"So, are you gonna be laid off?"

I'm really tired of hearing this question. I don't know and I'm not going to worry about it. I am confident in my teaching ability and there's nothing I can do to change the 5 million dollars of debt, so I will be patient and see.

Well, that was my one moment of venting in this blog. The rest will be happy things! I had a wonderful spring break hanging out with my best friend! We watched a ton of basketball and never ran out of things to talk about, but none of that surprises me. It's the reason why she's my best friend.

The week back was not as crazy as I thought it might be. I had some interactive lessons planned and it kept the kids entertained (for the most part!). One of the lessons we did was called the "Human Bar Graph." I had the students complete a survey about my class, then so it was anonymous they folded their surveys into paper airplanes and flew them around the room for 2 minutes. When time was up they picked up the closest airplane to them and sat back in their desk. We then went outside to the track to make our bar graphs. They stood in front of the sign that correlated to the answer that was on their new sheet. From left to right their options were Never, Rarely, Often, and Always (use that when you're looking at the pictures below).I wasn't sure how the whole thing was going to go, but it worked very well and I'm excited to show them their pictures tomorrow. They will also be on my school website for parents to see. 

I hope everyone has a fantastic week. This week includes one of my favorite days of the year: Opening Day of the Texas Rangers.

1st Period - "I ask questions when I do not understand something."

2nd Period - "I turn in my homework."

5th Period - "Ms. Lindstrom's class is my favorite class."

7th Period - "My words and actions create positive affects on my peers."

 

Teacher Spring Break 2011

My favorite quote from Friday was "I am JUST as excited about Spring Break as you are!!!" ha for real, the students were not as bad as I thought they were going to be! We ended the day with the faculty student basketball game! I was not going to play until they came to me 5th period and bombarded me!! :) They found me clothes and shoes and I acted like I could play basketball for 14 minutes. I actually almost made a basket!! ha I held my own, so I was proud of that!!

I'm going to enjoy my break and go visit my best friend in Lubbock. I am so excited to have time to spend with her. When Hannah was home for Spring Break we watched a home video, and there I was in kindergarten standing by her side in choir! :)

If you need a little bit of entertainment, check out the awesome way Hannah and I motivated Caroline while she was out for a run! Just go to Hannah's facebook page and it is on there titled, "Caroline's Tiger Blood."

Happy Spring Break!!!

Old-Fashioned Paper Chain

It has started. The countdown to the TAKS. I always have girls wanting to help me with things and today when I didn't have anything for them, I got a brilliant idea: make a paperchain!!! I know it's old-fashioned, but it's still just as much fun!!! So there it is, our class paper chain. There are 33 school days until math TAKS! Ah!!!

But like so many of my Blog Titles, this old-fashion trend is about a lot more than just our TAKS paper chain. I have made a discovery about myself and my teaching style: I am an old-fashioned teacher with new, modern tendencies. I have no idea if that sentence makes any sense, but I'm not really worried about it. The first thing my mom said to me before the school year was, "Mollie, this is the era of entitlement." Well, you're not entitled to anything. I've also learned I am not an enabler. I am not going to just hand you the answers because you get "special services." You still have to put work and effort into earning your grade. My one goal for this year was to just make it without stepping on any toes, and I don't know if I can do that anymore. I'm much more fed up with the special services department and the "help" that they're giving. I know I can't fix everything, and I'm honestly not trying to; I just want the kids to be successful. If we hand everything to them now, how are we preparing them for the future?

Onto happier topics: I've had my bridesmaid flowers in my room since my best friend's wedding in July and I took a picture with just my little camera phone and I love it. They were ivory roses that dried into an awesome rustic color. This picture is not in sepia tones or anything, just normal color. They are right by my bed and are a good reminder to see everyday when I come home after one of those more difficult days at school.

This paragraph is going to be anything BUT old-fashioned. One night when I couldn't sleep, I decided to write a song about area to Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never." The next day I went to Waco and sang my song for my cousins; they loved it. So obviously our next step was to make a music video!! It was so much fun to make and my kids have absolutely loved it. I haven't even played it for my on-level kids and they came in already knowing every word! Hopefully that makes our area unit that much easier! Area, area, area, area -a -a -a

Enjoy: Never Say Never: Area Remix

The last old-fashioned I'm going to talk about is my kind of old-fashioned. I love looking at pictures of my sisters and I growing up and the other night I came across a good one. Right before this picture, there was one where we were holding up our Easter presents. Hannah and Caroline were holding up candy; I was holding up a book on patterns. Go Math Nerds!!



I'm 7, Hannah - 5, Caroline - 3



The Glories of Waco

Ta-duhh!! The beginning of her real Baylor student collection!

I did not get around to posting last weekend, so I have a couple things I need to catch up on: for example, we have another Baylor BEAR in our family!!!!! 2 Fridays ago Hannah was checking Caroline's GoBaylor account and found out that she had been accepted. Instead of letting Caroline go and find out on her own, Hannah called my mom, dad, and myself. Mom was in NY and Caroline was training at a soccer game, so she had no idea what was going on! We are all so very proud of her and very excited to have another 4 years in this glorious town of Waco. Since Caroline and I were the only ones at the house, I ran to our favorite store that sells Baylor knick-knacks and picked up a few things to help her celebrate! She's always been a Bear, but now she's official.

