A week Late!

Sorry we missed updating last week! Things got a bit crazy but have slowed down enough to where we can write once again! I will try to keep it short this week as either tonight or tomorrow I am going to post again with our Pumpkin Carving Adventures along with some new recipes :)

Teaching Life--

Phew! Things are picking up and this Thursday marks the end of the first quarter at Hanna Elk Mountain Jr. Sr. High school--which means I have "successfully" made it through 1/4 of my first year teaching! WooHoo!

Last Friday was the most exciting day of teaching in the past two weeks so I figured I would chat about that. Started out fairly normal with the other math teachers coming in and talking and me preparing for my first class. One of my students was in the office and seemed a bit frightened. After talking with him I found out there had been an encounter and he was scared to be at school. I talked to him for a bit a reassured him that there were a lot of teachers there to look out for him. Next, Algebra I came in and we were off to a good day--until it started again--the nagging, negative comments. My algebra I class has had some social issues lately trying to contain their negative opinions to themselves. I went off and told them that I was tired of hearing such negative comments in the classroom. I gave them a choice of shaping up their attitudes towards their peers or taking notes by themselves from the book.

Pre-Algebra went well and we had a blast talking about dolly parton aka Pamela Anderson aka Improper fractions :). After lunch I got to have a meeting with the superintendent and a school board member---SCARY. Essentially, they are going to be meeting with me about once a week to discuss how to improve "at risk" students scores and achievement levels. I was hired on to teach the at-risk students at HEM through a grant that was given to the school because they had not made so many consecutive years of AYP. The superintendent asked me a lot of philosophically hard questions as a teacher but I feel that I answered them pretty well---at least I hope so!

Consumer math had a rough talking to about being accountable for their own learning and taking the initiative to recall information from previous class lessons. Then geometry came. I love my geometry class. But today....there was a student....that caused me to write my first discipline slip as a first year teacher!

This student has trouble staying focused in class. He constantly is moving and not taking notes but as soon as I urge him to try harder so that he can play basketball, he can usually get on task. That was not Friday. He was insisting on not taking notes as usual in class but he was not disturbing students therefore it is his own grade and not any one else's that is being hindered. Well. he then proceeded to lay across the seats and start talking and swinging his head. I finally asked him to move seats. He asked why. I said because I asked you to. He then proceeded to tell me no and say that he was going to sit outside. He refused to come back into class.

I was caught in one of those scenarios that we talked about in college that I always froze up on. Inside, I felt like I froze up, but I think I did alright handling the situation and making sure that the students that were able and willing to learn, kept learning. We will see how he does this week....hmm

The week ended with me getting interviews by a newspaper in Rawlings--talking about a struggling school and what we are trying to do to improve.

School/Pool Life--Brandon says he will update after his test sometime in the middle of the week---boring! He went to a pool tournament last weekend and although he did not do very well standings wise, he learned a lot and said that it was a great experience. He is looking at going to quite a few more tournaments throughout the year.

Married Life

As always, married life is going well. We are spending as much time together as we can although life does get busy with me being gone most of the day. We made some of my mom's meatloaf the other day but we used sundried tomato basil cream cheese = delicious! Tonight, we are trying a honey mustard pork loin recipe my grandma send us and the fudge is cooling on the counter!

Also got some pretty sweet school pictures taken so if any of you want some let me know!

Other exciting news: Our bed came in!!!!!! yah!!! Here are some pictures:

Another post soon with Pumpkin Pictures!!!