The Right Stuff

You know you've married an awesome guy when you're sitting around your apartment and he says, "Want to go to Pottery Barn?", and once you're there you split up to browse, and you haven't told him your secret agenda to find a vase, and then you meet up again and he says, "I was looking at the bud vases over there, because I know you need more, and I think you should pick a few out."

...and all that jazz.

It's been a while. Frankly, I've been too exhausted by school to talk about school. So, I won't. However, there is much to discuss besides the s-word. (That looks like "sword"!)

I went to CdA for a few days and had the fortune to stay with the Shirts'. It was overwhelmingly relaxing (is there such a thing?) to go at my own pace, visit the lakes, take some photographs, and read my book (1491; it's phenomenal!). I missed Hubby and the skunk, but it was nice to get away for a few days, even if that meant driving 63 mph in Joey Lawrence for almost 7 hours each way. With no AC.

But, I did see good wildlife. Three dear within five minutes! (The road that goes left at the bottom of the hill leads to Patty Duke's house; it's just out of the shot.)










And this seagull really wanted my Carl's Jr. We stared at each other the entire time.










James accepted a new job today! We'll be moving to Newburg in a couple of weeks. James will be the new property manager at a small complex; we get a bigger apartment to live in, it's only 15 hours a week and he sets the hours, so he'll be able to work there while he goes to school in the fall. Also, it cuts my driving time from 50 minutes to 20; I save a whole hour EACH DAY; that's FIVE HOURS A WEEK I'll now have to spend on more worthwhile doings than driving.

Skunkie's girlfriend is moving in with us in a few weeks, as well.

More to come...

School is over, the kids have all gone home.

I'll write more later, but in short, the year ended with: a cold, a sigh of relief, a few tears of exhaustion, and two long meetings when I just wished I was at home in bed. And I only have 2.5 weeks this summer to catch up on 9 months of sleep deprivation. Viva high school. This wasn't exactly the cathartic release I was expecting.

Happy Birthday, and much, much more!

Last weekend, Lumina came back to the states from Korea. She's spent the last three years there! There was a party at Skye and Jared's to commemorate.



























Emily Potter was even there! It fah-bulous to hear Emily play, as well as Skye. Dancing commenced.












This is Skye eating a peice of dried squid. The Banana Juice was quite tasty, she said, but I don't think she'd do the squid again.



















The happy couple. They're getting married in less than two weeks!










Then, last Thursday, MACA held it's First Annual Media that Matters Tech Fest. Wow, I was totally amazed at what our kids have done. This is a pic of one of our students (the one who was gracious enough to let us stay at her grandma's house at the beach a few weeks back) giving the opening speech. I was floored - it was a really terrific speech. We held the Fest "Academy" style, with awards.










Heather before the Fest began. I am so glad I work with such professionals. :)












Then, James had his birthday on Friday! We went over to his folks' place and had delicious Pink Lemonade Cake.













Donna and I made dinner. She had a really fabulous Wolfgang Punk recipe for pork, that required Port. She had purchased some Cabernet, which was super delicious with it, but as we were in the middle of cooking she asked me how I would recommend opening the corked bottle. "Don't you have a corkscrew?" Of course not - they don't drink. So, brainstorming began:
1. I could run to the store
2. Maybe stick a knife in it to pry it up?
3. Drill a hole in the cork to pour it out?
4. Push the cork into the bottle?
James' dad ended up drilling a screw into it. A long screw. This is Amy holding the screwed bottle:













James then took pliers to try to pry up the cork. It worked, until he got all the part of the cork with the screw up from the neck, and the top part of the cork ripped off. Then he just shoved the rest of the cork back into the bottle. That was the most redneck way to open a wine bottle as I can imagine.












...but, dinner turned out amazingly, and I wouldn't have altered a thing.

Designer Headgear

This morning, a student showed up to first block late with an excused note from the orthodontist. "Everything okay?" I asked.
"No, I just found out my braces stay on for another two to four months."
"Well, it could be worse. You could need headgear."
"This is true. I guess I should be thankful for that, at least."
This conversation spread to some other students in the room, with the consensus that headgear is just about the worst thing you could have to wear in high school. Some disbelieved me that people even wear headgear anymore.

Right then, we switched classes. The next thing I know one of my more "challenging" students arrives in the classroom... in headgear.

Nobody had ever seen him in it before. Total coincidence. I couldn't even look him in the face, I was trying so hard not to laugh. I had to take a "time-out" in the hallway to get it out.

Please, watch this:
Really really ridiculously good-looking.

James pointed out that having a skunk has lowered our "can this animal make a good pet?" IQ. There really was a second there that I thought about it.

