these kids make me sick... literally. ba dum dum!

Yesterday, very slowly, my throat got worse and worse. It started off a little scratchy. By the end of the day, it was very painful to swallow. I had to do a lot of talking during 8th bell, and it was horrible by the end of that time. I expected that after resting all last night, I would feel better today and not have to do a last-minute absence, but, unfortunately, that didn't happen. My neck is sore because the thing that always swells in my neck when my body is fighting off illness is nice and swollen. I've had a pretty healthy headache going on for a good chunk of the past 24 hours. My throat hasn't felt too bad today, except for the past hour. It stinks because I had to e-mail Chandra and ask her to put my stuff together for the sub. Not only that, but it was the last day for review and starting their essay part of the exam before my odd day kids had their exams next week. I would have liked to be there to review, but there was no way I would have been able to do 3 classes in a row like this. I probably would be way more sick than I am now. I'm not too surprised: a lot of the stress of the end of the semester is off now that it's ending and starting exam week and a lot of my students have had some crazy ailments recently (from fevers to throat problems to good ol' colds and such-- they've been nice and contagious).
This sickness was good timing though, I was having a rough week. My students have been crazy this week, due to having a LOT of exams next week and the pressure we've all been putting on them to do well. This whole part makes me ask exactly why we stress them out so much. What's the point of all this? Are they enjoying education? Are they learning? Are they enjoying it? Is this just becoming a bigger and bigger pain in the ass for them? If so, what's the point of this all?
All hail Airborne. Thanks, mom. That stuff is pretty awesome & has been helping a lot.

alala, alala

Holy moly, it's been a week since I've updated. Hah. It's not like Williamsburg is that incredibly exciting that we have so much stuff to talk about.
This weekend was a three day weekend for me though, thanks to MLK day. It's pretty awesome that they give the school a day off, Norfolk does tons of stuff on that day. The kids even knew why they had the day off! Fantastic! Let's see. I finally finished The Fountainhead, I watched all the movies that have been sitting around from Netflix, I lazed about and I changed up the patio stuff. Now it looks like we have more space and it's more comfortable. It was in the high 60s, low 70s this weekend, so I spent some time sipping wine and mimosas on the porch with David at night and reading in the morning with some coffee. Wonderful! I didn't have that much work to do for school, so it was a very lazy (and, at times, restless) three day weekend.
The prepping I had to do was mostly for the tea party. It was a theme to make it more fun and silly for the kids to start off their review for their semester exam. Yesterday went really good. Today... not so good. It was a combination of factors: My first bell complaining a LOT about theirs being cancelled due to behavior and one of my students being in a funk because of issues with his mom, one of my students in my third bell being in a funk because his grandpa died this weekend, and my fifth bell being pretty crazy and disappointing (they saw the very mean side of Mrs. P, unfortunately, but it needed to be done, I guess). For the most part, the kids did good and were helping each other out with their review. My 8th bell sillypants kids had way too much fun with the "tea party" theme. They took to sipping with their pinkies up (out of styrofoam-like cups... ultimate class!) and some amazing vocabulary appeared! "Mrs. P, this tea is simply exquisite!" "Excuse me, young lady, could I trouble you to tell me about coordinating conjunctions?" and the sort were what I heard a lot of. Those kind of days are why I love my 8th bell. My even day kids (2nd and 8th) are forgetful and hyperactive, but they are incredibly creative and silly, which I love. I couldn't take any pictures of them (consent issues! ugh! written consent needed! but no one knows where the forms are! what?!?), so I substituted this picture of me doing my best air tea sip. Enjoy.
What is causing a behavior problem now is the fact that they have exams all next week! EIGHT OF THEM!! My kids are stressed(!!) now that every class is devoted to putting pressure on them to pass every exam. That is so crazy. Eight exams. One week. Holy crap. I was talking to a few kids in my first bell who were complaining and wishing they could have the 4 class per semester schedule and that when they were in other districts in the area with that type of block schedules their grades were higher. They also wanted required planners, provided by the school (a system like we had in KPS), so they could keep track of their assignments. I was talking to another few students in my 8th bell yesterday about the no iPod/CD player stuff and the pros and cons of allowing that. I encouraged all of them to look into what they could do about that. Some of them automatically dismissed the idea. One girl said that there was a woman on the school board that outright said that students have no rights in the school. So I told her to talk to her mom about it. They still didn't think there was anything to do about it, but I'll keep nagging at them to give it a try. I am such a bad first year teacher. Look at me: encouraging my students to question authority and push for answers. Bad, bad teacher.
Anyway. We have visitors coming! In February and in March! I am so totally excited! I have a three-day weekend for Presidents' Day, which is the same weekend as David's birthday, so Miss Fancy Pants herself is coming for a visit! Perfect! Then, we have Meg and Mike coming down early March to spend their spring break with us. Hopefully we will find enough for them to do for that whole week, haha! Especially since we'll both be in school for that week (or part of it, in David's case. I believe his spring break starts the end of the week that they'll be here). Some of my students are excited to meet Megan since I have referred to her many, many times. Hopefully, they don't embarass me in front of them. I can only imagine...

