Sunday, September 30, 2007

Busy week - what else is new?

The life of M-Dawg is always busy and overwhelming. This past week was NO exception! Let's re-cap, shall we?

Monday and Tuesday: Not so overwhelming. I stayed late at school on both days since the kids had a project due at the end of the week. Still had my cold and was feeling miserable!

Wednesday: Early release for kids. Professional Day for teachers. We had to sit in these meetings about assessment. Sorta boring. At the end of the day, we went back into the auditorium to finish up our day. The administration put together this PowerPoint about AYP (Adequate Yearly Progress - it's a No Child Left Behind thing in education). We didn't make it this year. The way the PowerPoint was presented to us was very insulting to a lot of teachers and they were upset. We didn't qualify in ANY of our subgroups. We never pass in Special Ed or Black/Hispanic categories (my guess is that most schools are in the same position). So people left for the day upset and angry because we were not provided with any feedback. Also, people are upset that we STILL don't have a contract. The day ended on a very negative note. It looks like the union is finally going to try to do something. I think we are going to do work to rule (which means that I will only work at school my contractual hours) and we are going to start protesting at the School Committee Meetings every other week. It looks like it might get stressful and scary the next few months at my school. My cold is still here and not going away!

Thursday: Back to School Night. A group of us went out to dinner before the events started with the parents. I stayed at school until 9:00 pm. And, then I got to drive home late that night. Bad turnout by the way of parents. It's so upsetting that more parents didn't show up. I lost my voice from talking and my cold is still kicking my butt!

Friday: Exhausted from night before. After school, I had to run shopping to get food and drinks for the dance that my class was co-sponsoring that evening. Had one of the kids come with me (had parental and administration persmission) to the stores to help carry the stuff. Back to school to set up everything for the dance. I would not be chaperoning the dance since I'd already made plans for that evening (the other advisor NEVER checked with me to see if I was free that night so I told him I couldn't chaperone the event). Stayed at school to get some correcting done until I had to meet Janet in Burlington. We had a nice night of catching up and chatting. I miss my Nutty! It was a late night - I didn't get home until almost midnight!

Saturday: Delta Kappa Gamma State Conference in Taunton, MA. I had to meet our chapter president at 6:45 AM and off we drove down to Taunton for the day! It was a long day of meetings and workshops! My head was killing me and I was exhausted! I wasn't feeling feel for most of the day but kept smiling! :-) I went to some great workshops. One workshop was about Vertical Simulation Learning and the other was on Africa and service learning. Very cool stuff! But again, I was exhausted and came home and crashed! Went to bed at 7:30 pm!

So, that was my week. My cold is still here. I slept until 9:00 am. Wow! Over 12 hours of sleeping!

How was your week?

Tuesday, September 25, 2007

Icky cold needs to go away - NOW! :-(

Sorry for not posting anything in a while.

I'm alive.

Barely.

I caught a nasty head cold thingy from school. It's WAYYYYY TOOOO early in the school year to be calling in sick and to have icky germs and illnesses spreading around my building! UGHY!

I've been in bed by 8:30 every night.

My new best friend: Nyquil!

Sorry about the ranting. It had to be done.

End of story.

Thursday, September 20, 2007

List of happies for the week

I'm going w/ the theme from Lauren and Janet. I sorta kind of need a list of happies. It's been a busy and rough few weeks of school (I'll save the vent session for another post).

Happies:
*My Mom - thanks Mom for listening to me rant and rave about school stuff.
*Ellie the Cat - she's my baby girl and I love her so much! She puts a smile on my face when I walk into the door of my condo.
*My job - as much as I bitch and rant and rave about school, I do still love what I do.
*My friends aka "peeps" - thanks for always commenting on my blog, supporting me, emailing or calling me, and just being a damn good friend to me! :-)
*Matchbox Twenty! Rob Thomas! Need I say more??????? Countdown to release of new CD - 11 more days baby!!! Wahooooo!!!!! :-) I've seen Rob in concert in Boston - can't wait to see Matchbox Twenty!!!!!!!!!!!!

What's your list of happies for the week???????

Tuesday, September 18, 2007

Oops - should've posted about Constitution Day on Monday!

Bad M-Dawg! I didn't post anything yesterday on the 2005 federally-mandated Constitution Day! Oops!

FYI: Federal law requires that all high schools, colleges and universities that receive federal funds hold an educational event about the Constitution on September 17.

For your reading pleasure, here are a few sites to check out!

The National Archives - lesson plan ideas

Justice Learning Web Page

Constitution Day, Inc.

