Work

Work has been a bit crazy lately. The first weeks of school are always the most difficult for a teacher (in my eyes). I feel like I have yet to find a balance and get into the "groove" of things. I blame it the fact that I've been working late into the afternoon at school and then coming home and working until bedtime. On what, you may ask? I don't know. Organizing myself, I suppose. I spent all last night reorganizing my Physical Science unit and its binder. Took me forever, but now I have a revised (and better) game plan for teaching the unit in a way that makes a lot of sense to me and hopefully will make even more sense for my students.

Anyhoo... enough "teacher talk".

I haven't had a moment to sit and even think "wedding." In fact, I've been so crazily busy that there are times I forget that we're planning a wedding. We have some major decisions to make soon and I hope we're making the right ones. I'm trying to listen to God's voice, but I think I'm not doing good enough at listening to Him and what He has to say. I just hope we don't make the wrong decision and then regret it later. Ugh.

Good news is I've found a seamstress that is going to alter my dress for me. I hope it doesn't cost me a fortune.

More good news is I think I'm going to finally start a .mac account, which means I'll be moving this blog over to a new (and much better!!!) website sometime next month. Plus, I have tons I need to update on... including our recent Big Sur road trip this weekend (I have 600+ photos to organize!) but for now, I think I'm going to organize my math binder/unit for this quarter (hehehe... I can't help it!) and then relax for the night. I need it. My boys (in my class) are driving me crazy!!!

Lastly, and the best news of the summer... we got our state test scores back last week. My grade level scored 2nd in the district in math out of 45+ schools!!! Which means that the way we've changed our math instruction to incorporate more inquiry-based learning using the Japanese lesson design WORKED! I have two kids that scored a perfect! That's so amazing.

AND.... the news gets even better... we scored FIRST in the district for fifth grade science!!!

When I found out, we were hiking in Point Lobos and I was just doing a "happy dance" for like fifteen minutes.

It's so amazing because we've put so much work into making ourselves more effective as a math and science teacher and it's just so validating to know that our students did so well because of it.

(and our language arts scores weren't bad either... 5th in the district!)



WOO HOO!!!