet for, oh, two minutes or so. He watched the kids sing and stayed near his seat the rest of the time so I was happy.

I just wish he would lose this fake smile thing he has going on lately.

We're Back!!! (said in a sing song voice)

I haven't blogged in forever (my mom has reminded me of this EVERY time she talks to me) so here's a quick recap:

March 9 - 13 The last week of school before spring break is always crazy. I can't even remember what I did to tell you the truth. Oh yes, I remember now . . . the weekend before (March 7th) my DI team competed in their regional tournament. Meagan and I left the house at 5:45 AM and didn't return until 8:00 PM. Yes, you read that right. We were gone from the house for a total of 13 hours! My kids did a GREAT job, even if they didn't win a medal (sniff . . . sniff . . . sniff) I thought we were all done with DI and then come to find out people from Central Office were coming to school on Friday morning to watch my kids perform . . . when I hadn't planned on my kids performing. Anyway, I freaked out and then got over it and the kids did their play again. And everyone loved it. Big sigh of relief. Crisis averted.

This week was also Texas Public School Week. I had helped my counselor and principal put together a calendar of activities for the week so I was busy all week making sure we were ready for the events planned for each day. Monday was simple - kids wrote about what they wanted to be when they grow up, Tuesday seeds were planted, Wednesday college t-shirt/field trip day, Thursday made a graduation hat out of 500 cupcakes, and Friday we planned a picnic. Did I mention that a front blew in on Wednesday night bringing rain and temps in the high 40's??? Needless to say, the picnic was shot. I delivered fruit cups and decorated water bottles to each teacher and collapsed in my room in the afternoon and waited for the day to end.

Why did I want the day to end you ask??? Because we were going to VEGAS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and I needed to pack!

Garrett's PTA Program

In Februrary the kinder and first grade studnets performed at the school's monthly PTA program.

Here's a picture of Garrett at our house before the program. I got some really cute ones during the program but there were too many other kids in them to post them on the internet.

The kids sang three songs. Garrett's favorite was the Groundhog Hop. It's a really cute song about the groundhog seeing his shadow.

Garrett LOVES music and Miss Y. Thanks for all of your hard work!

Settling into my new job

For the last two weeks I have been having classes and have gotten into a routine.

In the mornings I see 28 kids, ages kinder to second grade. I have 5 classes with six kids in each class. (Well one class only has four kids but I need to find two more kids to pull in. The class was full but then two kids checked out of our school.)

I see each group for 30 minutes and I have five minutes between each group to walk around and find my next group of students.

All of those classes take place from 8:15 - 11:00.

At 11:00 I pull in fourth grade students for testing. I am doing IRI's on them. An IRI is an Individual Reading Inventory. It is a test that can be used to find a student's strengths and weaknesses as a reader. It also finds the reader's various reading levels. Once I finish testing them I will start working with a group of them on their weaknesses.

I have lunch around 12:00.

At 12:35 I go into a third grade classroom to work with kids who are struggling with various aspects of reading. The third graders are getting ready to take the Reading TAKS test on March 3rd. If a child does not pass this test they will not be promoted to fourth grade.

They are given two more opportunities to pass the test, but once a child has failed the test, self esteem issues and test anxiety usually set in and make it even worse for a child who probably already struggles in reading. This is why the TAKS test is referred to as a High Stakes test.

At 1:30 I pick up a group of students for my dyslexia group. I use a program called Language! with these students that so far, I really like.

At 2:30 I have my conference period. This is when I gather all of my materials for the next day, make copies, return e-mails, have meetings, you name it and it gets crammed into this 45 minutes of the day!

At 3:15 the bell rings. Since I no longer have a class of my own I do not tutor regularly. I do step in and tutor for other teachers when they are absent or have to leave early. If I do not tutor, I continue to prepare for the next day, week, etc.

