Rolly

Several weeks ago while working Brandon got called out to go pick up a dog. When animal control isn't on duty it's up to normal patrol officers to go out and get them. Usually he picks up pits and other random dogs, but this time he picked up a puppy. He thought it was so cute that he sent me a picture and named him Rolly. He considered letting him ride around in his car with him because he was sweet and small and generally the kind of puppy that melts your heart, but he couldn't do that and took him over to the animal control building. Of course he told me all about him and mentioned him often over the next week or so. I encouraged him to ask about him and when he did he found out that we could foster him if we wanted so on Monday he went and got him and we are officially the foster parents of Rolly. Rolly is a Bernese mountain dog (with a dose of boxer) so he might grow to be pretty big, but for now he's a small, cute puppy that is much better behaved than Hershey. The one plus about Hershey is that he was house trained, which Rolly isn't. When he came to us Rolly had an upper respitory infection so we've been giving him antibiotics (that we don't have to pay for because we're fostering him). Colby is doing well with Rolly - he's his new buddy. And now I'm completely and utterly outnumbered when it comes to the male/female ratio around the house.

Not My Favorite School Day

So, we've been doing Social Studies remediation so that the kids that didn't pass the Social Studies SOL might pass on the retake. Out of our group of 10 only 2 passed. I felt really bad because those kids worked really hard and some of them REALLY knew their stuff. I can't help but think that the people who write those SOL tests are purposely wording things to make it difficult. Another English teacher went with me to tell them whether they passed or failed - it was one of the hardest things we've done in a while. Overall only 26% of the kids who retook the test passed.

Monday :-/

So...Colby is feeling better, somewhat. He is still doing a lot of cuddling and fussing and generally not being very pleasant to be around. I'm hoping that by the end of the week he'll be back to normal.

In other news we're starting a remediation schedule at school. I think its sort of...stupid. Sorry, I can't think of another word for it. We're supposed to take 30 minutes at the end of class on Wednesdays and either remediate or do enrichment. I find it stupid because if you're a decent teacher, you spend time remediating when your kids don't get a concept. I don't really need to have my principal tell me to remediate - If they don't get verbs we spend extra time on verbs (though why a 9th grader wouldn't get verbs is beyond me). I think I'll spend some time reading nonfiction articles and maybe do some activites with them. Other English teachers have thrown out the idea of doing silent reading, but I already do that on Tuesdays and Thursdays. I'm sure I'll think of something productive to do like a good little teacher. I'll let you know what happens.

Losing the Battle

This morning Colby is feeling a lot better. He's causing mischief and starting to play with his toys again, so all it well in Colby's world.

It's quite amazing that in one week our house can go from extreme clean to crazy messy. I feel so lazy because I just don't WANT to clean the house. And I know exactly why: It's a losing battle. You can never really win the battle over a clean house because there will always be something or someone cluttering it up. I certainly don't want to live in a nasty house, but if all the laundry isn't put away or Colby leaves toys out occasionally, I'm not really worried about it.

Nice Spring Day

Colby has been sick for the last couple of days. He woke up yesterday with an extremely red eye. When we went to the doctor he was also running a fever. That mean he had to stay home for the rest of the week and he got some eye drops as well. I can tell he's still not feeling very well because all he's been doing today is laying around the house watching TV. But that's better than crying for nearly an hour, which he did yesterday. It's a helpless feeling when your child feels terrible and you can do nothing about it.

Today was super nice. While Colby was napping I cleaned up the back yard a bit. That meant cleaning up the abundance of dog poo (clearly that's a popular thing to do on one's day off). I didn't finish cleaning up the poo...I got hot! Anyway...there's still tulips and daffodils poking through in the front flower beds so I'm pretty excited about that :-)

I got a catalog from JCPenny today. I now have the itch to go shopping, but since we've started the Financial Peace University I feel like I can't. Maybe one or two things this month and one or two next month? Maybe that will be okay. Maybe I'll hit Ross and see if I can find some things I want for a much lower price. I did some looking around online to see what the trends are looking like for this spring and I'm now certain that I'm no fashionista. But what I did like: the jewel colored trench coat (short, not long), the t-shirt layered with a collared shirt, and of course the jewel colored cardigan.

