My head spins just thinking about my schedule for the month of October!

It's going to be a busy month. Volleyball, HMC stuff (Harvard Model Congress), and school stuff will keep me quite insane.

Progress grades are due this week (Wednesday). I have done NO correcting since the beginning of the school year. Ugh. And I have a volleyball game on Tuesday.

If you don't hear from me, it's because I'm officially changing my mailing address and sleeping at school. :-)

So, does anyone have any relaxation techniques they are willing to share with me? I may need something soon - the lack of sleep is starting to catch up with me.

Happy Birthday Lorie!

Just wanted to wish my friend Lorie a very happy birthday today!

Lorie and I met at Western Illinois University and we lived in the dorms together. Our group used to call her Little Lorie (since I'm tall Lori and she was short Lorie).

We had some fun and amazing times in college. Too many memories to write down here but I will always remember how Lorie was (is) always a good friend to me.

Lorie has a great hubby and two kids (girls). She's been very blessed to have a great family.

Happy b-day kiddo! Lots of hugs!

I live for weekends! :-)

I have to admit it's been nice having weekends off. No second job. Just relax. Enjoy time with friends. Enjoy time with Ellie the Cat. Enjoy time with me. :-)

Other news:

*My sister adopted a dog! A friend of hers had a friend who's boss just had a baby and they were having a tough time with the baby and the dog. The dog is two years old. It's a half Yorkie, half Havanese mix. She tells me Maddy is a cutie pie! My sis said she would email me a pic of her baby soon. My sister (like me) is a HUGE dog person so she's going to make a GREAT MOM! How cute is this: My sister Mandy now has a Maddy baby! :-)

*School is good but busy. My colleagues are amazing and so supportive (not that they were not supportive in past years). Being in the freshman house is such a great support for me. We all look out for each other. My school has a different feel this year - almost like we are a REAL school. It's a good thing since there have been a lot of issues that the school needed to work on regarding teachers, students, and administration. Here is hoping to a wonderful school year.

*Volleyball is good too. My girls are improving and getting better each day. Last night we had a match and actually played three games (we play best out of three at the JV level). They were SO excited that I can't begin to describe it. I'm proud of them. They are happy and so am I. :-)

*Lots of old friends are contacting me through my Facebook account. Especially my high school friends. I only started the Facebook account when my former students from my first school encouraged me to set up an account. It's been nice getting in touch again with old friends (even a few old boyfriends!) :-)

*Ellie the Cat is wearing her new Halloween collar and she looks boooeatiful! :-)

Plans for the weekend: Going to go yard sale shopping with my friend Aileen today and do some cleaning around the condo. Sunday: rest and relax. Do some school work. I'm behind in my correcting. Ugh.

What are your exciting plans for the weekend????

I know . . . . it's been a while since I've checked in.

What can I say???? It's been a VERY busy few weeks between school and volleyball.

Life is good. Busy. It has been an exhausting few weeks getting back into the swing of things at school. The good news is that I no longer work on weekends so I can relax a bit. I still have tons of school work but at least I can sleep in on the weekends.

I have a normal teaching schedule again. No more 40 minute Preps (planning periods) on one day instead of the contractual 80 minutes per day like last year. The administration fixed all schedules so that the teachers have 80 minutes per day planning (at my school, we have block scheduling and by contract, we are supposed to have an 80 minute planning block every single day). I have A Block (first block of the day) as my planning block on red days and H Block (last block of the day) on white days. I'm teaching the same classes - World Studies (4 sections) and the local history class (one section per semester). We changed the curriculum a bit in World Studies so we hope to get further in the curriculum by the end of the school year. We cut five units out at the beginning of the year. We are now starting with the Middle Ages and hope to get to the end of the Cold War if not to the present day.

The freshman this year are VERY slow (academically and behaviorally) - even the Honors are not true Honor students. Reading and writing levels are terrible so we have our work cut out for us this year. My co-taught class is interesting . . . lots of behavior problems and serious learning disabilities. I have three students in that class that need a para (aka aide) with them plus there is a SPED teacher in the room with me. The good news about the co-teaching this year is that the social studies folks were given a new SPED co-teacher!!!!!! She's great!!!!!! VERY hands-on and from the looks of it, I think for the first time since my time at this school, my students will actually get their accommodations and the help they need to do well in the class!!! I'm so pumped that I can't contain my happiness! She's been working with the kids, helping me, and even doing discipline (remember my co-teacher from last year used to fall asleep in the back of the room and fart and did nothing but complain how horrible the kids were - in front of the kids).

I am having a tough time adjusting my time management during the school day. Since I'm coaching after school, I don't have all that time to get ready for the next day so I need to get better at being more productive during my Preps. It doesn't help that I spend my entire planning aka Prep at the one photocopier in the building that actually works trying to copy my stuff! We have five photocopiers for teacher use and only one has been working since the beginning of the school year. I need to point out that there are 160 teachers in my building and we all use the photocopiers. Ugh.

The building looks great! Most of the construction and renovations have been completed. The school looks like a real school! My classroom has a new LCD projector installed from the ceiling, new MAC computer, new teacher desk, new computer desk, new filing cabinet, and new student desks. On Thursday, my LCD decided to die on me so now I'm back to using my own LCD projector for my PowerPoints. I emailed the tech dept. about it so hopefully they can try and fix it. I think the projector might need to be sent back to the dealer to be fixed though. I tried to troubleshoot the problem online and the problem seems to be the cooling fan. It should be under warranty so it won't cost the school anything.

Volleyball has been fun. This is only the second year of the program so it's been a lot of working getting the girls ready to play. Varsity is doing well. My JV's are still learning to play the game and the skills. All of my girls have never played volleyball before (PE doesn't count since it's not real volleyball). So, I have my work cut out this season. They are having fun and working hard and that is all that I ask of them. The league we are playing in requires a lot of traveling for away games so I'm not coming back to school until late and then I have the 45 minute drive home afterwards. My days start at 5:00 am (I wake up at this time), get to school by 6:45 am, and I'm not getting home until after 9:00 pm! Of course since there is always stuff to do at home and getting ready for the next day (make lunch, school work, lay out clothes for school, reorganize my duffel bag for a practice or game, etc) I'm going to bed after 10:30 sometimes 11:00 pm. LONG day! And, since I'm exercising so much, I'm losing weight - which is a good thing. I went clothes shopping and I went down a size! Let's hope the weight loss continues and that I can maintain the loss after volleyball season ends. :-)

Since I'm not working on weekends, I've been trying to relax and enjoy myself a bit. Today, I'm going apple picking with my friend Michelle and her daughter.

To my teacher friends from the blog world: I hope you all had a great start and wishing you all a wonderful productive school year! :-)