I also coach DI, which stands for Destination Imagination, at least one day a week after school. Our big competition is coming up in March so we will also be meeting on Saturdays to get prepared for that. The kids are having a good time and have really learned a lot. Regardless of how they do at competition, we have had a great year in DI!

I created my own lesson plan format to keep track of all of my groups and what we are going in each group. I also have to document skills the children are succeeding at and skills that the children are still struggling with. If students are struggling with a skill, I then have to find an alternate activity and reteach that skill. The results of that activity also have to be documented.

All of this is due to R.T.I. which is short for Response to Intervention. R.T.I. is difficult to explain. Basically, every child who struggles needs to be identified. A plan needs to be created for each child and that child's progress is monitored as they work through that plan. (See what I mean about being difficult to explain??)

Wow, this turned into a really long entry. Sorry about that!

If you can read this, thank a teacher

I know these pictures aren't the best but I just had to have proof of what Garrett is able to do. Ignore my upside down name in black. He wrote his name and dog and log. Earlier in the evening he made dog with the magnetic letters on our refrigerator. I then asked him about making log. I was wondering if he could make the word family connection. He is doing great with rhyming so I want him to know that by finding rhyming words you have more words you can write.

He then wrote Go Go Go Fast. After he wrote it, he read it to me several times. Each time he read it to me he pointed to the word he was saying - moving his finger with each word he said. The rectangle is a period that got a little big as he was drawing it.

He wrote fast by saying the word slowly and stretching out the sounds. He did the same with dog while he was using the magnetic letters. He mixed the letters up and then respelled it without stretching the sounds out.
He then flipped the box over and wrote his sentence again.

Not bad at all for a kid who didn't know any of his sounds at the beginning year - not bad at all!

So, thank you Ms. P. Garrett loves you and learns so much every day. I can't even begin to tell you what a difference you are making in his life.

Earlier in the evening he pointed out commas that he saw on the TV. (They were showing a printed poster of some sort. I can't remember what for now.)

To finish up Thanksgiving . . .

Here is Grandma Blair (Jimmy's mom - green shirt) and Grandma Silly (my mom - yellow shirt) and Garrett at the Thanksgiving Dinner done by our school. Parents are invited to each lunch with their children when the cafeteria makes Thanksgiving dinner. Thank goodness for grandmas because I do not like turkey, dressing, gravy all mixed up and the day is so crazy there is no way someone could cover my class for me while I ate lunch with Garrett. Grandma Blair and Grandma Silly have been coming to my rescue for many years now, first by eating with Meagan and now with Garrett.
Here's Garrett with his McDonalds - he takes after his mom and doesn't eat turkey/gravy/dressing either. Plain white meat for him, thank you very much.
I wish he would realize that this *IS NOT* a real smile.

Thanksgiving Break is here!

We had a crazy week at school. Wait a minute . . . they are all crazy. Let me say that we had a crazier week than usual at school this week.

Here's some of what went on this week:

• Working from 8:00 - 10:00 P.M. on Monday night (and then grading at home until midnight) on grades that were due on Tuesday morning at 8:00 A.M.
• getting to school on Tuesday morning at 7:00 A.M. to finish grades (Mrs. T. is NOT happy when you submit late! :)
• Third grade held a parent meeting about the Reading TAKS test on Tuesday (only 10 parents showed up BOO!)
• I attended a science fair planning meeting on Tuesday
• one of my co-workers was out a couple of days (her poor baby has RSV and TWO types of flu)
• we had almost 300 parents join their children for Thanksgiving lunch on Thursday (thank goodness I didn't have anything to do with it except turn in the money my students brought it)
• Holiday picture day on Friday
• wearing regular clothes on Friday (not me, the students . . . they usually wear uniforms),
• early dismissal on Friday (a first for us for Thanksgiving. We've only gotten out early once before on the day of Thanksgiving break because the high school needed the buses for the the football team)
• a student brought cupcakes on Friday for her birthday, etc.. etc., etc.
• finished up benchmarking (we test at the end of each six weeks on science, social studies, math and reading usual bubble sheets that the teachers have to check by hand before turning in - but I'm NOT complaining - bubble sheets are much better than our own grade/analyze by hand method)
• be depressed about benchmark scores
• take care of field trip details for my DI team
• Staff luncheon on Friday (thank goodness we drew paper goods this time)
• turning in all of the end of the six weeks paperwork that was due
• handing out Book-It pizza coupons to students for November
• trying to download new curriculum for the third six weeks (our internet has been on strike at school lately and these documents have tons of pages so I am NOT going to print them at home!)