keep it goin'

First thing first: HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMANDA MARIE!

Now. How's life? Life's okay. Life is life. Life goes on. This week drags on forever. The past week and a half all I've talked about is appositives and participles and the phrases they make. Let me tell you, that is some exciting stuff. I've cracked some of the corniest jokes I've ever thought up in my whole life this past week and a half. I became a cheerleader for appositives and participles, the whole time thinking to myself: And why do they need to know this? They don't read enough yet to even give a crap! They don't need to know the names! They just need to be able to write and read and like to do both! I would be happy with that. (And also knowing the basics of language, sentence structure and where to put those pesky punctuation marks) I mean, really, how many of you have ever been asked to pull apart all your sentences and label every. single. thing. you did. NO ONE DOES THAT! Raaaar. Other English teachers must think I am horrible for saying that. But I ask them: Who the hell needs this shit? What I keep telling my students that ask is that it will help them improve their writing, they'll feel smart and accomplished and they'll wow crowds of people at cocktail parties.
...Which brings me to the tea party. I came up with an idea to help review ideas and concepts for their semester exam: a tea party. I thought thinking about bringing in some articles and having them highlight and color and circle and stuff (they love that stuff!) to review grammar stuff was fun, but man! I blew my own mind with the idea of the tea party! They must "dress to impress", they have to try and use adjective clauses, appositives and participial phrases in their speech, they have to only talk about what we need to review: short story elements, Catcher in the Rye, grammar, and essay writing. They'll have a cheat sheet with topics to discuss and also a collection card to fill out, describing who they talked to, what they talked about and the clauses and phrases mentioned above used. So far, the kids seem to be interested/intrigued about the idea and a good chunk of them are excited about dressing up. Amazing.
Also, I read a part of Days of War, Nights of Love to two of my blocks and my 5th block LOVED it. You could hear the change in the room, all of a sudden it got really quiet and you could feel them listening. When I was done, they didn't really move and a few of them added, "I liked that. That made me think." That's why my 5th bell is really growing on me.
Other than all of that, nothing too exciting. I've been trying to find the good things in this small town and I've been trying to finish books and write more, generally keeping myself busy.

absurd

Amazing movie to see: Children of Men. I was totally expecting something with a somewhat good story, but was basically an action movie set in the future, because that's how they made the preview look. But. It was something actually very, very good. I highly recommend it.

Absurd/hilarious thing to see: What Williamsburg's youth do on a Friday night. Which is: hang around New Town. When we came out of the movie, there were not double- no, no- triple the amount of teenagers hanging around outside. It had that wonderful tense feeling before a fight, complete with some kid yelling at another smaller kid. Usually there is only one cop car there, to make sure nothing gets rowdy, but tonight there were five. (Not to insult WBG, but that's probably like their whole force, no?) Anyway, it was crazy. We laughed about it. I am glad I do not teach in this town.

