Friday - the favorite day!!

This was a busy week.  March is the beginning of the end as far as school is concerned.  It's time to get ready for Spring Break, time to get ready for state testing, time to get ready for all the end-of-year stuff that goes along with teaching.

And it was Open House this week too.

Students are getting Spring Fever - and it will last until June - believe me.

But we always get through it.

Friday is one of the ways we get through it!!

School Daze!!

Me with my instructional aides Beth and Julie about 3 years ago.

I've probably posted these ruminations on prior occasions - maybe I do every August in fact.  But I am looking to start school again in two weeks - summer vacation flies by faster and faster every year!!  (I  posed the question once, "Why does the time seem to go by faster every year?" and someone answered, "Because you are older and so there is more time to flash by."  Not sure if that's the answer, but it's a thought!)

(Note I said  summer vacation - summer is still with us and will be for many weeks I fear!!)

But when I contemplate the start of the school year - which for some points in my life truly did mean the end of summer weather and the change of seasons - I am impressed with the thought that school and all its controlling  parameters has dictated most of the days of my life.

I don't remember much before age 5 - and I don't remember a whole lot of specifics about my childhood.  But school figures prominently in most of the memories!  

Walking to school.  Walking to school with friends.  Walking to school with siblings.  Riding the bus one year when we shared a campus with Northridge Junior High.  Hiding my socks in the bushes when it was not cool to wear socks - and putting them back on when I headed home. Packing lunches.  Frosting the graham crackers for those lunches.  Begging for a lunch box and thermos.  Usually not getting either.  Choosing new school clothes.  Dreaming about having a dyed to match sweater set.  Wondering whose class I would be in.  End of school.  Report cards.  Homework.  Folding your paper so that there was an answer column.  Reports.  Projects.  Dad helping me with my posters.  Dad covering our books with paper sack book covers.  School carnivals.  Blackboard monitors.  Cafeteria food.  Rainy day schedules.  Pledge of allegiance.  Chalk dust.  Proms.  School plays.  Football games.  P.E. clothes - washing and ironing said P.E. clothes on Sunday night!  Studying for tests.  Exulting over good scores.  Despair over poor scores.  

 

(Mrs. Anderson saying, "Barbara, are you going on with math?"  "No, ma'am, I'm not."  "Well, I will give you a C in Trig then.  But you aren't ready to go on to Calculus."  "You have my word, Mrs. Anderson,  I will never take another math class."  I kept my word - I'm so old you could take 4 years of a foreign language in college to fill the math requirement!!)

Dorm life.  Roommates.  Choosing majors.  Homecoming.  Saturday night stomps at Cannon Center.  Hamburgers in the Cougar Eat.  Guys.  Cute guys.  Y Center Grand Opening.  Meeting Harry at same.  Working at the BYU Laundry.  Studying.  Study Abroad.  Reading, reading and more reading.  Writing, writing, and more writing.  Commencement.  Grad school.  Teaching Freshman Comp.

I could probably go on forever!!

The only times I was not in school were dictated by the times I was in school.  For a brief few months after I graduated from high school, in January of 1963, I worked in Saugus to save money for college.  So even though I was not in school, school was the reason I was where I was.

When I graduated from college, I went on the graduate school.  We even chose our wedding date based on the school calendar!  And when Harry graduated, we went on the graduate school at the University of Utah.  Even though I was not in school, I worked in the Registrar's Office and my schedule was dictated by school calendars and events.

When I stopped working when Bonny was born, Harry was still in school.  When he was through with school and I was expecting Harry, I enrolled in some classes.  For a few years I guess school did not impact us directly - maybe from the time Harry was born until Bonny started school 3 years later.

Then we started on the road to having our children in public school.  That started in 1975 - and ended in 2005.  There was even one year when Bonny was in college, Harry was in high school, Phoebe was in middle school, Eliza was in elementary school, Hannah was in nursery school - and Noah was home in diapers!  That was quite a year!

 

School memories and kids take up a lifetime.  Packing more lunches.  Frosting more graham crackers.  Buying more lunch boxes each year that usually end up being replaced by paper sacks.  Walking kids to school.  Driving kids to school.  Helping with projects, and homework, and carnivals.  Dressing up for Halloween.  Cupcakes for birthdays.  Room mothering.  Parent teacher conferences.  Book fairs.   Seminary.  Commencements.  Getting kids up in the a.m.  Getting kids to bed on time at night. 