I am grateful for the whole week off for Thanksgiving. I plan on working in my room some to get ready for the three weeks that we have in December. Time is flying by and the TAKS test will be here before we know it. There is NO time to waste (not that there ever is).

I also need to clean my entire house because I am hosting Thanksgiving dinner for my parents and some good friends of ours.

Garrett's Kindergarten picture

Loss of Control

I hate that my child is no longer at my school. (By my school I mean the school that I teach at.)


I am so used to knowing everything that happens, everything that goes on, exactly how we do things, etc., etc., etc.


It is frustrating to not know exactly how a teacher wants something done. I don't want to tell my daughter to do things my way because what if, according to the new teacher, it isn't right??


I miss the days of popping my head into her classroom after school to make sure everything is going okay. I miss knowing exactly how each and every part of her day is going to go.


The reason I knew all of this stuff over the last several years is that I have been at my school for ten years. I know how things are done. I have worked with all of her previous teachers for at least a year or two before she was in their class. We have a fairly small campus and we are, for the most part, a close knit group.


Don't get me wrong; I am a respectful parent. I make sure that my child does things the way her teacher wants her to because I know that I want things done my way. (I usually have a good reason to want something a certain way and I know her teachers do too.)

Tonight I sent two e-mails to different teachers asking for clarification. One to her reading teacher about a question I had about a TAKS style reading passage and one to her social studies teacher about a project that Meagan says is due Friday. I hope that these teachers do not see me as a "helicopter parent" now.

I am just mourning the loss of my little girl. She is on her way to becoming a grown up and moving on to middle school is making this fact more evident each and every day.

Someone tell me that this is normal and that, given enough time, I'll get used to it.


I have learned a very valuable lesson from this though. It has made me have so much more sympathy for the parent who sends me a note or comes to my door or who calls me on the phone and wants to talk about their child!

Back to School Busy-ness sets in

First of all, I know I totally made up busy-ness. I was going to spell it with an i (business) but that's a totally different word.

Anyway, soccer practice started this week. Jimmy said it went really well. Jimmy is helping one of the other dads coach. He said the kids had a lot of fun and really worked hard. There are a total of six kids on the team. Three play on the field at one time. A little girl from Garrett's kinder class is on the team. We have practice twice a week (Tuesdays and Thursdays) and our first game is on Saturday, Sept. 27th. I'll post pictures!

I did not get to attend practice because I was at a technology training. A few years ago our district added an elementary technology person to our school district. She is a former teacher who is awesome! She figures out how to work all of the programs we have and then she meets with us once a six weeks or so to share information about how we can use technology in our classrooms. She also holds workshops after school and in the summer to teach us how to use these different programs in our classrooms. And the cool thing about these workshops? We actually get paid to attend them! She looks for websites/activities that we ask her too, etc. We have to turn in one technology project per six weeks and she has made this task SO much easier to complete! Thanks A - You rock!

Jimmy and I are still getting used to be the parents of a middle school child. At elementary school she had a responsibility folder. She wrote in it each day and her teacher initialed it. We signed it each night. Well now, she throws everything in a zippered binder and I have to dig through it and see what her homework it. This week I fell down on my job and this is why she came to me at 8:45 to show me her science study guide - FOR THE TEST THAT WAS THE NEXT DAY! Sigh. The bad thing . . . I think that this is only the beginning.

The good thing is that our district has a program where I can check all of her grades on line any time that I want to. I can see each assignment that has been counted for a grade and what grade she received.

