Here's some of what I've been up to lately:
I took these two lovely ladies to Chick Fil A for a Halloween party. It was the first time I've done something fun with my students outside of school, and it was really nice. Yes, it made for a very long day. But it was totally worth it to see how much fun they were having. Plus they're both very quiet in class, so it was great to see them come out of their shells. They were very giggly!
Friday we had a school-wide Harvest Festival. Each class painted a pumpkin. I had a lot of fun painting the pumpkin with my class. Somehow everyone got along and no one argued about how the pumpkin should look. We named ours Benjamin, after a student who was on my class roster the first day but then never came. So we sometimes talk about him, cause I made a cubby and nametag for him and stuff. The day I wore my glasses to school (and apparently looked like Harry Potter), I kept taking them off and calling my students Benjamin, which they thought was hilarious. So they also thought it was hilarious that we named our pumpkin Benjamin. They kept talking to him like he was really there, and then kept telling him to be quiet and to follow the rules.
Here's my class with our finished pumpkin. We won the "Charlie Brown Pumpkin Award." I'm not sure exactly what that was supposed to mean. Maybe our pumpkin looked like Charlie Brown. Or maybe it was like the dinky little tree from Charlie Brown's Christmas that was pretty lame but still lovable. Either way, I think our pumpkin turned out great and could have gotten a better award. But the kids were happy, and that's what matters, right? Not their teacher winning a cool-sounding award.
At our Festival, the whole school came outside to look at the pumpkins and get the awards, and then we did line dancing! This actually turned out to be really fun. I think the original intention was to do square dancing or country line dancing, but we ended up doing the Cupid Shuffle, the Electric Slide, the Cha Cha Slide, and the Macarena. Luckily, since I am a professional wedding attendee, I am skilled in all of these dances. We also attempted the "Boot Scootin Boogie," which I vaguely remember from college. But we did that one last, and people were running out of steam.
After dancing, we went back to the classrooms and had fall snacks. I baked some yummy pumpkin chocolate chip bread for my class, and my students liked it a lot. Most of them had never tried pumpkin or had only had pumpkin pie. Chef Paul also graciously visited the school to make butternut squash soup for us that was really, really good. I don't have the recipe, but I tried to make my own butternut squash soup last night with my new (hand-me-down) immersion blender. I also used potatoes and yams and carrots, and it was pretty delicious! I think squash of various kinds has been my main source of sustenance the past few days, which has been fun. I made some good pumpkin pancakes today. It's been relaxing for me to cook after school, and there's no pressure, since I'm the only person who has to eat it.
The other thing I've been up to is preparing for and taking the GREs. Not as fun. I took them yesterday, and it went OK I guess. It's funny, cause I don't even know what a good score is. I think I did about average, maybe slightly above average. But not great. It was hard for me to focus for the whole test, which makes sense I guess, because I haven't had to do anything remotely like that since college. And the last semester of college I did student teaching, so I wasn't taking any tests then. I forgot how to do a lot of math stuff (like the slope of a line! I remembered the formula but not what it actually meant!) and my vocabulary sure hasn't improved since college. But that's OK. Most of the grad school programs I'm looking at don't require the GREs for a masters anyway. So now that that's done, I guess the next step is picking programs and applying. Yikes. And in the meantime, still trying to figure out if this actually what I want to do!
November will go really quickly I think. We have two three-day weeks of school coming up. This week the staff is going to Camden on Thursday and Friday for the Urban Promise International Summit. I used to laugh at the name, cause it was really just the US and Canada, but now we actually have other countries too, so I'll stop making fun of it. Then the next week we have Thursday and Friday off again for conferences and the banquet. Then a full week, and then Thanksgiving. Oh man. Then Christmas! I'm excited already. I want to do a lot of cool Christmas things with my class. And host a Christmas party and make lots of good food. And maybe find a place to wear the "fancy Christmas party" shirt I really wanted and got for Christmas, but haven't had an occasion to wear. For now though, I'm going to enjoy another month of fall and pretty leaves and squash and pumpkin and pumpkin pie lattes and wearing my puffy vest instead of having to wear a real coat and going on nature walks with my class to collect leaves. It's pretty great.
