Looking back at my experiences in English, I realized that I have always loved reading. It’s a part of who I am. I inhale books. My students are amazed with all the books I read and how fast. We have a challenge going; they are setting their goal to read 100 pages or more a week (some have goals of 400 pgs!) if I keep up with my goal of 600. The point is, I’m a reader, of almost every kind of book out there. I love love love reading and how it helps me go to new worlds and introduces me to new ideas and ways of thinking. Each book becomes a part of who I am. (Sidenote: I just read “The Hunger Games” this week- really interesting in a disturbing way–I really hope it will become a series!)

On the other hand, I’ve never felt like a writer.

When I was younger, between 13-17, I wrote a lot of short stories and poetry on my own. Lots of teenage angst and drama. But I rarely showed it to anyone because I was embarrassed about how horrible it was. I did it just for myself–not something I would ever seriously consider “writing.”

And, I mean, naturally, I write papers. You can’t make it through high school or college without writing those. And it’s definitely a kind of writing. I even was in journalism in high school and enjoyed that. But I never felt like my teachers encouraged me to be a writer. We wrote a lot, but I never felt like anything I wrote really translated into my own life. Then in my English Education classes in college, suddenly we were told to focus on our students; focus on encouraging them to feel like they were writers and had more control of what they were writing, and how it was useful to them.

This year in my own teaching, I’m trying to teach that to my 7th graders. I want them to feel like writers. I want to encourage them and conference with them, but it’s hard because I didn’t have that when I was growing up. My teachers were supportive and wonderful in their own ways, but we never had things like “writing workshops” or “mini-lessons” in writing.

What really got me thinking about my own writing was something that happened this week. We’ve been alternating talking about poetry and persuasive writing. We have “mini-lessons” were for 15-20 minutes, I focus on just one aspect of writing/poetry and THEN students have time to write in their notebooks and revise the work that they have, using the different lessons. In the middle of one of the poetry lessons, one of my students asked, “Could we see some of your poetry?” And it happened in more than one class. And the kids got really excited about seeing my own writing.

It’s been awhile since I wrote for myself. In college, I rarely had a time or chance to. The time I felt the most secure in writing was in my Shakespeare class and my professor told me that my papers could be worked into an honors thesis. Maybe I should take up Jared’s suggestion and start writing seriously again. He finds my ideas entertaining. 🙂 And I really did love writing, and do, if I just had enough time!

I’m into my third week of teaching 7th grade!

This week has been so interesting. Hurricane Ike has been a big deal here, as a lot of refugees had to come here from Houston/Galveston. Well, the schools here work with the Red Cross to offer a place for refugees to stay–and my school was almost one of those. Teachers here apparently also double as volunteers/helpers when refugees are staying at their schools, so there was a bit of drama and stress due to that, as the school kept on being alerted that we were on and then off again a few times. 🙂 Fortunately, while those areas by the coast (like Houston) look like they’ve been bombed or something, we didn’t even have a drop of rain. It was a nice breezy day, partially cloudy.

Teaching has been so wonderful. I absolutely love the people I work with. They are dedicated to the students and so nice and helpful towards newbies like me.

Some highlights of the week are:

1) This was a partial highlight… one of my sweetest students’ family had to move suddenly due to a rent problem. That part made me sad, but it was so amazing to see how the other students treated her that last day. They all made her this big card and had everyone (including teachers) sign it. She also made me a little card (out of two index cards) as a goodbye gift to me. I’m going to miss her, but I also was so happy that her last day went so well at school and that she made ME a card over it.

2) One of my students knew how much I wanted to read the 4th book of the Lightning Thief series, (Battle of the Labyrinth), so he came to me right before the last class (he’s in my first class) and said, “Mrs. Boothe! I know you want to read this book–I just finished this in math class, so you can read it now!”

Say it with me… “Awwwwww!”

3) One student found this hilarious list of the most commonly mispronounced words. He thought it was really funny, so he printed out the list for me and gave to to me in class!!! So neat!

I’m so lucky to be here. The only downsides are all the extra stuff that I have to do… like being lunch detention lady and trying to keep up with lesson planning and contacting parents… and trying to get enough rest and dealing with the headaches. I need to call the doctor really soon …maybe monday… and see if there’s anything we can do to make these headaches stop. They are getting worse and worse again…

Jared and I also went “window shopping” for houses last weekend and today. This means (for us, at least) driving around neighborhoods looking for house flyers to get an idea of what areas we could afford, and the houses in that neighborhood. We saw some really neat things, like 15 deer in the middle of a residential area of the city… so neat! We also have hope that we might actually be able to afford a home before next summer, which would be so amazing! We really need to save up… but we’ll keep our fingers crossed!

I have successfully made it through my very first week of teaching on my own in middle school!!!!

I love Canyon Ridge Middle School! The students there are great. The other teachers, overall, are even better. I absolutely love my co-workers. They are absolutely, posititutely the most supportive and friendly bunch I have ever met! I feel so blessed and lucky every single day I am there that I stumbled across this job.

