Yeah for Yoga!

I just finished day 3 of the new school year. Only 177 more to go!

No, I'm actually feeling pretty good about this year so far. I decided to go "part time" this year. I'm only teaching 4 classes instead of 5. I still have two preps, advanced algebra and CAHSEE prep*, so it feels like the same amount of prep work, but I have fewer students overall and my load will get lighter as the school year goes on.

(* CAHSEE stands for California High School Exit Exam, a big test that the students have to take in order to graduate from high school. They have 6 opportunities to take it, starting in the 10th grade. My class is full of seniors that are down to their last 3 tries. Once they pass, they'll probably drop my class, making my load easier as the year goes on!)

So I cut back on my teaching load but I'm still going to be plenty busy this year. Starting next Tuesday, I will be co-leading a yoga after school club for our students. Some students will be able to take it for PE credit, some will just drop in for fun when they can.

In preparation for this class, my co-leader and I have been studying BKS Iyengar's "Light on Yoga" this summer and practicing teaching each other poses. We're going to have sooooo much fun together, even if no students show up. We're hoping they'll come, especially since they can take the class for credit! (and some of them really want the credit for graduation) I'll be sure to update on how the club is progressing.

Also to make sure I was ready for this class, I took a quiz about my yoga snob style. It was written by another Bay Area Yogi who loves sharing yoga with her teens. Here are my results!

I'm a Balanced Yogi!

A Balanced Yogi You love your friends unconditionally and accept them for who they are no matter what their yoga style preference, religious beliefs, or spending habits. You focus on the good in people and would never try to change them. Almost everyone feels comfortable in your presence. You live your yoga. You are an inspiration to yoga students everywhere!

Take the Yoga Journal Yoga Snob Quiz!

Quite a nice message to hear before starting my teaching practice! Let's hope they're right.

Seattle

I've been home from Seattle for 10 days now. I know I promised you some pictures a long time ago. But I just couldn't follow through. I had that thing I had to do this week that took up all of my time... that thing that I didn't remember how tiring it would make me. That thing called, "Work."

Ah, summer, where have you gone? So quick you passed us by! Many goals yet still to be accomplished! Many experiences yet to be had! How I was just getting comfortable with my new schedule, and now I'm reprogramming. I forgot what it felt like to be at school all day. I am tired and I haven't even seen my students yet.
Look at this perfect summer sky! With the bright colors! Look at that bright fish, spending time swimming amongst the lilies. Look at this couple, playing on the rocks, no rush, no lessons to plan, no classrooms to set up, no papers to grade, no staff meetings, no urgent needs except to enjoy a trip together. More HERE.

Deliciously Tempting Part 2

A few weeks ago, my good friend, Marisa, threw a party for her friends. The focus of the party was to raise money for the American Diabetes Association, a cause that has been supported by her family for many years. Her cousin and his team are participating in a walk in September and Marisa is raising money for team. To sweeten the incentive to give to a good cause, Marisa organized donations of pies from her friends and asked another friend from our church to bring his band out and play for the party. So far she has raised over $500 and there is still more coming in as people fulfill their pledges of support. If you are interested, you can check out the team here.

Deliciously Tempting

School (with students) starts in one week. Staff meetings start this week.

Not Yet

I know, you want to see the pictures of Seattle. We both do. You and me. But, well, you can't because I haven't bugged Grant enough to move from his desk so that I could get to the picture drive, yes the picture drive, and copy the pictures onto my computer to process them.

Instead, you will have to browse pictures that I took last night of our pool sharkiness taken with the newly fixed Pentax Optio. You know, this is the camera we had to send in for repair during the month of July because it mysteriously stopped working on the first day of our backpacking trip after being dropped twice in 5 minutes (once by me and once by Grant). Yeah for warranties!

Our pool outings are almost becoming a regular thing for us. We're not very good (well, not all of us) but we have a great time together! More HERE

Back from Seattle-- Summer is SO over!

Here's a quick run down of our last week...

On Sunday, Grant preached in church. It was his second time in front of this crowd and it was great. You can listen to it here.

Summer officially ended on Monday August 6th when I went to my first PD of the month. On Mon/Tues I learned about how to be a coach for a new teacher. I haven't been paired up with a teacher yet, but as soon as someone is available at my school site or near by, I will be. Then I'll spend about 1 hour a week meeting with this new teacher and mentoring them through their first 2 years at the Castle.

On Tuesday night, Grant and I flew to Seattle for my second PD of the month. This time a 3.5 day conference about building a Professional Learning Community at my school. I was there with my principal and one other staff member and we learned many tools to help us come together as a staff by leaving our independent classroom kingdoms for some collaboration time, focus on learning (rather than teaching), use student data wisely, common assessments, and overall just being happier in our profession. (why do most teachers quit within the first 5 years of teaching?). In the evenings, Grant and I toured all around the city. We are officially undecided about whether Seattle will be the next place we want to live.

