- I was at CVS buying supplies for my classroom and there was this women at the other register and she was short a dollar to get her metro card. I then gave her a dollar that I had.
- Later that night after going to Target a women in the parking garage at my building asked me to help her bring some items to her apartment. I did. And during the course of helping her out I was able to talk to her daughter, who had just turned five. I was able to talk to the mother and daughter in a real conversation that didn't have any awkward moments.
It's at this point where I would then go TAKE THAT (INSERT NAME) I REALLY AM A GOOD PERSON. Of course that would require me to think that someone really doesn't like me and I honestly can't think of a person. Of course with this humblebrag that I inserted of good deeds, I really didn't feel that I have to do this to redeem myself, it was just something that came naturally. Because that's who I am.
For the past two weeks I've been working at my new school that I will begin teaching tomorrow. I am still teaching Kindergarten, but my class will be a mix of pre-K 4 students and Kinder students. I've looked at the age range of my kiddos and they range from 4yrs 1mth to 5yrs 9mths. So there clearly is a wide range of maturity and level for my students. But I have to be extremely confident that the leadership team at the school gave this opportunity. It gets me thinking that I am the boss (Like a?). It's something that has been coming up many times. I've been thinking that in June I was able to get two job offers for teaching, when frankly I didn't think I did that great of a job in my first year. I know that I improved as it went on, but to be honest I wondered what I did in my interviews to get two schools to send me offers. To be honest it must be because I am that good. I don't really know what else to say. I have moments of brilliance. I've got to come away of thinking the worst and thinking with more positive thoughts. I always go back to my senior year of college, when I wrote my first essay in the Later Plays of Shakespeare class, and was worried that I turned in an F minus minus paper. It wasn't until I got the paper back and it was an A minus I think. I know that if I put my mind to it, then it can happen.
Which gets me to thinking of a lot of things, step 1 running. The greatest race I probably ever ran was Thunder Road Half in 09. Usually when people run a good race people will go around and say good job. In my case people said that, but it first began with the "uh why don't you run like that all the time". I've been thinking more about what I really want to run and race. I've decided that training and running for marathons is something that I don't really want to do. How long? I'm not sure. The last time I felt this way it was almost four years till I ran another one. Why? I just felt that the constant loop of training and getting in the miles were something that just didn't appeal to me as it once did. Also since so many people I know train for one, I always need to be that rebel and do something different. I'm going to focus on races from 5 to 10k. I'm not sure what shape I am in. I have a race this Saturday and I am hopeful that I can run under 17. So no more marathons for a while. I guess that Vermont City was a great way to end it, the recap is still up. I thought that would be a great way to end the blog, but I didn't.
(Also Nathan S. said outside of spending times with his wife and kids, that reading the Vermont City Marathon recap was the best twenty minutes of his life. Well I'm thinking that Nathan needs to get out more often.)
With the school year starting tomorrow I have some goals that I would like to attain this year:
- Run in the morning everyday (weather allowing: if it's a monsoon then I'm not going out, if it's snowing and icy I'm not going out). I think this can work out. I'll be waking up an hour later than I did when I ran last year. 5am looks and sounds much better than 4am. And since I'm not running supper mileage it wont be that much of a drag. I felt that when I ran in the morning I got energy throughout the day. And besides I don't want to have that cloud of I have to run to carry over me throughout the day.
- I will not be at work past 5pm. That seems reasonable. My official hours are 8-4. The latest that I can stay in the building is 6, but I would rather not spend that much time in school like I did last year.
- Make sure that the clothes that I wear to school are ironed if needed. Here's a quick story: I use to wear a lot of sweaters over my buttoned up polo's last year. I did that because I was to lazy to iron my shirts and I figured that nobody was going to see the shirt so it didn't matter if they were ironed or not. For this year I'm not going to pay attention to the little things. Not ironing my shirt is one thing. Nobody else may know that my shirt isn't ironed, but I will know. It's about paying attention to all details.
- Not bringing work emotions home. One of the things that I always talk about when it comes to why I want to do this or what motivates me, is that for as long as I've been able to remember that my dad has never brought how he's felt about his job home. He works with children that have cancer, leukemia, and other not so much fun things. When I tell this to people and they give this look. It's one where they admire the job, but realize how bad it can be. I'm always like well I've never seen the bad. That is something that I want to get after. So I will try to write something positive on this blog of what went down. Of course that may not happen all that often, but I'll try to keep my self honest.
I've kinda have a lot ambition to what I'm doing at my job. Something that I haven't really had when most of the times. The feeling that if I apply myself to something then it's a big different to when I really don't care that much. I feel that where I'm teaching right now fits a lot of my personality and it's just something that makes a lot of sense for me. One thing that really has got my creative juices following is that I have to write lesson plans again, and for me I look at it like I'm writing a five minute skit and hoping that it works. There's a lot of independence that has been granted to my classroom, I really am digging the autonomy and really am looking forward to working. I tell people that my job is awesome, because I get to teach kids how to read. I've decided to attach some pictures of my classroom.
A picture of the classroom schedule that we will do tomorrow. If you can see the NC State mascot, he can travel to all the different subjects. My classroom is named after my college's mascot.
This is our word wall that was made on the fly. On the first day the students will put their names on the wall.
This is my artistic handy work. Someone made a comment that this makes the class really formal and ready. OH IT IS!
My objective board. You can see the letters on either side arching a bit. It's because I realized that I wouldn't have enough room to fit it across so I improvised.
This is what students/parents will see on our front door. You can't really see the other sign on the door. It has my name, my co-teacher's name and the wolf and university seal for NC State on it.