In the midst of our children being in school, I started substituting.  Soon I was teaching half-time, then full-time.  School drove the days of our lives - not just public school either - soon college drove our schedules too - and drove wedding dates and vacations and trips too!

I am still teaching.  School still runs the show.  No one is in college at present - but probably before I retire, we will see Ara in college!

School will always run the show I suspect!!

(Where would our lives be without school?)

(This could be a book!)

Like mother, like daughter maybe?

As you well know, I've been sorting and scanning photos - an activity fraught with peril - you have to stop a lot and reminisce - it's a tough job, someone has to do it!!

But it's fun too - the above photos show Eliza and I as 8th graders - but I don't have pierced ears!!  Otherwise it's a perfect resemblance, si??

What's going on!!

There's not a lot to report - school started, Dad ran the Hood to Coast once again, I managed alone for several days, Dad got home - life goes on!!

We are looking forward to some detailed reports on the Hurricane Adventure, the Iceland Adventure, the London Adventure - anything else I need to hear about??

So I will tell you that school started once more - it always does. It's a bit chaotic at Clifton. We have a new principal - Tammy's little sister Jenny in fact!! But she doesn't start until September 12th. Meanwhile, our SPED rolls grew by leaps and bounds that no one had anticipated - and I ended up with class sizes of 18 and 24!! (RSP classes are usually maxed out at 15, mostly they are 8 to 10)

I could have been persuaded to take an early retirement on Monday.

Things looked better on Tuesday.

This too will pass!

Celebrating the Day!

Maybe having to go to work on your birthday is not so bad - especially if you work with my good friend Marcie!!

She actually bakes cakes for everyone on our lunchroom crew on their special day - and she takes orders!! Mine was chocolate - yum!!

And she remembers details like my love of Circus Peanuts!! And I scored her special sugar cookies too!!

Good thing the fire marshall was not around!! I managed to blow all six out with one breath!! Not too bad for an old lady!

I may never want to retire - it would mean not having lunch each day with Marcie. She not only bakes, she provides scintillating conversation too!

The b-day crown says "Queen of Words!"

Amber Burdick stopped by with flowers from her mom and the fam - they did that last year too - came to school with flowers - now that really brightens up the old workplace!

After all that sugar, I opted for Chicken Noodle Soup at Panera's - with Dad and Noah.

And we went and saw Cave of Forgotten Dreams - a documentary about the cave paintings in France - a good film - one we'd heard about and wanted to see - we even stayed awake for most of it!! (A long day at work, a soft seat, a dark room - it's not always easy to stay awake for pre-historic art!)

That was me - Queen for the Day - with a throne even!!

Came home to voice mails from Hannah, Eliza, Phoebe and family, Bonny and family, and my brother Lyn. Three of them were musical voice mails - and brought a smile to my face indeed!

The living room is awash in flowers and gifts from my friends - and the piano is covered with cards and Facebook is full of messages.

Joy sent me a fun gift - needs a post of its own - which is coming.

A good day! Thanks to all who helped make it so!!

Ding, dong, the witch is dead - no, ding, dong the school bell rang!!

The day was fairly uneventful. We usually have a staff meeting a couple of days before school starts - but with budget cuts, that meeting day ended up being a "furlough" day. We usually have a session called "nuts and bolts" with all the "housekeeping" kinds of instruction for us - taking roll, changing schedules, room assignments, discipline changes, new staff, etc.

So we just started "cold" - no meetings, no instructions, nada.

And all went well.

Makes you wonder about the whole concept of meetings, doesn't it?

Sad News

On Sunday, Bonnie Card asked if I had any info on the teacher from Mayflower School who been killed in a car accident on Saturday. She said her name was Maggie Clark, but it didn't ring a bell. She said the teacher traveling with her was injured - and it was Jan Dunbar, who I do know. And who was Noah's teacher in 2nd grade.

On Wednesday when I saw Noah, I asked him if he remembered a Maggie Clark and told him about the accident. He replied, "Of course I remember her - she was my 1st grade teacher!!"

So much for my memory!! (In my defense, I was thinking in terms of a colleague, one I called Maggie, rather than one of my kids' teachers, who I would undoubtedly have called Miss Clark! As soon as he said that, I remembered her - and the classroom even, because I used to volunteer in there.)

Noah said, "Didn't I ever tell you about the time she let me be the teacher?" I think if he'd told me the story, I would have remembered it. But then, back in the day of small children in the house, I may have been listening with half an ear. Note to readers: Try retelling the stories you tell your parents - just in case they don't get it the first time!!

