Monday, February 21, 2011

HAHA!

Found this on a friend's Facebook and just had to repost!  It applies more for elementary teachers, but you get the idea!

Are you sick of highly paid teachers?

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit!

We can get that for less than minimum wage.

That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That would be $19.50 a day (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours).

Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day.

However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations.

LET'S SEE....

That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).

What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year.

Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is!  The average teacher's salary (nation wide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!!

Make a teacher smile; repost this to show appreciation for all educators.



Saturday, February 19, 2011

Productive weekend!

I intend to be super-productive this 3-day weekend!  And I'm totally looking forward to this next week!

Kyle went camping with the Scouts this weekend and won't be back until early afternoon.  This means I haven't seen him since Thursday night!  While I miss him terribly and am pretty lonely right about now (Tiger can only take so much cuddling, it seems), I did manage to get lots of things accomplished that hanging out with him would have distracted me from doing.  For example, I stayed at school last night until 9 PM (that's right, folks. You think your teachers work from 8-3? Think again.) grading projects for my 7th and 9th graders.  I organized my desk, cleaned up my workspace from this week, and made all of my copies for the next two weeks and got everything ready to go for Tuesday.  While I was the last teacher out of the building yesterday, I was able to leave feeling good about what I got done.  No grading for me this weekend!  Only doing the reading I assigned for Tuesday, some journaling for my university supervisor, and working extensively on my LAMP project.  Sounds good to me!

I was planning on cleaning the house yesterday, but after a rough night like that, I just didn't feel like it.  I got some chicken strips and chips from Marsh, returned some library books and watched a movie (which I couldn't even make it through because I fell asleep about 45 minutes in).  So the housework got done this morning!  I'm pretty excited for Kyle to come home because (a) he hates cleaning and he'll be pleasantly surprised that he doesn't have to do any, (b) I didn't even get to talk to him last night because he had no signal so I'm wondering how his trip went, (c) I'm in the mood for Scrabble and Tiger's not too good at spelling.  I'm thinking date night tonight?  Oh yes.

*Sigh.  It's going to be a good week.  Getting things accomplished and a shortened week at school?  And, even better, a field trip on Wednesday!  

Life is looking good.  Four more weeks until Spring Break!

Thursday, February 17, 2011

Valentine's Day

Valentine's Day was a success, even though it was quite busy and fairly unromantic.

Valentines for my 7th grade students (I gave my 9th graders candy hearts).

Yeah addressing them to each student would take too long. So we had them handed out as the kids walked out the door. Slightly impersonal, but a ton less work on a Sunday night!  They cared more about the rub-on tattoos anyway.

It was interesting finding "teacher appropriate" valentines. There are so many "Be Mine" and "I Love You" types that I was afraid that I would seem like a creeper.  But I settled on the peace theme.  I think they quite enjoyed them.

I had combined Kyle's Valentine's gift with his birthday present, but he got me a wonderful bouquet of flowers!

Even Tiger had a Valentine! Kyle bought him this stuffed duck so that he could have a "friend" while we were out of the house. The duck's name is Remy and is Tiger's "baby".  Tiger, however, is a very neglectful father.


XOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXOXO!

Kyle's Birthday

Kyle's birthday was last Saturday, and we had a blast spending time with his family!  He got oodles of stuff for his man room:

Michele said she swiped this bag from Kelsey's room. Cute!

"I ken helpz?"

Autographed by Adam West.

(Okay, not part of the theme, but he DOES love fruit snacks!)

We don't have birthday candles, so we did the best we could with the big one.

Boxes and boxes of comic books.

All of the comics were in their own little sleeves and are separated by tabs.  There are hundreds of them!

One of the Superman/Batman Trade Paperbacks that I got Kyle.  



Happy as a clam.

All in all, not too bad in the comic book memorabilia department!  He also got lots of Batman/Justice League action figures, a couple of other books on superheroes, Superman puzzles, a Batmobile alarm clock and remote-controlled car...

...and a Steak-n-Shake gift card from my grandparents.

Who said EVERYTHING had to be themed?

 

Wednesday, February 2, 2011

Just a small update.

