New School District Grattitudes!

1. A lot of what I got critisized for at my last school, this school embraces!
a. Inclusion as much as possible.
b. Academic focus until the student goes to the after high school program! HELLO! I tried to do that with my students. If there was a chance they could learn to read, then I was trying very hard to teach them to read. Certain very influential people though I should just be working on social skills and life skills with these students, and not academics. This was one of my biggest "head butting" things. Social skills and life skills can be taught in every grade, but if a student has a chance to learn to read, then I'm going to take that change and run with it! High expectations are a good thing.
c. Para's in this district actually get training that they can use! They have supervisors at District who take care of them. They aren't under the sole guidence of one special ed teacher in the school. Yahoo!!!!!!!!!! If the para needs training on something, then the district person will take care of it. Thank goodness!
d. We don't have to do all of the work for billing for medicaid! And they don't do any academic, or specialist traing (speech, OT, PT) billing outside of the therapy room. That cuts a lot of money from their budget, but also a lot of work for me!
e. They use a really cool software program that actually communicates with Power school. This means if someone's address changes, or their phone number, it will change in our program as well. That is totally cool!

That is totally cool! I'm excited to be working with this district. Seems really great so far! And while I was sitting there listening to all of their values that were mine last year, I felt so good. I felt validated that I'm a good teacher and that all of the poeple who disagreed were wrong. Or at least just don't have the same values as me. :)

I'm going to go to my school tomorrow and meet my principal, and anyone else who is there. I will get my lap top! Wahoo! I get one to work on IEPs. We get to take them to meetings too to makes changes on the IEPs and take notes. Isn't that neat? :)

Happy Birthday Joe, Jamie, Faith, and Gavin!

We had a mass birthday party this evening at my mom's house! Joe, Jamie, and Faith just had their birthdays. And Gavin, my super cute nephew, is about to have his birthday. So we had one big party! It was fun. It is so nice to see all of my family. We filled up the table, and that is with two of my siblings and their spouses missing. When we're all together, we have to put kids in the kitchen at the kitchen table.

I'm so glad I'm going to be here for all of the birthdays from now until May. :) And all of the Sunday dinners, and all of the holidays. :)

I got a job!

I got a half time job at Desert Sage Elementary in North Glendale. I am going to be working with the very special ed again. Basically what I do up here, but I will only be half time! That is awesome because I will have more time to spend with the girls. :) And I'll have more time to work on my Master's. I have to do an Electronic Portfolio, and a research paper this school year, so I'll have a lot to do! It is nice to go to Phoenix all set up and ready to go. :)

You are never going to guess what I did!

A couple of bird dogs got into our pond next to our swimming pool. There are some baby ducks, who are almost full grown, and the dogs would not get out! A couple of clueless teenage boys were trying to get them out. One of the boys even got in the water. But he wasn't even trying very hard to get the dog out. So after half an hour I went over there, jumped in the pond and got one of the dogs out. Some people who live on the pond have a black lab that they train for hunting. They had a dead duck in their freezer. So the boy got that and threw it in the water. Then the other dog finally came out! Bird dogs are trained to only get out of the water with a dead bird. Apparently they swim and swim and swim until they get a bird. The ducks were teasing the dogs and just staying a bit ahead of the dogs. They were just swimming around and around.

It was a good swim. The water was cold in the middle. :)

Cute Toes and Grattitudes

The girls and I did our nails today. We want to have cute nails for all of our play on these last three days of our time in Boise. We're going to the water park tonight. And the next three days we're going to go to the water park. Gotta have cute nails for that. :)

1. I'm grateful for friends who are going to be here for me when I get back. I'm going to miss them all.

2. I'm grateful that I have a Church to come back to when I get back. I'm going to miss them all.

3. I'm grateful that I'll have a beautiful house to come back to. I'll miss it.

I'll be updating you on all the fun we're going to try to squeeze into the next few days! :)

One week to go!

Wow! One week to go until the girls and I embark on our adventure. We are going to be staying in Phoenix with my mom for the school year. The girls are enrolled in school, and I have a job (pending reference checks). Joe is going to be going to Holland for a good part of the school year, so the girls and I are taking this chance to live in Phoenix. The girls will be spoiled to death by there grandparents. I want them to be able to get to know my parents better. My dad and mom are sooooooo excited! This is the next best thing to us actually moving down there.

I'm aprihensive because this means I will not be with Joe. I am going to miss him so much. He is going to be able to visit us a few times during the school year. I'm also going to miss my home. Our little town is growing so much and will look a lot different by the time we get home.

