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.
2 comments:
I was able to listen to most of Grant's sermon before being called away on Wednesday - it was great! I even jotted down some of his words that particularly resonated with me, such as the notion that it's not a question of whether to have faith, but what to put it in. Wow.
Wow...SO much posting! And in the midst of such an exciting/busy time of your life! Holy mackerel. I aspire to be as disciplined...
I went by St. D's yesterday after my Russian and Arabic classes to just catch up with some friends, and it was pure chaos. Just barely one week down, and things are already nutso over there. Hmmmm. Pretty glad I peaced out when I did, I guess. I'll miss my friends, though, and my students. And I'll probably at SOME point miss the relatively mindless tedium of grading papers--say, when I'm staring at 200pp. of reading for tomorrow. :-) But this is the joy I chose. :-)
Hope all continues to go well for you in the early going of this year, and with Grant's transition toward photography. We'll be following along! :-)
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