Friday

Thank the Lord it's Friday. I am so tired. School has been great this week; it's just the after school parts that have been draining.

I stayed up late cleaning last night. I figured out I could let the dehumidifier run if I had a bucket under the drippy part, so I had it on high the whole night. I think the musty smell in my room is coming from the carpet by my headboard... I called my landlords and left a message asking them to shampoo the bedroom. Then I moved my bed away from that part and woke with no ill effects. The doctor seems to be right about me just having a cold; my nose is a little drippy today and I haven't had any other troubles breathing. My kids are so sweet; they asked right away how cleaning is going and what the doctor said.

This group is crazy good at getting me to joke around with them. There are so many moments that warm my heart. One prayer I have right now is for another boy to join our class. There's an odd number which makes partnering up difficult. Two sets of brothers makes it even harder to find partners some days. One boy is usually left out of the pairs, so lately I've been asking God to send me a new boy.

We got our videos of offering/messages for Africa finished. The 5th grader who filmed them is so proud! The hardest part for me was getting those videos on a flash drive. After futzing with them on and off all day, I finally got it figured out. Hopefully if I ever have to do it again it will be easier!

VIP day is Monday. The IT guys said they'd get a projector and screen all set up for us. I'm worried. They've fallen through many times in the past! A few parents ordered books ahead of time, and they're due to arrive on Monday, except I'm not sure what time Monday. I have a sinking feeling it will be in the afternoon. We're usually one of the last stops the UPS makes in the day. Maybe Mr. E can pull some strings...

Progress

Last night I planned to get a lot of cleaning done. I only accomplished the kitchen. When I did my laundry, I quickly discovered my dryer didn't put out any heat! So much for that. I ended up bringing my wet blankets to my neighbor's apartment and she graciously let me use her dryer. Of course, she wanted to talk while my things dried, which was fun, but I didn't get much cleaning done during that time. I disclosed my mold problem to her, and she revealed that her daughter has a big air purifier I can borrow.

My landlords sent maintenance guys in to check out my apartment. The replaced the blind in my bedroom that was too big, checked the carpet for dampness (only found it in my guest room), looked over the dryer (have to order parts), and brought in a dehumidifier until the one I ordered comes in. Unfortunately, there's a place for a hose attachment at the back and all the water collected from the air drips out the back. I called and they told me to shut it off and point a fan at the wet carpet area; they'll send someone out tomorrow.

As the day progressed, I noticed my chest feeling tight and a sore throat lingering. I thought it was mold induced, so I went to the doctor. He thinks it's just a cold going around (there's one lots of people have that involves wheezing). He prescribed an inhaler and some daytime antihistamine stuff, but since the tightness is tolerable and is getting better as the day goes on, and the other stuff is over the counter and isn't covered by my insurance, I didn't get them. I have antihistamines at home.

As far as school goes, my student who knows how to do videos taped kids at school singing and saying greetings to the kids in Africa. She almost has all of them strung together. It was fun to watch her work; she even taught herself some things! The video will have a little banner show up at the bottom of the screen saying which class of kids is singing. Then she has music playing behind the chapel offering video. Now my job is to figure out how to get the video from the iPod to the computer/flashdrive. I need to bring my laptop since somehow iTunes got deleted from my school computer and the IT guys haven't reinstalled it.

The 5-6th grade girls have been making a dance during recess, like the full on dramatic one. Two girls are the 'coaches' and two are the dancers. One is the sound person (she pushes play on the iPad) and then pretends to be the judge and gives them pointers and takes points off their performance. It's hilarious to watch them playing, and their dance is really, really good! They've come up with all the moves themselves. Of course, now the song is stuck in my head all the time...

Mold

Ugh. I have been battling mold in my apartment this week. It's white like mildew, but fuzzy when it has the chance to grow more. I've only noticed it on my wood furniture. The first time was a few months ago... I thought it was dust, so I just wiped it off. It's been so rainy and humid lately, I don't think my apartment has had a chance to dry out. Now it smells musty when I walk in the door, especially in my bedroom.