I took these two lovely ladies to Chick Fil A for a Halloween party. It was the first time I've done something fun with my students outside of school, and it was really nice. Yes, it made for a very long day. But it was totally worth it to see how much fun they were having. Plus they're both very quiet in class, so it was great to see them come out of their shells. They were very giggly!
Friday we had a school-wide Harvest Festival. Each class painted a pumpkin. I had a lot of fun painting the pumpkin with my class. Somehow everyone got along and no one argued about how the pumpkin should look. We named ours Benjamin, after a student who was on my class roster the first day but then never came. So we sometimes talk about him, cause I made a cubby and nametag for him and stuff. The day I wore my glasses to school (and apparently looked like Harry Potter), I kept taking them off and calling my students Benjamin, which they thought was hilarious. So they also thought it was hilarious that we named our pumpkin Benjamin. They kept talking to him like he was really there, and then kept telling him to be quiet and to follow the rules.
Here's my class with our finished pumpkin. We won the "Charlie Brown Pumpkin Award." I'm not sure exactly what that was supposed to mean. Maybe our pumpkin looked like Charlie Brown. Or maybe it was like the dinky little tree from Charlie Brown's Christmas that was pretty lame but still lovable. Either way, I think our pumpkin turned out great and could have gotten a better award. But the kids were happy, and that's what matters, right? Not their teacher winning a cool-sounding award.
At our Festival, the whole school came outside to look at the pumpkins and get the awards, and then we did line dancing! This actually turned out to be really fun. I think the original intention was to do square dancing or country line dancing, but we ended up doing the Cupid Shuffle, the Electric Slide, the Cha Cha Slide, and the Macarena. Luckily, since I am a professional wedding attendee, I am skilled in all of these dances. We also attempted the "Boot Scootin Boogie," which I vaguely remember from college. But we did that one last, and people were running out of steam.After dancing, we went back to the classrooms and had fall snacks. I baked some yummy pumpkin chocolate chip bread for my class, and my students liked it a lot. Most of them had never tried pumpkin or had only had pumpkin pie. Chef Paul also graciously visited the school to make butternut squash soup for us that was really, really good. I don't have the recipe, but I tried to make my own butternut squash soup last night with my new (hand-me-down) immersion blender. I also used potatoes and yams and carrots, and it was pretty delicious! I think squash of various kinds has been my main source of sustenance the past few days, which has been fun. I made some good pumpkin pancakes today. It's been relaxing for me to cook after school, and there's no pressure, since I'm the only person who has to eat it.
The other thing I've been up to is preparing for and taking the GREs. Not as fun. I took them yesterday, and it went OK I guess. It's funny, cause I don't even know what a good score is. I think I did about average, maybe slightly above average. But not great. It was hard for me to focus for the whole test, which makes sense I guess, because I haven't had to do anything remotely like that since college. And the last semester of college I did student teaching, so I wasn't taking any tests then. I forgot how to do a lot of math stuff (like the slope of a line! I remembered the formula but not what it actually meant!) and my vocabulary sure hasn't improved since college. But that's OK. Most of the grad school programs I'm looking at don't require the GREs for a masters anyway. So now that that's done, I guess the next step is picking programs and applying. Yikes. And in the meantime, still trying to figure out if this actually what I want to do!
November will go really quickly I think. We have two three-day weeks of school coming up. This week the staff is going to Camden on Thursday and Friday for the Urban Promise International Summit. I used to laugh at the name, cause it was really just the US and Canada, but now we actually have other countries too, so I'll stop making fun of it. Then the next week we have Thursday and Friday off again for conferences and the banquet. Then a full week, and then Thanksgiving. Oh man. Then Christmas! I'm excited already. I want to do a lot of cool Christmas things with my class. And host a Christmas party and make lots of good food. And maybe find a place to wear the "fancy Christmas party" shirt I really wanted and got for Christmas, but haven't had an occasion to wear. For now though, I'm going to enjoy another month of fall and pretty leaves and squash and pumpkin and pumpkin pie lattes and wearing my puffy vest instead of having to wear a real coat and going on nature walks with my class to collect leaves. It's pretty great.
Comments