CJ and Jenn in Jose Olé

Our school has the week off but I spent 4 days working in my classroom. At the beginning of the year I had 3 days to get stuff prepped for the school year. My routines I planned to do had to change because instead of the 24 students I had on my roster I ended up with 31. I've felt that all year I was just "getting by" because I wasn't as organized as I wanted to be.

Last week I had the opportunity to go and check out other teacher's classrooms and I saw some really great ideas. Being in P.I. (Program Improvement) we have all this "extra" stuff we have to have. They have this check lists (three I think) that have over 200 things they should see when they come through your classroom. There are simple things that almost every classroom has like a posted schedule to standards posted for the students to see in every subject area (I personally hate this one because it makes the students learn just to pass the tests. My hi-cap kids often just check the standards off and say, "I get all of this so I can slack the rest of the year" and it is a real pain to try and get them to push themselves. My below-grade-level students, 17-23 students, aren't encouraged by seeing all these standards up all over the place. Many of them just shrug their shoulders and give up!) .

I brought the dogs with me and Stella took a nap and Luna chased my tennis balls all over the room. After I finished I took them over to the play field and let them run around. It's all fenced in and they had a blast. I let Stella off her lead b/c she's so good at staying close. Luna on the other hand was chasing birds (and their shadows on the ground) all over the place and would just ignore me. I feel bad giving Stella all this freedom and Luna none but Luna is a turd when it comes to coming to us. Stella can't really be trusted in the house all by herself and Luna can so I guess it all evens out. Stella is cutting her "big girl" teeth which will be a nice change from the sharp little puppy teeth. Looking back at her schedule we think she might have been even younger than we thought when we first got her. Using her guesstimated age she'd be almost 7 months old and I think that is a little late for her to be losing her milk teeth. I know Luna lost hers earlier.

Well I'm off to clean the house and do the dishes. Since Shane started working at Vitamin Shop and Jennifer is in the middle of "test season" I'm having to hold down the fort quite a bit. I'm learning how to cook, which I guess is good! Maybe I'll become a Stay-at-home-dad!