Last night after I got home I completely cleaned everything in my room. I used bleach to wipe everything down, I vacuumed, I dusted, I put things away, I did laundry. Tonight's goal is to finish washing my bedding and get the living room and kitchen done. There aren't as many spots in those rooms so hopefully it won't take as long. I had thought the kitchen was free of mold, but this morning I found spots on some of the lower cabinets, so it's added to the cleaning list.

We all got a note from the landlords saying we should all try to keep humidity down in our houses by cracking the windows, running the fans and/or a dehumidifier, etc. Over the weekend I bought an air purifier, which is helping a little with the smell, but I think I have to cave and buy a dehumidifier. Man, I was hoping to avoid that!

I had had grand plans of things to do after school this week, but those have all gotten pushed aside by the need to clean. Grr... On a positive note, I can listen to an audiobook while I clean! Still, papers aren't getting corrected and they're starting to pile up.

Midterms are next week, so I have to put grades in the gradebook; I started that today while my kids were at PE and got maybe a third of them entered.

We're doing a special offering in conjunction with the ladies' LWML rally on Saturday. It's a collection of items for young girls escaping the sex trafficking industry. We had a ton of donations come in so far and offering today was $69! Woohoo! Evelyn, the lady in charge of this safe house mission, wants to meet the kids who are giving so much. Since our students can't all be at the rally Saturday, we filmed them bringing their offerings up front and we're making a video of students who want to say things to the recipients of the items. All of it's going on a flashdrive to be given to Evelyn to take with her to Africa. One of my 5th graders loves editing videos on iMovie, so I put her in charge of the project. She is jumping in with both feet and has already filmed the kindergartners singing 'Jesus Loves Me'! Who knows what tomorrow will bring!

Another Speaker

Our Australia speaker showed up today! I hadn't checked in with him since we scheduled this date about a month ago, so there was a small part of me that didn't know if he'd come or not. He came at noon (I thought I'd told him 12:30, but I guess not). He brought Vegemite with him and let the kids sample it while they ate lunch. Most thought it tasted disgusting. One 7th grader said he threw up after eating it. Our speaker said most people compare it to road tar. I thought it tasted like soy sauce; it wasn't too bad, but I wouldn't eat a whole sandwich of it. It's made from yeast extract. Overall, it's a very strange food...

This guy has a very exciting life. He used to be a pilot (for a Canadian airline I think) and was in the military. Now he lifeguards for the state of MN at Flandreau State Park (after he said that all the kids recognized him) and occasionally for the city of New Ulm. When he's not doing that, he judges white water kayak racing, sometimes for the World Cup and even the Olympics! And he's acted in various things (extras in movies we haven't heard of), even in Crocodile Dundee! He was part of the airplane scene, except his section got cut. Bummer. He just got back from England from doing a callback audition to be on Dr. Who!

How'd I get in touch with him? The library! One day, in passing, I mentioned to the librarian that I am teaching geography this year and I like to have guest speakers from each continent visit my class. She knew of this Australian gentleman who frequents the library and thought he'd be a good speaker. So she passed on my name/number the next time he came in! (I gave her permission of course).

We've missed two days of bells due to speakers, so the 6th graders convinced me to have bells Friday to make up for lost time. That's actually a good idea; we haven't practiced our new song yet and we perform in less than a month...

Bake Sale

After school Friday was so busy I didn't have time to write a post before I left! My main objective was to order the pre-ordered books for our author visit coming up October 1st. Easier said than done. Only four families ordered a total of five books. They are through two different publishers, and one of them has a minimum order number (10). We only want to buy one from them. A guy was going to check around and see what he could do, but so far I haven't heard anything from him. The other order needed to be faxed. After getting that straightened out, I headed to Mankato for Theater Physics with one of my college friends.

