Friday, February 1, 2008

It's February?

I can't believe it's already February...time is really flying by so, so fast!

I started classes a few weeks ago and they're going well. I only have class on Mondays and Tuesdays, but those are LONG days! I work Mondays and Wednesdays, which means I have Thursday and Friday off completely. That has been so nice - I'll take a busy first half of the week any day if it means I get a four day weekend! I can't express in words how ready I am to be done with school though. It's gotten old and I'm bored with learning the same thing over and over again in my education classes. I'm sure if I wanted to I could get something else out of them, but I've gotten to the point where I want to take my certification tests and just be done. No more tests, no more hour long drives, no more humongous reading assignments, no more stupid projects, no more laminating! Okay...well, I guess being a teacher I'll be doing lots of laminating...but no more PAYING to laminate Dolch Word Cards that are geared towards Kinder-3rd graders (I'm certifying to teach 4th - 8th graders...makes a LOT of sense, right?) Basically, I'm just done. Thank the Lord I only have this semester left of classes and then I get to be in the classroom all the time student teaching.

My mentor teacher this year is something else...I won't go into it fully, but let's just say that this is going to be a huge lesson in what NOT to do with your kids. It's also giving me a chance to show some military kids what a teacher should act like...teachers should definitely love their kids (why else would you do it??) and that's what I'm trying so, so hard to show these poor little fourth graders in the two hours that I'm there every week. :(

On a happy note, Greg and I joined a gym last week! It's not a huge gym, which means that there isn't a huge price tag on it (yay!) and it's really helping us in our goals. We've been doing awesome on working out, not eating out, and cooking really healthy meals at home. I joined a free website to help me track what I'm eating and how much I'm exercising and that has been so motivating to see all that in black and white. I feel so much better now that I'm really only putting healthy food into my body...I'm back to running, though it's only about 2 1/2 miles four times a week...at least it's something! It's the one part of working out that I really look forward to, and I'm taking full advantage of that!

Other than that, there's not a whole lot more that's new around here. Sammy is finally starting to understand how to tell us when she needs to go outside (thank the Lord!!) and she and Riley are really starting to love each other. They were even sleeping in the same bed the other night when we were getting ready to go to bed! :) I'm so glad to have both of them, although you couldn't imagine two dogs with two different personalities than the two of them. Sammy is a lot calmer than Riley, but way more skittish. Unfortunately, as I found out last week, this really applies to new people who get in her face. We are really going to have to work on that while she's still young.

I hope 2008 is treating you all well. I miss you guys and love you :)

1 comment:

d.kunz said...

so i was watching this commercial on AFN (Europe Military TV, basically). all the commercials you see are replaced with military ones (lets hope this doesn't apply to the pending SuperBowl)... anyway: it was about military kids whose parents are deployed and how much it bums them out and makes school harder for them. I had two thoughts:

1, what the hell is wrong with these people? why would they show this in Iraq? don't they know a distracted soldier/Marine is a dead one? And i'd certainly be distracted if I thought my kid was going through what these kids were describing! Luckily, all of my children are illegitimate.

and 2, I thought about what a burden it must be on those teachers to work with military children, given the inherent transitory state of military life.

and today I was comforted as to the second thought, thinking of YOU and teachers who share your philosophy and students who will one day be mentored by teachers like you. It gives me great joy to know that there are still teachers (and students) who do it because they love the children...

just my thought for you for the day...