“I want to go to heaven.  I will ride the love birds.  I will become an angel.  I will see my great grandma Rosella.  I will also see my grandma Barbara.  I can watch the sunset.  I can talk to God and Jesus.”

Now doesn’t that just melt your heart?  It made me cry, and she loved my response. 

Last night was the latest I’ve stayed in my classroom:  Ryan picked me up at 8:30 (over 13 hours!!), and I most definitely could have stayed at least 2 more hours without even finishing my work load.  To top it off, I had to squeeze my training workout in before going home, so I left the gym at 9:45 to head home.

Yikes!  I must have seriously taken advantage of the 2 somewhat calm months of December and January, because February and March have come back with a vengeance!  Good news is, my BFF at work Cathi (our school psych) recommended that I get in touch with another RR teacher at a nearby Boise elementary school who I ended up having coffee with on Tuesday afternoon.  Let me tell you, it is such a relief just to get things off my chest and be able to complain about work for a couple of hours!   She is very understanding, considering she is in a similar situation (this is only her 2nd year, she has upwards of 27 kids on her caseload), but also very sympathetic in our differences (she only teachers K-3, where I teacher K-6).  She is definitely somebody I will keep in contact with, and I got lots of great tips from her!

As for my sanity and my poor aching heart, I think the doctor might tell me that my true age is somewhere in the early 40s as opposed to my chronological age which is mid 20s.  There seems to be a constant cloud of  anxiety sharing my airspace and it chooses fairly inconvenient moments to pour.

But the good news is, I still love my kids!  And their constant smiles and hugs (amidst their also constant yelling and fits) seem to bring me back every day.  And I’m not sure whether or not this is a good thing or not, but I was able to take 2 full days to complete my IEPs in the next couple of months.  I’ll have 5 meetings one day, 6 the other.  Seems like it will be a heck of a day to pick up after, and exhausting to all end, but it gave me a little bit of stress relief to know that I don’t have to plan so many different random days of meetings as opposed to just these 2.

So if it sounds like I’m complaining…I am a little bit.    But I’m also just rewinding from another day full of progress reports, and focusing on some of the good things that my job entails.  I do love those darn kids.  If I didn’t, would I be racing to the gym at 9pm to run 5 miles for them after 13+ hours in my classroom?!  I think not.

Happy Spring Break, everyone!!  Or in mom’s case, just another week off.

Obviously, I am very passionate about kiddos with disabilities.  I have worked with them for 7 years, and still can’t get enough of them.  But being as busy as I am with the new job, I feel that (outside of the school) I haven’t been able to give as much of my free time to some of the great causes out there for students with disabilities.

So I started searching around.  I visited several community website, national organization website, church websites, etc. to see what I could do.  Then, I found something!  Taking into consideration the little amount of time that I have to offer on a daily basis, I decided to do something a little more long-term that could still give back in a big way.

Over the past couple of months, I have been in the process of becoming an Endurance Athlete for the National Down Syndrome Society.  I first became familiar with NDSS when mom, Ryan and I first participated in the Buddy Walk a couple of years ago.  I participated again this year with a few of the ladies that I worked with at the Developmental Therapy Agency that I worked at during college.  Then, looking more in depth about NDSS, I decided to become an Endurance Athlete!  This basically means that I set out to complete some sort of athletic adventure – be it marathons, walk-athons, etc. – while asking people to follow my journey and give what they can for the cause, whether it’s money, time, or their own legs to run.

As of today, my Endurance Athlete webpage is up and running, ready for visits and possible donations!  I have looked very closely into what NDSS does with their donation money given, and feel comfortable in reassuring everyone that donations are used wisely and selflessly.  Otherwise, I wouldn’t have joined the ranks of NDSS.

So if you have time to check out the website, give it a chance!  If nothing else, it will be a wonderful journey for me to show my support for all of those students who melt my heart on a regular basis.

http://ndss.kintera.org/endurance/areasontorun

Here they are enjoying the movie

Our Train Luncheon, hard at working building their own trains

One of my mom’s helping her son, concentration at work

Our FABULOUS ice cream cake dessert

A couple of my girls with their finished products!