I heard back from the faxed order today and I'll probably have to put the order on a credit card (mine, since school doesn't have one). Of course they're on Eastern time, so by the time I called it was ten minutes until closing time. The lady I talked to will get back to me tomorrow for my payment information. I'll probably have to call the other guy back to see where we're at for the one book order.

Sunday we had another bake sale to raise money for Camp Omega. We did even better than last week even though there weren't as many people in church. The leftover items were sold at today's home soccer game, and we ended up with about $200 towards our trip. Most families don't have to pay anything since they helped out. A few decided not to do the bake sale and just pay. I can't believe our trip is next week already!

Well, my brain is shot. I'm headed home, grabbing supper, and then heading to bible study. Our normal schedule is disrupted since our bible study hostess's work schedule has been switched around. Next week I think we're back to a Wednesday night.

Antigua

First round of guest speakers today! Since the 7-8th graders are learning about North America, I teamed up with MLC to get student (teachers) from other countries (or travelers to those parts of the world) to come speak to my class. Today's speakers were two girls from Antigua, which is an island in the West Indies (near the Caribbean). It turns out I've been pronouncing it wrong. It's pronounced an-TEE-gah. No "gwa" sound in it at all. Learn something new every day!

I had a lady from church pick them up from MLC since they didn't have a car. This is the first time I've tried that and it worked fantastic! The lady said they had good conversation in the car on the way here and back to MLC. I think we'll keep doing it that way. The 5-6th graders stayed for half the time, going to math the other half. The girls were mostly done presenting by 1:00, so the 6th graders got gypped a little, but we kept coming up with questions, so they did learn some things.

Lots of pretty tropical beaches and clear, blue, water. Both girls are here on scholarship, being trained at MLC so they can go home and teach at a Lutheran Antigua school. They've taught in Antigua previously (preschool) and they had pictures of their classes, so I'm wondering if they started teaching right out of high school and now are officially being trained. They mentioned needing more classrooms to student teach in, so I volunteered to let them come back anytime. I wonder if the teachers at MLC would be okay with sending students out for clinicals at our school since we're Missouri Synod. Our school is so close to New Ulm that it wouldn't be too difficult to send people out here. Ah well, I guess we'll see!

Training

It was a long day. The dreary weather had everyone feeling droopy, and my kiddos were harder to engage than usual (to say nothing about the 7-8th graders... their class was rough). After school I had plans to buckle down and cross things off my to-do list, but it wasn't meant to be.

A stranger showed up after the buses left. He had a clipboard and looked pretty well put together, not a dangerous sort. We couldn't figure out who he was and why he was here. Then one of us remembered a topic at our last staff meeting about doing active shooter training sometime in September. Today was one of our top choices for the training. Except no one told us it was officially on the calendar. So we had an impromptu (for us) session. It was depressing and sad, but good.

Instead of schools going into lockdown mode, law enforcement officers are teaching people to Run-Hide-Fight, depending on the situation. Barricading the door is a big yes, and escaping is also a yes if you can do safely. We need to come up with a few safe rendezvous points for kids/teachers to go to if a situation were to happen and we escaped school. Then we can do headcounts of our students. Also, to cut down on congestion when parents come to pick their kids up, we could have the buses pick people up from the safe zones and drop kids off at a central location parents know about (but is away from the school). Lord willing it will never happen to us, but it's always good to be prepared.

Mr. E will work on putting an action plan together with this officer. When it's done, he's going to come back and talk to the upper grades about what to do, and also to parents so we're all on the same page (and explain why we're doing things the way we're doing them). Whew.

After that I had a short time in my room before we teachers headed over to the Ice Cream Social fundraiser at church for supper. It was fun to interact with them in a social setting, plus I could talk to a bunch of church people I needed to talk to all in one place!

We're starting a once-per-week lunchtime book club- 5-6th grade girls are the primary members, plus a sweet older lady from church who volunteers at school often. She's very excited to start next Tuesday! The girls unanimously picked out the book today before lunch.