He said that he had been a bit rowdy and inattentive, so she said, "Noah, do you want to teach the class?" So he said yes. He said that she went and sat in his seat and folded her hands in her lap and waited for him to teach her!! When I asked him how it went, he said, "It was chaos of course. I wasn't a teacher. But she just sat there, acting the way a student should act." He noted that he'd never forgotten the experience.

From all I have read, she was a wonderful teacher - and she will be sorely missed. The entire Mayflower School - staff and students - are reeling from the blow. I sometimes wonder, when I read in the paper about tragic deaths of a teacher, just how our site would operate if that happened. School sites, especially small ones like Monrovia, are pretty much like a second family. (And for some, they might even be all the family they have.)

There is some food for thought here.

A "Big" Weekend!

It was all about the Egg Drop on Friday. We do it the Friday before spring break, so parents won't take their kids out a day early!! (We lose a lot of ADA money that way.)

Kyle was either on the roof of the auditorium dropping egg drop projects or else he was on the ground checking to see the results. I was only on the ground checking results!! My kids had mixed results. The best one was a box with holes on either side and a sock run through the holes. The egg was tightly twisted into the middle of the sock. It worked!! (It wasn't one of my kids - I suggested the idea - I'd found it on the Internet - but no one would buy it. The boy who used it is in the class, but he's not one of "mine!" The class is a collaborative class.)

Some of the most elaborate devices didn't work well at all - they broke apart on impact so the egg suffered! One boy used the puffed rice I brought and put it in a ziploc bag - and it survived the fall!

After our temple stint this weekend, be headed off to Rene's 75th birthday party. She has 8 sisters - and two of them share her birthday with her - and they are the last 3 sisters!!

Now we are off to Portland and Gearhart - I may or may not have an opportunity to post - depends on how busy Phoebe keeps me!!

I guess this is why I go to work every day!

Every month, I celebrate the birthdays for that month. I used to give school supplies, because kids seemed to need and appreciate them. But believe it or not, they were pretty expensive. Then I was doing Baskin Robbins gift certificates. But the last three times I've gone to BR, they've been out of certificates. I was getting desperate, so I went over to Wendy's and got some gift cards there. We had 6 birthdays - all at the beginning of the month too.

I'm pretty sure the office manager told these boys to write the thank you notes - they are TA's for her 6th period - but that doesn't make these notes any less special.

These two boys can be a handful, but they are basically sweet - your typical 13 and 14 year old!!

And I can deduct it all on my taxes!!

Not much going on!!

Tonight was Open House at my school. I ended up staying there and not even going home until it was over at 8:30. (I was pretty behind in my work!!) I only had about a half dozen parents show up. Which is par for the course.

Over all there wasn't a huge turnout - it is middle school, after all. But with budget cuts and furlough days and belt-tightening and all, the teachers are saying, "Let's get rid of Open House. If they have to cut salaries to keep jobs, fine. But don't make us stay after to greet parents as they walk through our rooms and judge things with a critical eye."

I don't mind Open House - or Back to School Night. Parents don't often come to my room - special ed kids have a yearly IEP meeting and parents feel connected that way. And some special ed kids don't like being in special ed and want out - especially at the middle school level - so they certainly don't want to visit there after hours!! But I enjoy sitting in my room and getting "caught up" on all the work that has piled up. And it doesn't hurt to have a reason to spruce up your room now and then.

And Harry brought me dinner!

What we do on Tuesdays around here

Well, one thing we do on Tuesdays around here is get together with the Girls of '45 and go to dinner - and chat up a storm!! The four of us all work or worked at Clifton - other than that we don't have lots in common - but we were all born in 1945 - and that alone seems to keep us with plenty to talk about. There is something about being with your peers!!

This Tuesday afternoon, I had a little after school workshop for those students of mine in the Science class where I am a collaborative teacher with the general ed teacher. They have a project due on Friday - a Newton Scooter - a vehicle that has to travel 1.5 meters - and has to be self-propelled - thus demonstrating Newton's Third Law. (If you google Newton Scooter, you will see some interesting little contests mostly at middle schools across the country.)

I found directions for a "mini car" that used a playing card, wheels from an old toy car, balloons, straws and duct tape - I got some "hot pink" duct tape - a big hit!

After some trial and error, we got two of them to "qualify" - that is, they went in a straight line for 1.5 meters. George and Hailey were having a fine time - it was kind of fun to hear their laughter and excitement. I used to groan when my kids had science projects - I'm sorry now I was such a sourpuss about them!

I'll let you know how it goes on Friday.