I really should start packing. YIKES! I packed my school things for my Master's Degree. But after that I got sick and haven't had a chance to pack anything else. I've been sleeping a lot and am almost better. I still have a cough, and a bit of chest congestion. But at least I have my singing voice back. It is torture trying to sing with the songs on our local Christian Music station. That is another thing I'm going to miss. We have an awesome radio station here, KTSY. The Christian Music station in Phoenix doesn't come in real well in West Phoenix. :( I'll have to listen to KTSY on my lap top when I'm working on my homework. :)

Weekend grattitudes

F wanted me to take this picture of her and Maggie yesterday. She wants a picture to remember Maggie by. Goofy! We can go see Maggie every week if she wants. (Maggie is going to stay with my sil when we're in Phoenix)

Weekend grattitudes:

1. I'm feeling a lot better than one week ago. My bronchitis is still here, but getting better. Thank goodness!

2. I finished another week of statistics! Wahoo! I have to do another week today. I'm behind since I was sick. I'm almost done with that class. :)

3. Sports Camp at 2nd Baptist was a hit! Jamie had fun with Cheerleading, and Faith had fun with soccor. Neither girl wanted to go to sports camp, but both had fun once they got there. :)

4. Faith is getting caught up with her reading. She may still be a little behind once school starts, but she'll be way ahead of where she was when school was done. :) My parents will be a huge help with Faith when we get down there. :)

We are all looking forward to getting healthy again so we can go to the water park. If we are rested enough by tomorrow evening, we'll go with some friends. :)

Statistics is stressing me out!

My Statistics class is stressing me out! I put all of these numbers in the computer, and then it spit more numbers out. Well, what do I do with these numbers now? URG! I hope to get some help from my teacher soon.

Summer Sick days?

What is up with this summer? URG! As soon as school got done, I got sick. I had a cough for three weeks. That finally left and we had a couple good weeks. Then BAM! the girls and I got another cold! It was the worst head cold I have had in a long time. I was going through the kleenex like crazy! I had to carry a kleenex box with me on the 4th of July! Then over the weekend it turned and went into my chest. I just got done being sick in my chest, so I headed to the doc in the box. I got hooked up and am now just starting to recover. I'm still exhausted, but getting better. Jamie has a bit of a cough, and Faith has quite a cough. URG!

This week is crazy too. Faith has summer school in the morning to help with her reading. And in the evening we have Sports Camp at Church. Faith is going soccer and Jamie is doing cheerleading. I'm helping with the snacks. Last night I took the night off because I was feeling so sick.

I hope you all are having a good summer. :)

My sister's Baby is still growing! Whew!

The doctor looked at Katie's baby and the baby is still growing. Whew! Thank goodness! She is 8 weeks along now. Praise God that all is well. This is an answer to prayer.

Yeah for Doctors!

Well, my annoying head cold went into me chest, of course! Since I have asthma, even the simplist of colds go straight to my chest. GRRR!! Well, instead of stretching out the suffering, I went to the doctor today, on a Sunday. He gave me some steriods and antibiotic. I already feel a bit better. I love ZPacks. :) whew! I'm working on my finals. It is so hard when I just feel like sleeping. But I need to get it all done by midnight. :)

Prayers needed

My sister has stated bleeding again. :( We think she might be having a miscarriage again. Please pray for her and Dan. If she is miscarrying, then this will be her 3rd miscarriage. I wish there was something I could do. All we can do it pray and pray and pray

2nd interview of the week went well!

I had my second interview of the week today. It went well. I hope I get this one. The princpal and resource teacher were very nice. It is for a .5 job at a school near my mom's house. I would love to have a .5 job. Then I'd have time to work on my master's and still have time to be with the girls. And maybe even have time to hang out with my mom and dad. :)

Wall-E

For a child this was a very good movie. There was a cute story of two robots falling in love. That was too cute. Then there was the space ship with the fat lazy people riding around in hover lounge chairs talking and shopping on screens in front of their faces. When they try to walk for the first time, they look like big babies. That part of the story is cute. The part that the kids probably won't get is the preachy part. The earth is overrun with garbage because people buy so much stuff that they then make so much trash the world is covered with it. I'm sure the kids don't get the "green" of the movie. But for adults, it is kind of like a lecture.

Over all, it was worth the mattinee price. We'll probably buy it because the robot story was so cute. If it helps the future leaders of the world recycle and look around their environment and take notice of the world, than the not so subtle message will work. :)