to me!
Despite the crappy school day, I had a pretty memorable birthday.  It began, as usual, with a call from my mother at 6:30 singing “Happy Birthday.”  She does this every year and it feels like the length of the song gets longer each year (even though the words remain the same).  And when I [...]

Student M stayed after to talk with me about some of her troubles. She needed an ear and I was glad to to be there for her.
We got to talking some more and I suggested that she write some of her thoughts on paper – perhaps in a journal. She said that someone she [...]

This afternoon, student A stayed afterschool to finish her classwork.  In class, she is often off-task and has difficulty keeping her mouth closed long enough to get her work done.  She also takes about 10 minutes to get settled in a 90-minute class, so she hardly ever finishes the Brain Burner (aka warm-up) and then [...]

On the first day of school, we had a conversation about what everyone feels like on the first day back at school.  Some of my students noticed that my left eye was twitching and wanted to know whats up with my eye.  Like them, I shared that I was nervous (and have always been nervous) [...]

Rough start to the first week of school — huge class sizes and juggling a new schedule.  Science and PE are on this rotation where we see the kids every other day — it will be great in the long run but I’m struggling to stay organized.  I’ve got 230 of everything to read, grade, [...]

the first day of school blues. This phase shall pass … soon, I hope.

On a positive note, I surprised two lovely young ladies with these …

Surprised.  Elated.  Grateful.  Appreciative.
Kelly flipped through every single page and recalled our trip together, photo by photo.  It was the cutest thing.  Unfortunately, she won’t be able to show her [...]

Hey, check it out – I was quoted in a recent NASA article!  What a perfect day to get the link!  Even though parts of today were kinda rough, it was a pleasant surprise to get this link in an email.  You can read the article here.

I had every intention of posting an entry about my trip to Portland (sorry Laura, I didn’t have time for a visit!) but when I got home, I couldn’t get myself to do much.  I worked in the garden a bit, uploaded some photos to Flickr, and sat around feeling totally unmotivated.  I just needed [...]