More of the end products…we used graham crackers for the train, icing for the “glue”, oreos for the wheels, 1/2 of a ho-ho for the “chimney/smoke thing” (haha, I really don’t know much about trains), M&Ms, colored marshmallows, and gumdrops for decorations and the “coal” in the open back part of the train, and finally, coconut shavings for “snow.”  It was a lot of fun, one of the biggest messes I have made in class, and a definite sugar-high promoter for my kids. But oh well, it’s Christmas, when all the good crafts and other fun things come out, and I would have wanted to do all of this when I was in 1st grade!  Whew~glad it is over though.

On to “Happy Birthday Jesus” week and then a blessed two weeks off for Christmas/New Year’s break.  Hooray!

But alas!  God is faithful, and the past week has re-lifted by spirits in my current teaching position!  I was able to attend a pretty rad training (I know you’re thinking, “rad? since when is district training rad?!” but it’s true!) on Monday and Tuesday to learn a lot of new tricks of the trade for teaching reading to my kiddos.  I’ve been able to apply the tricks already this week!  They love how fun they are.

Also… this week we had a very scary meeting involving a seriously stubborn mother, her tape recorder, and a fresh-from-last-year lawsuit against the teacher who taught in my room last year.  Very touchy situation – yikes!  To top it all off, my school psych (the most important part of the meeting) was at home for the day on doctor’s orders, and had to “attend” the meeting via conference call!  We had my supervising teacher come in from the district office to take notes for the meeting and make sure everything went well.  Talk about stress!  So there I was, facing this frightening woman and her tape recorder (capturing my every word for later use)…. and about 20 minutes into my speech – BAM!  The tape recorder stopped working!!  HAHAHA!  It was all I could do to keep myself from laughing.  Just another God-made moment to keep me laughing.

Right after the meeting ended (which, by the way, lasted AN HOUR AND A HALF!) the general ed teacher in the meeting told me he was very impressed with how well I did during the meeting.  And this man hardly ever talks!  So it was a wonderful compliment.   Then, later on in the day I got an email from my supervising teacher that told me just how wonderful of a job I did, and that she was thoroughly impressed with my presence at the meeting.  What a great compliment coming from the person who could very well hold my job in her hands!   It was very exciting.   But the best is yet to come…. Even later in the day, that same supervising teacher called me on the phone and informed me that the district would be using the IEP I had written for that meeting to show as an example of a well-written plan to all new special ed teachers during their training for the district!!  (I am currently still taking the training, so she didn’t want me to see my own IEP in a meeting and wonder what was going on.   But she told me to take this as a great compliment coming from the district, and a reward for such a job well done.

Well slap me upside the head, I was so shocked!  It was such a wonderful reinforcement from my coworkers and advisors..and a FANTASTIC reminder that God really does want me where I am, at least for now.  I have really been praying that God would address some of my doubts that I’ve been having, and he’s really been able to do that this last week!

The best part is, I’m FINALLY feeling like I have my head above water, and I can begin to focus even more on how important my students are to me.  I have been able to collaborate more with the grade-level teachers, which is really exciting for me in a dorky way.   I’m just really excited to be able to catch my breath, have some free time, and really finally focus on what I need to focus on.  WOOHOO!!

What a great week in Mrs. Beymer’s classroom!  And next week should be pretty great too…we’re having a Christmas movie day, a day to eat cookies and drink chocolate milk while I read Christmas stories, and a Christmas party with presents for my kiddos!  Then a CRUISE to Mexico with the family!  Geez, this has been the best December of all time!!

Thanks again, God, for the reminder of how great You truly are!

This was my first experience with Pilgrims’ Day and I guess I had no idea what to expect, so my expectations were blown out of the water!  We started with an assembly in the gym and all the parents, grandparents, kids, and teachers joined in welcoming one another.  Our 1st graders sang a two song medley for everyone OF COURSE with hand motions and cute 1st grade dancing (1–Great Big Love, 2–Mercy is Falling).

Next, we broke off to follow each grade’s time schedule.  Our first graders were going to start by making a Family Monogram Photo and Frame, then Learn how to Make Butter, Create a Wampum Necklace, Learn Outdoor Colonial Games (which I taught), enjoy the Pilgrim Stew and other goodies for lunch, Color their Colonial Coloring Book, Make an Indian Drum, and then watch the 2-5 graders perform in the culminating assembly with Square Dancing!  What a day!!