So I know yesterday was the first time I'd posted in a very long time (a couple of weeks!), and it wasn't very long, so I figured I'd update all 8 of my followers on what's going a little bit more on what's going on in our lives:

1) Student teaching is amazing!  If you haven't gotten that from the other couple of posts I've put up or heard me talking about it....I don't know how you've escaped!  I love love love my 7th and 9th graders.  Not all of them are sweet, but a lot of them are!  The nice thing about the not-so-well-behaved ones is that they really do challenge me.  School was always something that came really easily to me and I've always loved school.  It's interesting to have to teach someone who does NOT share those sentiments.  I'm constantly asking myself how I can make the day interesting for them or what I can do to get them involved.  Some days are better than others, and some days you just have to draw the line and tell the kids that regardless of whether or not they like the assignment...they've gotta do it to pass the class!  I've had plenty of interesting experiences, too...the most recent one involved teaching a chunk of my class in the girls' restroom after using permanent marker on the dry erase board...oops!  

2) I've finally gotten the Praxis II taken...only another week or so until I know for sure that I've passed.  Hopefully so, because I'm running out of time to take it!  Can you say procrastination?  You bet.  And if for some reason I don't end up passing it the first time, I won't have anyone to blame but myself!  I'm also looking at taking a few other Praxis II exams to get certified in other areas, although I must admit that I'm not as worried about that right now with some of the other requirements I have to take care of.  I'm leaning toward taking the middle school math test as well as the social studies exam.  How awesome would it be to be licensed in those areas, too?  Pretty dang awesome!  Next on the miscellaneous to-do list:  CPR training.

3) Grad school applications...check and check!  Kyle's grad school packet was due earlier this week.  Thank GOODNESS we got it in before all the snow and ice came!  He had to do quite a few things to apply:  be accepted by the University in general, take the GRE, write a statement of purpose, submit a creative writing sample, get three letters of recommendation together (two within the English department and one outside it), and ensure that BSU looked over his transcripts.  He's also applying for an assistantship in the department.  He was pretty much finished with everything before Christmas except the statement of purpose, which he tackled in bits and pieces over the last week.  Finally, we got everything printed off and in a folder for him to take to the office on Sunday night, and I've never seen him look more relieved!  We're really hoping he's able to get in the department as well as secure an assistantship, but if not, then we've got a few back-up plans ready to go!

Other than these things, life is going on simply here.  Our cat still loves us, the house is still standing, we basically just get to see each other on weekends and snow days...not too many other things are consuming our lives!  While I'm totally in love with what I'm doing this semester, I also can't wait for it to be over!  First and foremost, no more Ball State criteria I have to meet, and secondly, I get PAID to do what I love!  Who would have thought?  I guess I'm stuck in the whole I-pay-Ball-State-to-get-the-opportunity-to-teach mode, because I can't even imagine earning a paycheck for writing lesson plans and getting up early every day and packing a lunch in my little lunch box and grading papers.

All in all...a good start to the semester so far!  Now if we could only cure Kyle's senioritis....

Tuesday, February 1, 2011

ANOTHER snow day.

The nice thing about student teaching during spring semester is that you get to take advantage of all the snow days issued to your school corporation.  I've had four cancellations, one two-hour delay, and one early dismissal because of the weather.  I really like having the days off to get caught up (or ahead, depending on the time of the week) on my work for my 7th and 9th grade classes.  The best part?  I graduate in May no matter what, so I don't have to make up any of the days!  AND, if the schools have to stay in session until July, more subbing time for me after graduation (which equals more dinero in our pocket)!

There are some cons, though.  At first, planning was such a hassle because I had to move so many activities around because we weren't in the classroom.  This was really hard for me at first, but now that I'm a seasoned student teaching veteran (of 3 weeks, ha!) this is coming a little more easily.  The worst part, though?  The kids' attitude.  When bad weather's coming, the kids get squirrelly and a little out of hand.  There have been more write-ups and suspensions and yelling in classrooms than usual because the kids anticipate the snow.  It's all that's on their mind, and it's hard to teach kids who don't want to be taught. 

Hmmm.  So overall I like snow days, but it just makes the time that we are in school just that much more difficult to manage.  But, oh well.  I've got plenty of things to do today!  Oh modifiers....here I come!