lightning fast trip

Winter break was a quick one.
Our flight D.C. to Detroit went quickly and well. David did pretty okay on his first fight ever. We landed in Detroit, ate some lunch and hung around David's parents' house.
The next day, we went to meet up with Amanda and exchanged gifts. It was nice to see her again, if only for a short amount of time! We also tried to see David's grandparents, but couldn't get ahold of 'em. We drove back to Warren and went to Bo's family Christmas. We came back so late we decided to do Christmas at 2 AM and sleep in the next day.
Christmas started off with a huge, delicious breakfast. Two of David's uncles came over. We watched movies, Superman, and lazed about. We ate dinner with them and then headed to Kzoo. We got to Kzoo about 9:30. We waited for Meg to get home and then decided, since it was late, we would open presents, get it over with and sleep in the next morning. We did. Megan liked her two seasons of Gilmore Girls, my mom's "tea for two" set (two cute mugs and four loose leaf teas) went perfectly with the tea kettle my dad got her (we had no idea we were getting gifts that would go so well together!) and my dad liked his coffee. I love giving gifts. David and I got some awesome stuff. I got some socks from sock-dreams.com (wooooonderful socks!) and enough money on a gift card to get a CD player installed in my car (yesss!). David got a very nice outfit that is very appropriate for internship/grad student life.
I soon realized I was the only one without a laptop. Meg has a beautiful iBook, David has his huge laptop, my dad has a tablet laptop (where you can flip around the screen and write on it), and my mom has a laptop, too, now! David and I made a joke about how we should all be on our laptops and also talking on Instant Messenger. So, we showed my parents how to use AIM! Now they are totally caught up in the technology world.
We headed to Rocket Star for some quality coffee shop time. I dropped off two copies of my zine in the zine library. Meg, David and I showed each other the newest funny videos on youtube we've been laughing at. It was nice.
The next day was our first full day and started off pretty rocky. Brody has been acting up recently and decided it would be a good idea to latch on to Megan's hand with his teeth and not let go. Luckily, Megan's hand is okay, just swollen and has a few wounds on it. No broken bones or anything like that. Whew. Brody will also be going into training after he is out of quarantine. I hope it works and that Brody and my family can live in harmony and finally relieve some stress that dog has been putting on my family.
Mike came to stay with the family for a while. It was nice to see him, as always. It was especially nice to see him since he brought along a Wii! What a blast that stuff is! I was sore from boxing Megan and Mike and I swear I pulled a butt muscle bowling.
We also went to get tattoos. David got the golden spiral, I got my other hip Hedwig tattoo done and Mike got his Harry Potter tattoo touched up. It was awesome to see DJ at the shop. He seems like he's doing fantastically well.
Anyway. David and I went out separate ways, hung out with all our friends, went to coffeeshops, bars, wherever. We caught up with Kalamazoo and tried to see everyone we could. Here's where I will name drop--it was wonderful to see (mostly in order of how I saw you): Clay, Mike, April, Ian, Johnboy, Quaz, Natalie (!!), Scotty, Traci, DJ, Kim, Dan, Bill, Emily, Brian, Katy, Spock... hopefully I did not forget anyone. Congrats to Dan & Emily, who are now engaged.
It was strange being back in Kalamazoo. I was looking forward to being there and seeing friends, but I also felt myself slipping back into bad habits. I used the move to Virginia to start on everything I wanted to do and be. Being back in Kalamazoo, I realized I was being the old Alison. Not that I'm that much different, but it's different enough to bother me. It was really awesome to see my sister, family, former co-workers, friends, etc. But I don't really belong there anymore. Most the people that live there I don't keep in contact with and they don't contact me. No big deal. Kalamazoo moves on without me. Yes, it would be nice for someone to say they missed having me there, but they have no reason to. I wish I could bring some people here with us so this town would be more interesting, but I have no interest in moving back to Kalamazoo. First off, no jobs. Secondly, Michigan is depressing. I'm enjoying Virginia much more. Thirdly, most of the people I still keep in contact have moved other places. David and I were talking about how, in a few years, most of the friends we had in that city will be in other places. That's good, though. Kalamazoo seems to have a way of stagnating people. Anyway, it was good we were only there for a few days. Now it's time to get back to business.
The flight back to VA SUCKED. First, we were supposed to take off at 9. We boarded the plane at 8:30. We sit and sit and sit some more. Finally, the captain comes on and says something like, "Well, folks, if you've looked out the windows, you've seen the fog. The fog's even worse in D.C. and they're not letting anyone fly in." So we sit. Sit more. Finally, at about 10/10:15, they let us leave the plane to stretch. We re-boarded at 10:40 and sat for about 30 more minutes. Finally, we took off. We were supposed to land in D.C. at 10:10. We landed around 1:30. There was about a 30 minute wait to land in D.C. from the back-up of flights. It was so long of a wait that the pilot said if we had to wait 20 more minutes, we'd have to fly to Atlantic City to fuel up. The bright spot of this flight was the head flight attendant who decided to change up the original flight safety spiel. It started off with the usual stuff and then she pops in (not even breaking character) "please pretend to pay attention". She also had other gems popped in there like: "...then we would not have come to work this morning.", "If you are sitting next to a child or a politician, please secure your mask before securing theirs", "For those of you that have never been in a car before, this is a seatbelt. Please secure it tight and low around your waist like Britney Spears' jeans", "the in-flight movie is Gone With the Wind", "The lights in the cabin will be turned off. If you look above you, you will see a white button that will turn on your own personal reading light. Do not press the blue button, as this is your seat ejection button". The best part is that most people didn't even notice because she kept the same tone of voice (and it was very stereotypical flight attendant style) and the other flight attendants didn't even flinch! Everyone acted as if it was totally normal. The people that did notice were laughing their asses off, though. It was priceless.

