Guilty as charged!

Yep...I'm checking. Nope...I'm not doing anything exciting either. In the midst of trying to get started teaching 6th grade math, I am also working as on of the Continuous School Improvement Co-chairs in charge of our accreditation this year. Long process and lots of work to do. I was also elected to be on the School Advisory Council...dunno what they do, but I have to miss tomorrow morning to be trained. I was NOT happy to hear that as my students are very sweet, but very mathematically challenged. Last week I was out for a full day to do the CSI Status Report and apparently my sub couldn't read because she didn't do anything I had in my plans! UGH! AND I have to miss another half day at the end of next week when CSI meets with our principal and the head of the accreditation team to prepare for the accreditation visit in February. I'm starting to realize that when I agreed to do CSI I should have kept teaching Social Studies because it is MUCH easier to come up with a sub plan that doesn't waste the kid's time for SS than for math. The down-side of that would have been staying on the same team. The upside is that I LOVE my new team. The other teachers on it are so awesome and we are having a great time!

Teaching 6th grade is very different from 7th grade. I forgot how scared they are at the beginning of the year. It was even hard to start explaining things to them. I would start saying something about getting math help during Seminar and hands would go up. "What is Seminar?" I would try to explain that Seminar is on B days...more hands. "What are B days?" And so on and so forth. I went on three tours with kids who had also been on three tours, and they still couldn't figure out how to get to the cafeteria. And then came locker opening time! These guys don't know clockwise and counterclockwise, so it was quite an adventure trying to teach 17 of them how to do the locker at the same time. A few ended up in tears... Ya gotta love sixth graders!

In other news...there is a pottery class at the community center that I am going to go to on Wednesday. Of course I said that last week and then totally forgot to go! After waiting a whole year for them to get one started there, I forgot to go! UGH! I was so aggravated!

Evelyn and I are thinking about some travel plans. We are looking into going to Hong Kong over Thanksgiving and Australia over Christmas (anyone wanna meet me there?). I figure that if I can afford both I should do it because on the ultra slim chance that I get transferred this summer, I really wouldn't want to miss Australia. Don't know about Hong Kong, but she says it is neat and others agree, so why not!

Okay...gotta get back to writing my sub plan for tomorrow! Sayonara!