This is after we had finished our Family Monogram photos and frames and needed some “silliness release.”

Here are the outdoor Colonial Games: including a burlap sack race, bean bag toss, hula hoop crawl, and jumpropes…who knows if they even had ANY of those activities in colonial times…but my resources were limited.

This is just a quick shot of the gym assembly before the square dancing.  We have a live “caller” who is a bit older and has done calling for square dances held at the White House for both of the Bush Presidents while they were in office.  That guy was fantastic and a great addition!  After that, we auctioned off a quilt made by one of the grandmothers and the money was being raised for Black Buffalo, a Native American the school supports each year.  He and his tribe help to build churches for very low socioeconomic areas in our valley, giving them the opportunity to go to church and hear about our Lord, as they might not have had the chance otherwise.  The quilt went for $1300!  It was so neat, because Black Buffalo came in his full headdress and everything and was so appreciative of the money raised.

Lastly, here’s a pic of all the elementary teachers after it’s all said and done.  All the kids had gone home.  The clean-up crew was hard at work.  We were exhausted.  And…you can tell by just looking at many of us.  Haha, but it was such a wonderful day and many memories were made and pictures taken to document this great event.

It’s funny how many things I didn’t know that I needed to know before starting my first year of teaching.  I am beginning to see that my student teaching experience was nowhere near what I needed it to be to be ready for this first year of teaching!  I know there is always a “learning curve” with any new job, but I feel a little more stressed when there are cute little kiddos who are depending on my brilliance on a daily basis.   But I am happy with my new (and stressful) discoveries from PTCs, and it’s actually exciting for me to be able to do more work because of it… only because I know it will help my students in the end.

Even though this last week was by far the worst since I’ve started teaching, Friday was a very fun-filled day!!  The Broncos played the Vandals today – a very long-living rivalry between state universities.  Our principal announced on Thursday that Friday would be “Game Day” for the school, and we were to wear our preferred college’s colors to show our support!  I was very happy to wear my new Bronco jersey…but oh boy, I had no idea what was in store!  I came into work Friday morning and found our entire school decked out in blue, orange, black, and gold!!  I guess this has been somewhat of a “competition” for a few years with the teachers to show who has more school pride!   Banners were hung, confetti was thrown, and blue/orange, black/gold construction paper was scattered colorfully around the halls!  If that wasn’t enough, the teacher’s lounge was stocked with Bronco and Vandal themed food.  There were even blue and orange tortilla chips, jelly beans, and donuts!!  What a fun day to celebrate school rivalry.  Our principal even brought in Buster Bronco for the occasion.   It was a wonderful end to an otherwise crappy week.

But hey, weekends are given for a weekend and I am hoping for a much better week next week.  If nothing else, I will do all I can so that my students will love to learn while they’re with Mrs. Beymer.

Disclaimer:  This picture may or may not be real, and may or may not contain images of children from a school I may or may not work at.  This photo contains children whose parents have or have not signed off to allow it to be on the internet.  Each may or may not be a part of my class and their faces could or could not have been superimposed for the purposes of entertainment value.  In no way can these images be used elsewhere and you will be prosecuted if caught doing so.

That’s all.

Today, I had a girl in my class, who is the darn cutest thing ever, and whose mom actually does work at the school in the preschool, accidentally call me mom.  She is very shy most of the time and turned bright red in the face after doing so…mind you, she has bright red long hair and is very pale–soo cute!  So her face seemed to match her hair.  But it was so funny, because she followed up her mistake by telling me, “Sometimes I think you look like my mom and want to call you mom because you look like her.  She likes to match and you like to match and I like to match too.”  She went on to explain in length how they love fashion and she thinks I look like her mom.  So, I took it as a compliment, because anytime I see her mom, I am in awe of the fashion sense she has in putting super cute pieces together and adding just the right accessory to make it complete.  Wow, if I could pull off any of her outfits, I would be pretty lucky.  She’s a funky dresser, but pulls it off.  You know the type?  But, I thought it was very cute that she had to explain why she called me Mom.

I will have to keep a tally of all the times I get called Mom this year.  I can tell its going to become greater and greater the more the kids become comfortable with me and forget where they are when they have a question.  Just too cute!