The Inaugural Post

Welcome to the first Thursday post of 2010! I'm sliding in near the deadline. I would have posted earlier but tv, facebook, and then a phone conversation got in my way.

There are few things as invigorating as a conversation with a good friend. Laughing, sharing feelings and experiences, finding that sense of kinship. I always feel more alive after talking with a kindred spirit. Teaching, as much as it deals with people, is often a lonely experience. Children don't have the same level of social maturity (obviously) and you can't talk to them the way you can talk to a good friend. So you can sometimes feel alone in a room full of people. Having chats with kindred sprits becomes even more important after a day dealing with nine-year-olds.

Since the beginning of the year, I've decided my two new year's resolutions are to do the Best Life Diet (from Oprah's trainer) and to work through Life Makeovers, a book that was also featured on Oprah. (Please no comments on my conversion to the Cult of Oprah). So far, it's going all right. I started off strong with the diet (which luckily doesn't require much change on my part) but the added exercise that I want to be doing is very tough after a day of work, on my feet all day. But I am not going to give up!

I'm also trying to actually be ON TIME to work. I am not a morning person, and as much as I'd love to be one of those reliable, on-time people...I'm not. But it is part of my job and I want to start holding myself to a higher standard this year. I'm happy to report I was on-time for the first three days, and only 5 minutes late today. I'm going to finish the week out with a bang and be on time tomorrow! Wish me luck.

School is really going well this week - I really feel like I came back from vacation with all engines go. I was observed Monday by the instructional coach and told I was doing a great job. I have been getting hugs from my students. Tuesday, one of my students who had just NOT been getting rounding (like 17 rounds to 20) GOT IT! And then it was like a domino effect, more and more of my Math Lab students (who are the low low low kids) GOT IT! We did rounding again today and then adding and it was awesome - we had some slight hiccups, like when adding 40 and 70, they got 200 (got to 100 and stopped counting by 10s) but still - I finally, after weeks of feeling like we were treading water, or even sinking, in Math Lab, seem to have made progress! Yay!