I've put all the pcitures I took on my flickr site, along with a TON of wedding pictures (by Beth) that David's parents scanned in for us and put on a CD.

Also, Chris and Cherie were broken into before Christmas and hit pretty hard. While we were in Kzoo, we talked to a few people about collecting some money to replace stuff/repair their window. We're going to buy them a few movies they had stolen. If you're interested or if we already talked to you and you can spare a few bucks, let me know.

I hope everyone had a good Christmas and that you have a good New Year's Eve/Day. Ours will probably consist of Yuengling black & tan and continuing watching the Twilight Zone marathon on Sci Fi.

hang in there

I had a wonderful plan for my day today that involved getting the required "what I did on my Holiday Break" blog out of the way. Unfortunately, I will explain and update tomorrow. This update will be the most epic blogging you have ever seen in 2006.
Or maybe just on December 31, 2006.
And possibly maybe probably not that epic.
But it has a 70% chance of at least being a little entertaining.

with a quickness

This week we made cookies. One batch of ginger snaps that were far too ginger and one batch of oatmeal/banana/chocolate chip cookies that were deeeeeeeeelicious!
I got a lot of cards from students and teachers. I got candy and cookies from a few students and one of my co-teachers. My other co-teacher gave me these three beautiful candle holders that say, "peace", "joy", and "noel", plus candles. Now I must find something or make something (food-wise) for my two co-teachers to thank them.
One student gave me a cute snowman candle. One of my students made me two "snowmen". They were made of three marshmellows on a stick, dipped in chocolate and white chocolate, meant to be stirred into hot cocoa. She also gave me a card that said I was a great teacher and, even though she may not say it a lot, she appreciates everything I do. It was amazing! I gave her some hot cocoa mix. Other teachers were jealous of the stuff/cards I got... I was totally not expecting anything!
This week, I made copies and put together my first (kinda crappy) zine. It's rushed and kinda disorganized, but it'll work and the next one will be better. I wasn't sure what I wanted out of this one, but now I know for the next one.
Today, so far, has involved packing (pretty much finished), cleaning, and getting the apartment ready for the pipe replacement that's going on while we're gone. We have to move everything off the counters and from around the kitchen sink in the bathroom, remove everything from one of our storage closets, and remove everything from the bathrooms. Ugh! This also means the cats will be stuck in our computer room the WHOLE TIME we are there because they can't be loose while the dudes are working. Carly is going to check on them mid-way to make sure they're doing okay though, so that's good. (It still sucks that they'll be in one room for a week. ugh.)

And we're off!