After the conference was done on Saturday, Grant and I rented a car and drove south to Tacoma for the night. We swung by an REI to get some fuel for our stove. We couldn't bring the fuel from home with us because 1) It wasn't in a container that was 3 oz or less and 2) It didn't fit into a quart size ziplock bag. (never mind the fact that it is flammable-- oh and did anyone really notice that Grant forgot to even take his quart sized ziplock bag full of less than 3 oz items out of his carry on bag? Nope!) We then drove to the Olympic National Park and spent a night in a rain forest. And get this, while we were there, it actually rained. I haven't seen rain in a few months so I was super excited. On Tuesday morning, we drove back the airport, returned the car and flew back home to Oakland.

On Tuesday night we had LIFE group at our house (a small group of folks from our church who get together weekly to check-in about current challenges and graces and then participate in a bible study on the weekly lectionary).

Wednesday our God son, Aaron, came over and the went shopping and finished teaching him to ride his bike. He is almost a pro now.

Thursday (today) brought me PD #3. This time I'm working with a group of Math Teachers who want to learn together about how to teach their students literacy skills. We've come together because we're tired of people teaching us techniques that work really well in English and Social Studies classes! Tomorrow will be more of the same.

Weekend... breathe... going to a wedding...

Next week I will be getting back into my classroom and arranging everything, spending time with my staff and finally getting my act together on all of those summer goals I wanted to accomplish.

In other non-professional development news, I recently got accepted into an Advanced Yoga Studies program at a local yoga studio. About 2 months ago, this was something I really wanted to do. Now I'm not so sure. I'll go to the first couple of classes and then decide.

That's that. Pictures will be coming soon. Grant and I shared a few memory cards in Seattle so we're currently trying to sort things out and then start processing them.

Recycling

There is a large pile of boxes in our dining room from the "recycling" that we do in our house. First, we buy a new toy (or are gifted a new toy from our parents). Usually this toy isn't new, but pre-owned. It arrives at our door in a box. It is unpacked with delight and all shipping contents are saved.

After some time has passed and technology has changed, we upgrade or trade-in. Much research is completed on ebay, craigslist, and other websites, and a new item of interest is decided upon for the trade-in. Then the search for the perfect buy commences. A while later UPS delivers a box to our door and the new pre-owned trade-in toy is played with and loved.

But, where does the box go? The box goes in a pile in the dining room where it will wait until it can be filled with the old toy that has just been sold. Thus the boxes get recycled. Lately there has been a glitch in the system. The number of new toys brought into the house has outgrown the number of old toys leaving the house, and along with my frustration level, the box pile has grown. There are packing peanuts escaping from plastic bags and statically attaching themselves to other objects.

It is no wonder that with the mess in our house we feel a little anxiety about the clutter. So what do we do about fixing this problem?

Find more closet space!

A few weekends ago, I was cleaning out the front closet in hopes of finding more stuff to put into the pile in the dining room for removal from the home. I found a large box full of candles. Many of the candles were 3/4 burned. They were not good enough to go to salvation army and I didn't want to throw them away, so I decided to be a little creative. Being that it is summer break for like 2 more days I had some time to kill on a Friday afternoon. And here was my adventure...

Step 1: Get the old wax out of the candle holders by placing into boiling water. Note: only use pots that you don't need, because the wax is hard to get out. I chose to use our old aluminum backpacking pots with the coating that is pealing off (into our food?).


Step 2: Pour wax into a second pot and add other wax from candles that were not in holders. Use low heat. Fish out all of the old wicks.


Step 3: Wash out the candle holders and place new wicks in the bottom.


Step 4: Pour in the wax and let it cool. Different temperatures of wax seem to make different patterns as it cools. I don't know the specifics, but something was definitely different about the wax used in the second layer of this jar candle. The top layer was liquid in this picture but dried as a dark blue.


Step 5: Cut the wicks down, admire your work, and take pictures! Oh, and don't forget to use the new candles or else they'll just sit in the closet again!

More Photos of the NIght

Sorry about the delay in posting some pictures. My computer is 94% back to normal operating conditions. Just this afternoon I had my first opportunity to look at some pictures on my computer (since I don't know how to speak macbook).

The three of us, Grant, Jane, and I went to Sunday night's destination of Jack London Square in Oakland, CA. (click on the links for more pictures of our adventures)



This is a part of the city, about 8 blocks total, located on the Oakland waterfront next to the Oakland port. It is across the estuary from Alameda Island. On clear nights you can see the Bay Bridge and the lights from SF. You can see the ships coming into port and the cranes lifting off the cargo. This is also the location for the Golden Gate Ferry across the bay and the Amtrak station.

We went around 8pm to try to catch some sunset light, but we were impaired again by the Giant Mass of Fog which swept in to cover the water and sun.

We were also disappointed by the lights around the square. Jack London Square must be the safest place in Oakland. It is so light we thought it was still daytime. We still had a good time together.