Family pictures

We went to Priest Point Park with some friends of ours and took each others pictures in order to save a little money. So here they are!!!

Run for Fun

A couple of teachers from school and myself decided we wanted to race. So what did we do? We entered the Tenino GhostMuster Fun Run. We ran the 5k and all set goals. The race was more of a lets see if we can all make our goals rather than who's going to be the fastest (at least that's how I looked at it). I finished 54th overall and had a time of about 30 minutes. My goal was to complete 3 miles in under 30 minutes and I did that since 5k is 3.1 miles. My first two mile were each 9 minute miles and then the cold I've been getting over told me I was to be on WOO (WithOut Oxygen). I had to stop and clear the system before continuing the race. I felt good about the race and it was a lot of fun to hang out with other faculty members outside of school.

We didn't get a picture of me crossing the finish line so just believe me that it did happen.

State In-Service

Yesterday I went to a workshop on technology in the classroom and was bored out of my mind because the people giving the workshop were so disorganized and anti-pc that it was hard to find something that I could take back to my own classroom.

I don't think that people realize that you can do anything for music you need to on a pc and do it just as well as a mac. Everything I have used for the pc has been pretty much plug and play and very simple. They kept saying things like use Itunes to convert it to an mp3, it's really easy on a mac, but a pc is really different and more complicated to do this process on. THERE IS NO DIFFERENCE!!!!! My favorite Mac plug of the day was when the main lecturer said his laptop came with a free remote if he spent over $1700 on his new mac laptop. If that is your main reason for getting a mac is you get a free remote your wasting your money. you could spend have the amount on a dell and add a remote for as little at $30. That seems way more worth it than having to spend close to $2000 on a laptop.

By the end of the workshop I had corrected a few things about sibelius and finale for some people and put a huge plug in for google apps and using google calender. Their comment before I talked about google was "I've never used it, and I don't see how it is going to help me so I'm not going to use it." I showed them the schools calender in google as well as google docs, sites, picassa, and igoogle. Many of them were pretty impressed that google does so much.

One piece of equipment I might but for my classroom was the tuneview for the ipod. It's a pretty sweet docking station and remote for the ipod that runs on radio frequency instead of IR. I also made some good contact with two other choir teachers from Tenino and Rochester.

After the workshop I went home ate some dinner, took some exederin for a tension headache I had and went to a really cold football game to play sax with the pep band. I didn't see my family at all that day and it was really depressing.

Only two more home football games.

Well, I think that is enough venting.

Clarification

So our councilor was the administrator for our grade book system that houses all of our WASL scores, contact information, grades, and basically keeps track of the districts population. He is the only person in the district trained on that program. He is the only one who knows how to add users and fix things that go wrong in the program.

Since they stopped paying him he hasn't been helping with the program at all. If we asked him a question, even an easy one, his response was I am no longer in charge of that. I think that's what got me the most was I'm not asking you to do it I am asking for a nudge in the right direction and if you know it please share it. That's at least what the rest of the faculty does.

First Week of School

Wow this week of school has been full of ups and downs. On the upside I have some enthusiastic groups that are ready to work. I hope they can handle how much I want to push them. I have a clean room as well as organized and it is all mine. On the downside the faculty is pretty upset at our school councilor because he has made some choices that we don't like, but understand why he is making those choices (the district stopped paying him for something he was doing and expect someone else to do it.)

Last night we had our high school open house and I was able to meet several parents and have some really good discussions. When I got home Mackenzie was in bed but wanted to tell me about her day. I went into her room and she started to giggle and she could hardly tell me what happened that day. I got snippets here and there and I guess she bonked her head and went down the slide. The rest was just giggles.

Today I was able to stay home in the evening and spend time with my family. It was a very nice end to the week, almost. One more day to go!

Happy Birthday

If you hadn't noticed I had a birthday last week. I am now 29 years old. This year we kept my birthday really small partly because students loans are now in full swing. I'm sure those that are paying student loans know exactly what I mean. We had a party for me on the 1st while Jacob and Carolyn were visiting. Mom and dad got me a freight car for my trains that is a cleaner car. Basically the car has a pumice stone on it to make sure there is a clean contact to the track. It's way cool. I haven't been able to hook it up yet, but I also now have enough money to finish the 4'x8' track layout I've been working on.

I have also finished painting my room and I have been setting it up so class can start on the 15th.

I will post pictures later this week of my new train and room.

First Day of School?

Yesterday I was at school setting up the room and everything when all the teachers that were there were called to the office. What they had to tell us is good and bad. First the middle school that is under construction is not done. This means that we can't start school when we are supposed to (Sept. 8) we are now starting a week later on the 15th.

This is good because I have another week to get my room set up. The bad part is the whole calender is being redone so we can get out of school on the original last day. They are making winter break shorter and taking out some of our longer weekends.

Well, I hope school starts on the 15th.