Adventures of a Shockingly Average 30-Something

Halloween - my favorite holiday! At the school that I'm at for placement, Halloween is the principal's favorite holiday.  So, naturally, the school goes pretty all out for Halloween.  The teachers and student teachers are allowed to dress up, so I spent my day as Rapunzel from Tangled (she has short hair at the end of the movie!).  My fourth graders loved my costume, and I loved theirs.  I had a ninja, an army man, Little Red Riding Hood as a murderer, two of those Scream things, a pretty little kitty cat, and others.  Because my kids are in the fourth grade, they didn't get to participate in the Goblin Parade (that's for students in PreK - third grade), so we watched the younger kids parade around the school in their costumes, and oohed and ahhed over the cuteness.  Maybe it's because I'm getting used to being around fourth graders, but oh my goodness the PreK and Kindergarten little ones were SO itty-bitty!! After we finished watching the Goblin Parad...

Dad, How do you say the right thing when there isn't a right thing to say?  Why did you have to leave?  I miss you.  Nikki misses you.  Cody and Hailey miss you.  We all do.  When Nikki called me tonight in tears, I didn't know what to say to her.  I just want to make it better for her.  I want her to be ok.  I wish I could be with her right now, just so I could hug her and just be there for her.  I wish, I wish so so badly there was something I could say to her that would make all of this go away.  I wish I could somehow go back in time and stop your death from happening.  What do I tell her?  What's the right thing to say?  I don't think there is a right thing to say, so I just listened.  All I knew to do was to listen to her, and so that's what I did. I don't understand any of this, Dad. I just want you back. It's not fair.  Why?  Why did this happen?  I just want to see you again. ...

Can I just say how much I absolutely LOVE teaching? I'm in a 4th grade classroom this semester for placement.  My first day was on the 17th, and it really wasn't that great to be totally honest.  But that first day was also kind of a weird day.  The kids had a field trip in the morning and then, later in the day, had to sit through a presentation about why they shouldn't do drugs.  It wasn't a normal school day for them, so I really shouldn't have expected that their behavior would be their normal behavior. Today was fantastic.  I did the fluency activity for math (the times tables for 6's and 7's) with two fourth grade classes (the class I'm in and the class that my mentor teacher team-teaches with), so 22 students.  Twenty-two 8-10 year olds.  And do you know what?  I wasn't nervous.  I was completely unprepared, but was ready to jump in and be in the front of the classroom. Being in the classroom as got to be one of my favorite place...

Dad, you always told me that if I ever got a tattoo, it had to mean something.  This does.

Dad, First let me tell you how much I love you.  I love you, Daddy.  I'm so sorry that the last time we ever talked on the phone, we argued again.  I'm so sorry that I was mad at you when we hung up the phone for the last time.  I wish I could go back and change that.  You know, I don't remember if I even said "I love you" when we hung up for the last time.  But I do.  And I really hope that you know that. When Mom showed up at my dorm room at two in the morning on Wednesday, October 2nd, I was so confused.  My roommate answered the door.  I looked up and saw Mom, and my only thought was "what is my mom doing here?  I must be dreaming." and pulled the covers back up over my head.  "It's for you," my roommate said, and I sat up, still not entirely sure if I was dreaming or not. Dad, you were my last thought that morning because I didn't think anything truly bad would ever happen to you.  I never thought something would ha...

I'm taking a class this semester called "Creative and Sensory Experiences for Young Children."  Our big project for the semester is one where we work with a group to create a creature that we could design an entire unit on.  We have to create a story about our creature and come up with math, science, social studies, and literacy lesson ideas that somehow incorporate the creature. My group created a "Recycle Monster" that we named King Jeffery the Fourth.  He is the king of Recycle-topia, where everyone LOVES to recycle!  BUT!  Poor King Jeffery, because lately people have been feeding Mr. Trash all of King Jeffery's favorite foods (cans and bottles).  To make the king happy again, we have to feed him his favorite foods instead of giving them to Mr. Trash. The picture came out blurry, but here I was painting the cardboard box we used for his head.  We painted with sponges, paint brushes, and our hands. We used a copy of our school newsp...