Some of the girls have expressed an interest in learning how to sew, so I talked to a different lady about doing sewing lessons during afternoon recess (the time those students requested). We haven't set up a specific date to start. I brought my sewing basket from home and another student said she'd bring scraps for the girls to use. We might start tomorrow if she remembers to bring the stuff.

It's Raining, It's Pouring

Holy buckets did it rain this morning! I put off leaving my apartment until the very last minute, hoping the rain would stop, but it didn't. The wind blew and blew (thankfully going the direction of school), and I had to run from my car to the building. It stayed dark for a long time, but it's actually kind of sunny out now. The rain stopped around noon. It sounds like almost all week will be rainy.

Last night was a big correcting papers night... I haven't had much time to correct since I've had so many things going on over the past few weekends, but last night after bible study I buckled down at got almost everything corrected. Of course they turned in more assignments today. I don't have much going on tonight, so maybe I'll spend another night correcting.

I wish I could pause time to do some reading! I have a stack of library books on my shelf waiting patiently for me... Did you know the New Ulm library system automatically renews your books for you? Best thing ever! Now I don't have to worry about getting late fees on my books. I still keep an eye on it though, just in case I reach the renewal limit.

Today was the first day my students could pick their own rounds for Daily 5. It actually went really well. I met with all my Tuesday people, it was quiet, they seemed productive, and I even had time to re-shelve the 'on display' books I've had out from the beginning of the year. I have to make room for our first book order! They will hopefully arrive this week (but maybe next week). I had a lot of kids order this time! Yay, more books!

We had a bake sale Sunday to raise money for Camp Omega. Two moms are going to chaperone. They decided to split the free registration PTL paid for and each will pay $43. This morning another girl told me her grandma wants to come and her uncle is going to pay the $86 fee for her. Still waiting for a male chaperone though. There are a few nibbles, but no bites yet.

Huff and Puff and Blow Your House Apart!

In other news, we got two new fish over the weekend, male guppies: Apollo and Zeus. So many name suggestions this time! The names I liked best were Marco and Polo. Ha! Clever. Maybe next time we get fish we'll use those names. The darker one is Apollo, named after the guy who got too close to the sun (my kids decided that).

We're under a severe thunderstorm warning for the next 10 minutes... the storm is moving fast (about 60mph) with winds gusting the same. This round started at 4pm, but earlier today it was totally sunny!

Noon recess was hot and sticky. It all changed at 1pm when the 1-4th graders played outside at recess. The wind came up all of a sudden, the sky was brown with dust being blown up by the strong gusts. Kids screamed and almost got blown over. It's the fastest I've ever seen the wind come up! The 7-8th graders were fascinated by the sudden change. We paused our mini-experiment to watch the air front move in... and connected it to today's topic: diffusion! Awesome!

Once we switched from science to study hall, they convinced me they should be allowed to go outside to pick up all the toys and cones before they blew away. So they went. From the window, I saw one of the 8th graders holding a section of a plastic play house the preschoolers like to play in. The wind was so strong it literally blew the house apart! Wow! They didn't carry everything inside, but they put all the movable pieces inside the wooden triangle tree house.

For a while it rained really, really hard. I didn't realize it was going to rain today, so I left my jacket at home... since the storm's moving fast, it will hopefully be done raining by the time I go home.

The Voice

Today the 6th grade girls played "The Voice" at afternoon recess. If you're familiar with the TV show, you know how it works... During tryouts for the show, three judges (in our case) face the audience, their backs to the singer. The singer sings a song and if the judge likes it, he/she turns around. If no one turns around, the singer doesn't make it on the show. If more than one turns around, the singer gets to pick which team he/she is on.

So the girls took turns being the singer, belting out whatever pop song was on their minds. The other three sat on the swings with the chains twisted so they could dramatically spin around. They even reenacted the hugging that always takes place after a contestant gets accepted to a team. Hilarious!