Constitution Center

Constitutional Right Foundation

Center for Civic Education

Are you "Constitutioned" out yet????? :-)

Sunday, September 16, 2007

Beautiful and relaxing day

The scoop on what I did today:

Enjoyed a relaxing day with my friend Aileen. We got up a tad bit early to eat some breakfast at the Hallow Cafe in Amesbury. Very yummy food by the way. We then ventured off to Todd Farm and Flea Market. Aileen was on a mission to find a bureau for her clothes. The poor gal has all her clothes in boxes or in baskets on the floor of her loft condo. I saw a lot of cool furniture. I wish I had the space (and the money) to buy some of it. Flea markets are sorta interesting because it's a hit or miss on items. I guess it depends if you are looking for something specific. I just went for the ride and the company.

Her first purchase was this fabulous metal table from the 1950's. The table reminded me of the table my Auntie had in HER kitchen way back in the day! It was refinished and looked amazing! It will look great in her kitchen. Her second purchase was the bureau. She only had $113 and they wanted $120 but she talked them down. The bureau looks great! We loaded both items into her car and drove back to her place to unload them.

We were going to go to Plum Island but I had a ton of stuff to do so Aileen dropped me off at my place.

I ran to Market Basket for some food for the week. I'm trying to be better about making my lunch instead of buying my lunch. I also eat out a lot so I'm trying to cut back on that too.

I just finished two loads of laundry and I'm doing school work. Well, technically, I'm blogging right now but ya get the idea! :-)

The day was beautiful here today. Perfect Fall weather! It's hard to believe that Fall is almost here. Fall is my favorite time of the year.

How was your weekend??????

Saturday, September 15, 2007

It's a rainy day here in New England!

It's raining here. Sorta a good day to stay in bed and read a good book kind of day.

I'm exhausted from my first full week back to school. My white days are rough. I teach the first block. 2nd block I have 45 minutes of hall duty and 45 minutes of common planning with my freshman team. 3rd block I teach. 4th block I teach. Oh, the block is 90 minutes each by the way.

I need to point out that my white day schedule is a violation of our old contract (We are in the second year of working without a contract). We are to have a planning block every single day. There are six teachers in the freshman house that have the schedule that I have right now. Someone went to the union to complain (not that the union will do anything about it anyway - our union is VERY weak at this school).

My issue is that I'm all for supporting the team. However, I don't want to be taken advantage of either. As a freshman house teacher, we all go above and beyond our hours as it is. I just want to be treated fairly.

I'm even more annoyed with the situation since this is the second year I'm making the same salary. For those of you not in the teaching world, we usually get a "small" increase in pay every year. Trust me - it's not even a cost of living raise but it's something. I've tried to vow to not stay late after school like I normally would do but I've been staying late since I can't get my work done in the time given to me during school hours. It's VERY frustrating - I really don't want to be doing a lot of my work at home anymore. So what's a gal to do?

So, what am I doing this weekend? Sleeping in, resting, and relaxing. I have a ton of school work to get done but instead I'm relaxing and beating up myself for not being more productive.

Ughy! :-(

Friday, September 14, 2007

Quick shout out Anniversary to Janet and Jeff!

Happy Anniversary to Janet and Jeff!

Enjoy your special day!

Lots of hugs!!!! :-)

Wednesday, September 12, 2007

Hump Day!

I'm already exhausted and it's only Wednesday!

Have a faculty meeting today after school. I'm going to try to leave school after that meeting - I've been staying late at school again and I promised myself I would start leaving at a decent time.

Also, been trying to get to bed earlier since I get up at 5:00 AM! Yes, I get up THAT early for school!

My body is on a completely different time zone.

I hope to get back into the swing of things soon -

How many of you have a hard time getting up in the morning?????

Monday, September 10, 2007

Sept 11th

I took these photos in July 2002 on a weekend visit to New York City. Across the street from the World Trade Center stood a small chapel. This chapel would become a make shift memorial for the victims of Sept. 11th. These photos capture the different memorabilia of family members, friends, and strangers from all over the United States and world that sent their thoughts and prayers to the site.

I remember exactly where I was on that day. I'm sure most people of a certain age remember too. It's very similar to the generation that was around when John F. Kennedy was assassinated - they know where they were and what they were doing at the time he was killed.

It's a sad memory. A memory that will impact me for the rest of my life. A memory of a beautiful early September day when innocent people were killed for no reason. A day that will forever be etched in my heart and thoughts.

My thoughts and prayers go out to the families and friends of Sept 11th.

We will NEVER forget!

Saturday, September 08, 2007

Back to school!

A quote from Billy Madison (1995):

"Back to school! Back to school, to prove to Dad that I'm not a fool! I got my lunch packed up, my boots tied tight, I hope I don't get in a fight! Ohhhh, back to school! Back to school! Back to school! Well, here goes nothing!" Watch the clip here.