Winter kickball will be starting soon for us so that is going to add two more nights of practice for us to attend. Jimmy and I both have to attend since he is the coach and I am the ball girl, I mean assistant coach. (I need to learn how to do that neat strike through thing.)

I need to pick my DI team and get started with meeting with them one day a week (after school). I know that tutoring will be starting soon.

Uggh . . . I don't like to have nothing to do, but it seems like my calendar is starting to fill up really fast!

Mr. Serious

Anyone who has met Garrett knows he isn't crazy about sitting still. He is all boy, always on the go, wanting to see things and touch things, and figure out how things work. He loves to play outside and get dirty.

However, in preschool he was very well behaved and the teachers had only good things to say about him. His only downfall is that he is very shy about speaking to grownups.

He has suddenly become interested in working on writing his letters. Nana bought him a Spiderman workbook on their last trip to the dollar store and he has enjoyed practicing with it. He gets frustrated easily however because he wants all of his letters to be perfect. When that happens I encourage him to go find something else to do. We then work a little more on letters later.

Even though he grumbles some mornings I know he really does like going to school. I hope that this continues (the enjoying, not the grumbling!) and he does well in school.

Classroom Pictures August 2008

Make a Smilebox slideshow

Well . . . the first week is over

My feet are killing me, my voice is almost gone at times, and I am exhausted!

On a good note:

Things have been going well behavior wise.

I am finished with one of the beginning of year tests I have to give and almost finished with the second test. (I have a third beginning of year test but I don't have to give it to too many of my kids.)

The new principal has been great about meeting with us and hearing our ideas for the year.

I am almost finished planning for next week (I even have some of the copies I need made already!)

We have a three day weekend! I want to use part of my free time to make some long range plans for reading. (My teaching partners plan math, science, and social studies.)

Meagan loves middle school and seems to have had no problems with the transition from elementary school.

Garrett is doing well in kindergarten. (His teacher, however, is more exhausted than I am. She has had 32 kids all week. We are in the process of adding another K teacher to make the classes smaller. She is in my prayers!)

On a totally different note: We are in the cone of uncertainty for Hurricane Gustav. Please pray for whoever will ultimately be in Gustav's path.

Check out this sign!!

It feels great to have all of our hard work pay off! (And by our I mean everyone at school - staff and students!)

First Day of School Pictures!

I'll write about the first day of school tomorrow - when I'm not so tired!

I work with the best teachers ever!

Here is a gift bag full of goodies that V brought me: Club crackers to ward off munchies during our planning period, a pretty pink mug for my water, a cool round hair brush, chocolate (yum!), Lysol spray and hand sanitizer. This is what E brought me: an adorable pen/note holder, two mini staplers (I'm famous for misplacing mine!), a note cube, a memo pad, hand sanitizer, and white out tape (we go through A LOT of this stuff!).
Thanks girls. I LOVED both goodie bags.

The two girls that I work with are amazing (and not just because they brought me great beginning of the year gifts)!

V and I have worked together for five years. She is the most organized person that I have EVER met. She is also a math whiz. She is busy with three beautiful children of her own but still finds time to get us organized for whatever is coming up. She is great with coming up with projects for all of our kids, but excels at working with gifted children.

E is new to our school. She was a first year teacher last year, however, if you walked into her room you would NEVER know it. She has reminded me what it is like to be a teacher who is excited about teaching and sees the students for who they really are. When you teach in a grade level with high stakes testing (and who doesn't these days??) it is easy to lose sight of what really matters. Working with E has allowed me to step back and see the big picture.

We are very close and work together extremely well. We complement each other. We can even complete each other's sentences. Somehow, I have the job as our spokesperson. (I don't know how that happened! <--- read with sarcasm!) V is our long range planner who keeps us organized, and E is our cheerleader who keeps us going, even when the going gets rough.

Girls, thank you for being you and making our grade level a great place to work!