Recess Volleyball

For the past few days, I've been bumping back and forth with one of the 6th graders at afternoon recess. Well, we must have made it look super fun because today four of the boys asked to play with us. Man, they are a hoot!

The 6th grader and I would go nicely back and forth between each other. The boys would bump the ball high in the air and then scurry around beneath it, trying to get underneath to hit it again. They looked like busy little ants running around haphazardly! We started playing in a circle, but every time they'd end up in a blob or halfway across the field chasing after the ball. Hilarious!

Our high score was 12 with the boys. The 6th grader and I got 35. I wonder if they'll play with us again tomorrow...

PTL

Another late night at school... we had the fall PTL meeting which was supposed to be followed by a 5-6th grade parent planning meeting for the Pork Chop Dinner. Instead, it kind of got rolled into one meeting, with a few of the 5-6 parents sticking around after to do Pork Chop stuff. Fine by me!

No one argued at the meeting, everyone was pleasant; it did get a little long though. The Nicollet chamber brought us supper as a back-to-school thank-you treat, so I did get to eat before the meeting! It was nice not to cook.

I also got all my spelling lists for the year put together (just need to print), bells brought over to church (we play on Sunday), and I fit a mile walk in too. Good productive day!

Ruby Slippers

We did the rock version of the song again... no air guitars today, but lots of singing. The key the youtube video is in is different than the one we sing for church, but so far they're going with their muscle memory instead of what they hear in the video (it makes for a weird sounding verse sometimes).

Some of the boys had trouble with organizing today. Last night I got around to correcting some of the things I collected from them earlier, so I wrote missing work on the board. Turns out, some of them had actually 'lost' their papers. I use quotation marks because nine times out of ten the missing paper shows up in a desk or a crate or a backpack even though the kid has assured me multiple times, "No, it's not in there; I checked!" The 5th grade boys are really bad about that. At least five times this morning I got told, "Miss H, I can't find my..." I usually look at them with a blank face and say, "Well, I don't know where it is."

They're never really sure how to react when I tell them that. I do remind them to check their WIP folders (work in progress) and all the other usual places. And once they look a little harder they find the papers one of those places. One kid actually did lose his spelling paper from last week. It's nowhere to be found. He had to rewrite the worksheet from scratch (it wasn't that long). He didn't fuss too much about it, but at one point while he wrote out the sentences he asked why he couldn't just make a copy. Ooo! Teachable moment!

Well, would it teach you anything to just be able to make a copy? No? This way, you have to deal with the consequences. And I'm guessing next time you'll keep track of your papers better. He definitely agreed!

On a totally different subject, did you hear that Dorothy's ruby slippers have been found? There were multiple pairs of slippers made for the movie, four of which are known to exist. The fourth pair was stolen 13 years ago from the Judy Garland museum in Minnesota (on loan from a private owner). One night someone broke in, smashed the display case, and walked off with the slippers. They hadn't been seen since. A few years ago someone put a million dollar reward out there for anyone who would find the slippers, but no one came forward. One of my kids had heard that the slippers appeared on an estate sale and that's how they'd been found. The article I read said the FBI in Minneapolis didn't release any details about the location they were found at.

I have a pair of ruby red flats with sparkly bows on the top, and I happened to wear them today. During Daily 5 when we sat in our circle in the reading corner one of the 5th graders commented, "Hey! I found Dorothy's slippers!"

Volleyball

The first home soccer and volleyball games were today after school. My classroom was pretty noisy for a while... the girls all wanted to hang out in my room. One cleaned out Joe's tank, another used hot glue to fix one of the spring chairs that has a crack in the seam. The rest kind mostly just talked or hung around the people doing stuff so it looked like they were doing something too.

Another box of spelling books arrived at the end of the day. Now the 8th graders have books! I also got a teacher CD and interactive whiteboard DVD. Once I have time to look at them, hopefully I'll learn more things to do with the spelling for the week.

