This week was faster than the last! I guess district testing will do that. We had a busy week. We had our parent volunteer day on Thursday, which parents helped us with weeding our Sow Healthy Garden. This is an awesome grant that we were awarded this year. We have two master gardeners that come twice a week for two hours and teach our students about gardening. They help us determine what to plant and when to harvest. We currently have lettuce, broccoli, and shard. We are hoping to get a composting barrel soon. We do breakfast in the classroom and this sure would help the kids to clean up and be responsible for disposal. The garden has been slow going but I can see the benefits. When we do harvest, part of the produce will be donated to the local food bank and the other part will be taken to our food services department. The district chef will come and teach our kids about food prep and cooking the vegetables. The students will prepare them and serve them to the rest of the school for lunch. Pretty cool, huh? Also - our volunteers helped us with getting our Turkey Trot setup for Friday. We had our annual Thanksgiving Dinner for the community, which hosts about 300 people. Our parent liason works hard to host many events to help build community support. So...Turkey Trot was Friday. This is a huge deal at our campus. The kids are pumped up and very competitive. Ok...we have a young lady in our Essential Academics class (aka life skills) who can be a behavioral concern on a daily basis. She HATES to run (probably as much as I do). She LOVES our principal though. The principal promised this young lady that she would run with her during the Turkey Trot. Psss....my boss hates running more than I do. I was trying to get out there to see both the student and my boss run, but being the assistant principal - everyone needs to tell you something when they see you in the hall. Finally, I pry myself away from the venting of a few teachers. I get outside and they had already started and were about 1/3 done. They were dead last as was expected, but we still want everyone to give their personal best effort. I see that the student is losing her staminia and wants to give up. I jump down onto the course and go meet up with the two running. The student (we will call her Emily) lights up when she sees me and grabs my hand and starts running. So here we are (the principal, assistant principal, and Emily) running the Turkey Trot. BTW...I ment to change into my running shoes, but again some behavioral emergency came about and that didn't happen. So...I'm running in my sperrys. As we are coming up the last hill, Emily is huffing and puffing and now basically walking. The principal is ahead of us a few steps going backward, encouraging Emily to keep trying and that WE can do this. I am still holding her hand and sorta jogging in place, fearing that she is not going to finish and we may have a meltdown. So we get up the final hill and make the turn for the last 30 yards, she hears ALL the fifth graders cheering her on. She grabs the principal's hand and mine again and she sprints to the finish line. It was probably the best feeling I've had all year. That's why we do this job! For the kids! It meant the world to her, but it felt pretty damn good to me too. A parent did get a pic of us finishing together, but I don't have it yet. I'll try to get it to post, even though I look terrible in it. lol
I'm working on some behavior contracts since many teachers ask for them. I'm also working on some more math ticket out the door questions focusing on geometric attributes...or perhaps fractions...maybe I should focus on one thing.
I'm jealous of those who have the whole week off. My husband is one, but he'll be cleaning (bet he wishes he was at work. :)
All of our teachers just received their ipads, so for my primary friends, check out these math ipad apps that Kinder-Craze has posted about.
Loving all the freebies and teaching tidbits I gather from Math Coach's Corner
Have a wonderful Thanksgiving!
No comments:
Post a Comment