Well, I'm back into the swing of things at school. We had professional days on Tuesday and Wednesday. Tuesday was a day of meetings. Wednesday was freshman orientation. My team came up with creative ways to present the four major goals of freshman house to our students. The entire freshman house was divided into four teams and then each team was divided into groups of twenty. Each group had a 30 minute presentation from each of their core teachers (History, English, Bio, and Math) about one of the four goals of the freshman house. My goal was "9th graders will take responsibility for their learning."

This is what I did:
1) Welcome to World Studies and quick intro on me.
2) Broke them up into groups and gave them a big piece of butcher paper with the word Responsibility on it and a marker. Told them as a group, to try and come up with a definition of what responsibility means. After 10 minutes, they hung up their sheets and presented their info to the class.
3) Hung up the "real" definition of responsibility according to Mr. Webster (I wrote this out the day before on a piece of butcher paper) and we compared the dictionary version to their own.
4) I then asked them what are some ways that they can take responsibility their learning. Wrote out the ways on butcher paper. We discussed what they wrote.
5) The freshman house has a rubric for each of the goals. I passed out a copy of the rubric goal, went over the expectations with them, and the kids checked off where they thought they were on each of the expectations. Some of them admitted that they "needed improvement."
6) I passed out a strip of paper and a marker to each of them. I asked them to think of one goal they could work on this school year on how could they be responsible for their learning. They were to write their name on the paper and then write their goal for the year of the paper. I then told them that I will take each of these strips of paper and connect them into a chain. A chain of responsibility! After I connected them (stapled) together, I hung the chain across the classroom. It's a huge chain! :-)

The activity went very well. Afterwards, my team members and I met to check in. We all agreed that there will be one class that may be a bit on the rambunctious side! :-) We all agreed to keep them in check right at the beginning.

First day of school on Thursday went well. I have a small section of Salem in History class. My co-taught class is large and of course, I'm receiving no support from my SPED teacher. He just sits in the back of the classroom. We have some severe cases this year that really need some help so I don't know what is going to happen. I can only provide the support that I can provide to these kids. Last year, I advocated for support in my classroom. When I went to the head teacher of SPED, her response was this, "Suck it up. He's retiring at the end of the school year!" Nice support, eh?

My second day (White Day) is going to be rough. I teach the first, third, and fourth blocks. The second block, I have 45 minutes of duty and 45 minutes of common planning with my team. I need to point out that my schedule is a serious violation of contract. We are supposed to have a planning period every day. I have two planning periods on red day. None on white day. There are only five freshman teachers that have the same kind of schedule as me and no one wants to "cause any waves" since they are not tenured (I am only in my second year at this school). Since I've worked in other schools and this is my 9th year teaching, I do SEE what is going on and how wrong it is for the administration to take advantage of us. I was so exhausted yesterday when I came home. You need that break in the day away from the kids. Those of you that teach now EXACTLY what I'm talking about! :-)

Plans for the weekend:
*Going to a psychic party this afternoon. I really don't believe in this stuff but thought it would be fun!
*School work!
*Cleaning the condo.
*Quality ME time???? Maybe????? :-)

Enjoy your weekend folks! :-)

Tuesday, September 04, 2007

Had lobsta's!

The photo is a little blurry but ya get the idea! I'm holding a seven pound lobster! Rich (notice arm in pic holding other lobster) is holding the eight pounder!

On Monday, I drove out to spend the day with my friend Lauren. We did lunch here. Spent the day chatting and catching up since it's been forever since we've seen each other!

Her boyfriend, Rich, likes to go lobster diving off the coast of Gloucester so imagine my surprise when I was invited for dinner to help eat one of these beasts!

We had corn-on-the-cob and fresh lobster! Yummy!

There was so much meat in these lobsters! I was full immediately!

I also got to hang out with Giz the Superdog! He's such a cutie pie!

Thanks to Lauren, Rich, and Giz for being such wonderful hosts! :-)

Sunday, September 02, 2007

It's Official - I'm done! :-)

No more working weekends.

No more working late hours during the week.

I finally will have a life on the weekends. I can attend parties, go out with my friends, etc.

I worked my last shift at my second job yesterday. The only two things that I'm sad about is that I will miss the usual dogs that come into the store and I will miss the gals that I worked with at the store. They are a great group of ladies who really have a caring nature and good heart.

So, what is M-Dawg to do with her free time?????? :-)

Saturday, September 01, 2007

Last Day at Paws!

Long story but I got roped into working one more day at Paws.

There is a festival going in Newburyport so with folks giving notice, the store is short of workers. And, there has been more drama with the owner so she's not coming into work.

I told the owner that I would work today and that's it! No more! I already made plans for the rest of my weekend so no more work!

I really would like to enjoy having the long weekend off.

A six hour shift and I'm officially done!

Joy! :-)