Other things I need to catch up on is Valentine's Day!! I completely miscalculated how important Valentine's Day would still be to my 12-13 year olds! By the end of Valentine's Day my desk was full of all sorts of treats!! My very favorites are the ones that have notes attached to them. With all the work I put into our lessons, it's nice to have the students tell me they love my class and they hope I have a great Valentine's Day (even if their parents made them write it!!). After the school game we had our girls last basketball game. I swapped games with a coworker since I had no other plans than to go home and watch the Bachelor and she actually wanted to have a date with her husband on Valentine's Day. This ended up being a wonderful decision. Since it was the last game I started making "deals" with all my girls (I was bribing them with all the chocolate candy I got, since I don't like chocolate!). For my girl that wouldn't hurt a fly, I wanted to see her get a foul. For my all-star on A team, I wanted a basket and for her to point at me after she made it. For my point guard on B team, I wanted a lay-up. And all the other girls were just supposed to make me a basket!! Well, I think all of them ended up happening and it was hilarious to watch them make a basket and look at me and just smile grin ear to ear! At the beginning of games they handed out carnations to their parents, and all of the workers got one too! So I still have a lovely collection sitting by my bed!

The boys working!

After having a total of 5 snow days, the weather this week has been phenomenal!! So for 3 out of the 5 days of school this week, my 6th period convinced me to go outside after we finished our lesson. Since my 6th period only has 8 students it also is very easy for me to keep an eye on everyone. This really works both ways in the classroom. They want to go outside, but I tell them we won't go if I cannot get through my lesson; this makes them pay attention without any interruptions, and then we go outside!! I like to think it's a wonderful, fancy teaching technique rather than bribing them with the outdoors! :)

 And finally, I started with the glories of Waco, and I'm going to end with the glories of Waco. I randomly decided to come down to Waco this weekend to see Hannah, Josh, and Trey. I do not know what was going on with me on Thursday night, but I could not sleep. There's a possibility it might have been because I was so excited. So, I ended up just laying in bed until 2 am. Now, when I'm wide awake I am not very good at laying there being unproductive. I had had an idea earlier in the day to write a math song to the tune of Justin Bieber's "Never Say Never" so I started brainstorming a little more about that..... I ended up writing the entire song about Area! It includes area of rectangles, squares, parallelograms, triangles, trapezoids, and circles. So when I got to Waco and sang my newly envisioned Never Say Never, Josh and Trey immediately dibbed making a music video. So on Saturday with the help of his roommates and friends (especially the computer engineering friend), we danced, filmed, and recorded the song. Yes it includes cheesy dancing, a rooftop scene, and a rap that I messed up on at the end -- but I wouldn't have it any other way! The computer engineering friend is still working on editing the video, but as soon as I have it I will put it up on here!! I love my cousins and at one point one of their friends said, "Y'all have a really creative, talented family." We all decided that our response was, "Or we just take things a little too far!" 

Couldn't leave without a gut pack and banana pudding from Vitek's!! Yummm

Snow Day #5 = Cabin Fever

Holy cow... a 5th snow day?! This is crazy. I am once again wishing we were at school because this brings a whole new added pressure to my first year of catching up!!! I do feel better that all teachers all over the dallas/ft. worth metroplex are under the same pressure. So, after venturing out to Fuzzy's for lunch (again), and after Caroline and I left a ridiculous video on Hannah's facebook including 90s music and dancing, and after paying my loans for this month.... I'm finally on to blogging! (I'm proud of myself for doing this before catching up on Glee, that's next on the list!).

So, we got one day of benchmark testing in, but not the 2nd. My kids still haven't taken their geometry test that I had scheduled for last Friday! They are loving it all and were crazier this week than ever before. So I had planned another awesome game that I was really excited about and only got to play it with 2 periods last Monday before our wonderful snow days. This was the game:

Superbowl Football!!!

It was similar to the baseball we played earlier this year, but this time I used the two specific teams from the superbowl! I drew it one night when I was hanging out before the girls tournament. There was of course my one girl who asked the question after a team scored, "Wait, why did they get seven points?!" and my girl football player (who is awesome!) is in that class just turned and looked at her and said, "Because that's how much a touchdown is worth!!!" haha poor girl had no idea! I also got to deal with comments of "I don't wanna be on the Steelers... they have a rapist on their team... that's what my dad said." ha They know way too much for their own good. Anyway, the two periods we got to play were really fun and so that is definitely an activity hopefully I'll get to try again next year! My next idea is going to have to do something with getting ready for TAKS and "March Madness." Right now I'm trying to control my ideas and not get too far ahead of myself. That may have to be a project for next year. :)

This last picture is just a picture of our backyard on the the 4th snow day! After 5 inches of snow and an inch and a half of ice (yes, I took a ruler out and measured), everything was a skating rink. My favorite part of the picture is the chlorine tub in the pool that has a perfect dome of 5 inches of snow on top! With a low of 7 degrees and a windchill lower than that, I'll be inside hopefully planning the rest of my 4th 6 weeks.... or watching Criminal Minds. We shall see....