Happy Valentine's Day!

Today I went to the Building Leadership Team meeting as part of my internship. I was suprised at how little they accomplished. I'm going to ask of that's a normal meeting because if it is...it explains a lot.

Over the weekend Brandon and I went out to dinner. We tried to go to Outback, but with a 65-80 minute wait we decided to go to Panera instead. After that we hit the used book sale in the mall and Ben and Jerry's. I got Brandon a card that plays a Taylor Swift song (he loves Taylor) and some Little Debbie cakes since I never buy those for him. I have yet to recieve anything, though I haven't seen Brandon since this morning when he was really sleepy and I won't see him until tomorrow afternoon. The only thing that sort of marred the weekend was my dear father-in-law's behavior. I hope that when my kids are grown that they still come over for Sunday dinner and that I never, ever loose sight of how blessed I am during those occasions. I hope I never keep a running tab of how much my kids owe me and that instead I always show them how much I love them.

Thoughts for the Day

Today I got to sit in on a meeting with my principals and their consultant (a principal at a larger high school in northern virginia). Two things became abundantly clear at this meeting.

1. I don't know that I would want my head principal's job. For every little decision there is too much to think about. The tiniest decisions require you to think about students, teachers, central office and community. The biggest decisions...well lets just say I don't know how my principal doesn't leave school every day with a migraine. I have so much more respect for him now that I've gotten a glimpse into the things he must think about on a daily basis.

2. My school leadership is out of touch with teachers and students. There was nothing specific that was said, but there were several times that I thought that they didn't know the faculty well if they thought that decision was going to go over well. Or that, that idea would create the nightmare classes I'd only want to see on a silver screen horror movie. Brandon and I talked about how loosing touch is a problem with almost all leadership including his leadership at the PD. I guess that's just one thing I'll have to remember when I become a principal - loosing touch isn't helpful in any way.

Wasted Day

Today was a waste. I have probably posted before that parent-teacher conferences are basically a waste of time in my high school. Today was an even more extraordinarily useless. First of all, it snowed last night. When I woke up this morning, the news said we were closed. It didn't say anything about conferences or anything. So being the good teacher I was, I checked my e-mail and discovered that parent-teacher conferences were still on and we were to report at noon. What the heck! Parents probably assumed we weren't even having conferences because the news said we were closed! I basically spent seven hours at school doing nothing but helping come up with ideas for prom, which I believe is going to be awesome. I met with one parent. Count 'em. One. And there were many teachers that didn't even get the message that they were supposed to be there!

Oh, funny story from today. I dropped Colby off at daycare just in time for lunch and had some time to kill before noon so I went to Walmart. I ran into one of my fellow teachers and we started talking. All the sudden out of the corner of our eyes we see this woman. We both had to do a double take because we weren't sure what this woman was wearing. Unfortunately for both of us, she was wearing daisy dukes. In the middle of winter. With snow on the ground. And she didn't have the figure Daisy had. We both lost our trains of thought while thinking abut how horrified we were and had a good laugh about it later at school.

Not Feeling Well

I have not been feeling well lately. I guess I have a bug - I've been tired, naseous (sp?), gassy and today I had a bit of a migraine and had to take something in the middle of fourth block. Thank goodness I had some ibuprofen in my purse. I don't know what's wrong with me, but three days later I sincerely want it to go away.

We got back the Social Studies SOL scores last week. They were not good. Apparently the state decided to revamp the test and make it so that the kids had to use some higher level thinking skills, which in theory is okay. It's not okay, though, to do something like that and not warn teachers. So our school freaked out and those kids that qualify for a retake (they got a 375-399 on the test - 400 is passing) now have to do this intensive remediation. They are asking the English teachers to help, but I have no idea what exactly we're supposed to do beside make sure the kids are taking the notes like they're supposed to. I had nightmares on Monday night about helping with the remediation so I didn't sleep well. I think the first day went well, though, so it will be alright. Pray that all these kids pass the second time around otherwise our pass percentage will stay in the 60s.