The only really bad day was Friday; it all started when my car battery was dead in the morning when I wanted to head out a little early. Fortunately, Jared was still home and our cars live next to each other, so he jump started mine and I made it to school in okay time. Then…. Language Arts classes had to take the students down to get pictures, so I had to go through that drama 3 times and my last class acted like a bunch of monkeys. My head started to really really hurt, and I had to tell them off when we all got back to class. Fortunately, they listened well after that. Each time we did photos though, it took a good 45 minutes out of class, so that was frustrating too. It’s better to over plan than to under plan, though.

Yesterday was the best though. Friday night I crashed about 9:30 and slept until 8:30-9:00 the next morning. I must have really needed my sleep to crash like that. After getting ready for the day and just hanging out and relaxing with Jared, we went out to lunch to one of our favorite places, Texadelphia, which has to have the best cheese beefsteak sandwiches ever. Then Jared surprised me and took me to the nearest Apple store and we used my teacher id to get me a new macbook!!!! We got a really good deal–We got the macbook, $100 off, iPod touch for free, and a printer for free.

It was a really big purchase, but I am really excited. My laptop has been a good, sturdy lappy for 5 years, but it’s getting old. Jared’s laptop is even more decrepid than mine, so it’s nice to have a reliable computer. 🙂 Especially because I’ve wanted a macbook for ages! 🙂 My husband is the best.

So, as you all can probably tell, it’s been a good week. I am really excited for this school year, and I think as long as I can get my headaches under control, everything will be really good!

Well, it’s been a bit since I last posted, but with good reason. The past two weeks I have been in training with Leander ISD. Apparently, all the new to the district people have an extra week of training, and then this past week they had all teachers doing some time in the school and reviewing curriculum. I can understand where the district is coming from, but I really wish they didn’t feel the need to cram loads of information into my head right before the school year starts. It hasn’t helped me prepare for the REAL reason I want to be there in the first place-working with the students!

The upside of the training is that there were a lot of other new to district teachers at Canyon Ridge, so I got to make friends with a lot of people I probably wouldn’t have been able to get to know otherwise. I also have a “mentor” as I am considered “New to Profession” (first year teacher) whose name is Carie. She’s been a lot of help in watching out for me and giving me good ideas for the beginning of the year. We’re actually going out with her and her boyfriend Mark for dinner tonight, as they both have been in Austin for a lot longer than we have and know some good places to try. 🙂

Anyways, My birthday was great, thanks to the wonderful man I married. I don’t know what I would do without him. He had to work a lot that week, but he still made the time to come home early and take me out to try sushi! I had tried cheap sushi once before a long time ago, so I was really nervous, but we went to downtown Austin and gave it a go! It was great!!! I can’t wait to go back there again. We had the Godzilla; “Salmon, Avocado and Cucumber drizzled with spicy teriyaki sauce, covered with tempura flakes.” MMMMMMMM!!!! the other one we tried wasn’t as good, but it was still a great experience.

Afterwards, we walked for about 5 minutes to Congress Bridge, which apparently is well known for housing a large colony of bats in the summertime, and the best time to see them out and flying around is in August. We thought we might be too late to see them as it was getting pretty dark, but we weren’t! there were thousands of these tiny bats swarming around under the bridge; it was really neat to see. Afterwards, we came home and ate some great Costco monstrously large chocolate cake that Jared bought. What a great guy he is!

and now, as for me, I am lesson planning. I have a fairly good outline of next week already planned, and I’m excited to get started and actually meet my students for the year. I only wish that I could get rid of these headaches.

I can’t believe how fast time flies. Two weeks ago, I got a call offering to interview with the Leander ISD, and two days after that, interviewed with the principal of Canyon Ridge Middle School and was offered a position teaching 7th grade English. I’m still waiting for all the paperwork to go through, but yesterday I met with a couple of the other Language Arts/English teachers and got the key to my room so I can start organizing things! It’s just amazing to me how things somehow fall into place.

I am a bundle of excited nervousness. The way the school is assessing the students is really new and uncommon. Everything gets a grade of 1-4, and assignments focus on only one or two “traits” like “focus” or “mechanics”. A “1” is that the trait is not evident. “2” is that it’s basically there but not quite solid; “3” is that they are proficient, and “4” is advanced. It makes sense, but it’s going to be kind of strange to work around that… I don’t know how I feel entirely about that. Also, the scheduling of the periods are different than anything I’ve ever been involved in. It is exciting to note that the class sizes are really nice and small- compared to my class of 35 and 36 while student teaching, the largest they allow here is 25, and last year, some of the teachers only had 3 classes of 15 or so…. so no more than 50 students total! I’m definitely not in Utah anymore.

Now I just need to figure out what the heck is wrong with my health, we’d be pretty much good to go.

In other news, tallying up the votes I got (some were emailed to me), the Pink bag is in the lead by one vote. If you have an opinion- vote soon (unless, of course, you already voted…)! Jared refuses to give me his opinion on two such girlie bags. 😉