We sing for the first time in church this Sunday (and play bells too). The song we've worked on the most is "You're Worthy of My Praise". Some of the words still haven't sunk in, so I found it on youtube and played it at the end of the day. I used the Jeremy Camp version, which happens to have a rock feel to it, so a lot of the boys played air guitars more than they sang... They were like, "Miss H! We like this version better!" Then came the head banging followed by more air guitars. It was fun to watch, but I think we'll have to switch versions tomorrow.

Scalp Tingling

:( We found a case of lice in my classroom today.

It started after religion... one girl complained to me that she saw things moving in the person's hair sitting next to her. I brushed it off thinking that you can't see lice on someone unless you get really close to them, and she wasn't that close to the individual.

Then after lunch two other girls cornered me to say the same thing. The person sitting next to them at lunch had bugs crawling all over the head. Sigh. Then of course the gossipy 7th grade girls got wind of it, whispering madly with the 5-6th grade girls. The boys didn't care. They focused on playing soccer.

So I called the school nurse, asking her to come take a look. I tried to sneakily look at the student's head at recess... I saw a bug and little white flecks. Aww man!

The nurse came out and did a check. Sure enough, lice. The poor kid. Thankfully the other students were kind about it and encouraged this person that it can happen to anyone and "it's just something that happens sometimes". I hope the 7-8th graders will be just as kind!

Now before I go home I have to bag up all my beanbags and vacuum my classroom, just in case. Where am I going to put them?

Busy, busy, busy

Sigh... I'm not doing so well on my goal to leave school between 5-5:30pm each day... Yesterday wasn't as bad as today. We had a staff meeting after school that went until 4:45. Of course my to-do list always grows exponentially after a meeting, typically with little things, so I worked on crossing off a bunch of them.

One of the tasks was to try to find a parent to chair the Pork Chop Dinner. Last year there was so much drama, no one wanted to touch it. Now the dinner is in about a month and still no one is in charge. Thankfully the first person I asked said yes and we got a second volunteer too, so we should be okay now (I hope).

I put the spelling sorts up on the class website so parents can access them. I'm leaning towards not having a test this Friday since we're still working on figuring out how to do it. One of the other teachers isn't sold on Words Their Way and wants me to convince him that this way is better than the old spelling way. I'd be happy to if I knew what I was doing. As of right now, I know just enough to get it started with my students, not enough to persuade someone who is dead-set against it. But we're meeting after school tomorrow or Friday to talk about what I know, so we'll see what happens.

It's time to sign up for the Lutheran Educator's Conference already. The first session had a bunch I wanted to go to, but of course they aren't offered in the 2nd or 3rd sectionals. Those classes didn't spark too much of an interest for me, but I did pick ones to go to. Usually the ones I've picked have been good, even if I hadn't been too excited about them beforehand, so I'm hoping that's the case this year.

Nemo is No More

Poor Neptune. He made it until Monday (maybe Tuesday morning).  I got a text update from a parent who stopped in on Saturday. She said he was weak because the filter quit working. She took ours apart, found the problem, couldn't fix it, and brought hers from home to try to revive him. She said he was still really weak on Sunday. I got no news Monday, but this morning when I checked on him, he was stuck up against the filter tube. I 'buried' him in the woods before the kids got to school.

Before we get another, I should really have our water tested. Pet Expo does it for free; I just have to bring it in. So now we're back down to one pet...

Joe is settling back into our classroom nicely. As is typical after a car ride, he buried himself in one corner of the tank. We gave him a piece of watermelon as a treat, but so far he hasn't eaten it yet.

It's been raining for most of the day, and when it's not, it's sticky humid everywhere. I turned on the A/C this morning which seemed to keep the humidity down. The forecast says we're supposed to get less than an inch today, but I'm sure by now we're well over that amount. I've gotten notification we're in a flash flood watch for the rest of the day. Bleck. At the end of the day I prayed for the rain to stop so fields can dry and farmers can start the harvest. Another boy prayed for the rain to keep going because he likes the rain!