Lessons learned

As the year is wrapping up, we've all been reflecting on how much growth we've experienced and all the lessons we've learned... not just the students, but us, the staff. Really, when you boil it down, teaching isn't really about the subject matter. Most big schools focus on getting the kids to memorize math terms and sentence structures so they can pass state and national tests. That's what education has become - test centered. (That's a whole other subject that I won't tackle now.) But educators that really know what's up - my instructors at Concordia, luckily, had this sense too - focus on character development. They're student-centered. What do you remember most about high school - economics lectures or the choices you made? Do you remember what the teacher taught, or what kind of person teacher was? We want these kids to learn how to be good people who love to learn. But like most things done right, it takes more effort than to do it wrong.

I haven't talked a lot about what MACA is about. Part of me wants to rave and rave about what a phenomenal experience we're giving these kids, but I don't want to seem like bragging. But you know what? 10 people in one hallway of an 80 year old building have managed to create something extraordinary. We've been given the spotlight at small schools organizations, national newspapers have written stories about us, our students are winning awards (most recent were two students that produced a video PSA for the Suicide Prevention Coalition), and the Employers for Educational Excellence (an organization that works with the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation) say our school is ahead of other small schools that have been open for years. In short, it's starting to work.

This means that NONE of us in the building have ever worked harder before. The teachers that have worked for 10+ years say this is their hardest year. Not only do we have to do our normal teaching duties, but we've had to incorporate professional media into our whole school's plan. We do projects together - all 150 of us - in Adobe Illustrator, Dreamweaver, InDesign, Flash, Premiere Pro, Soundbooth, and PhotoShop. Each of us 7 teachers have had to become experts in at least one of these programs - I'm the house expert, for instance, in Photoshop and Illustrator. These kids are working with the industry-standard versions and producing professional quality work.

In teaching these kids, I've of course learned SO much myself. I've been working on my photography skills, my graphic design skills, and of course, my bowhunting skills. In trying to keep ahead of the tech-savvy and sneaky students trying to get around our tech restrictions, I've had to become a pretty good troubleshooter. Teaching a year of math and science have increased my knowledge of both. My mind has never been stretched as much before. This is hard.

This post has turned into nothing like I intended. I only wish to express how excited I am to finish the year, how I can't believe I'm going to make it out alive, and how thankful I am to have had this experience. I wonder how different my experience would have been if it weren't my first year teaching, because sometimes my struggles with that have clouded some of the more extraordinary moments. In the end, I'm a different person (and I hope a better one).

Complexes.

This week in Psych we're talking about Freud's psychosexual stages.

Pure comedy.

Perks

There are few perks to being a teacher. Sure, we're guaranteed national holidays off (even though having two weeks off for Christmas was convenient, this year it didn't really seem like a "perk"), and we get summers "off" (if you're a half-decent teacher, this really just equates to about two weeks), but the amount of overtime a teacher puts in is really ridiculous. At least, if you're doing your job right. But during the day, I can't think of any real "sweet" benefits. You're lucky when you get time to use the bathroom between 8:25 and 12:15. Your stuff gets stolen, drawn on, and broken. You get constant emails, calls, and unexpected drop-ins from unhappy "clients" (i.e., parents). You get observed regularly. You get constant reminders of how imperfect you are.

You get the picture. Don't get me wrong, I'm not complaining per se, but being a teacher's harder than most people realize. It's like most jobs - until you've actually experienced it, you can't really "get" it.

Thursday and Friday I got the rare opportunity to go on an overnight trip with 13 sophomores to help begin the planning process for a service retreat next year. The meetings took place at one of the students' grandma's house. It happened to be next to the beach, at Oceanside. On the warmest days we've experienced this year. Needless to say, it was a welcome change to the regular school week.

This is the view from the front patio where we held our meetings:















I was almost washed away shortly after I took this picture. I clung to the boulder on the left while the surf washed up to my waist. Tide was coming in and that was the biggest swell the beach had seen since the day before!






































Due to privacy issues, I can't post pictures of students at this time. BUT... I don't think anyone would recognize feet.






























Our house was one of the ones on the left.















It had to be one of the most beautiful sunsets I've ever experienced. These pictures do NOT do it justice, sadly.

Dedicated to my sister, Ginny

Alas

It turns out I'm allergic to B12. No injections for me.
Now I've got to take a B12 pill and hold it under my tongue while it dissolves. I did it this afternoon. It was disgusting, even though I made sure to NOT get the kind that lists "dessicated liver" as one of the ingredients.

So, pending the results of several blood tests, I will begin receiving B12 injections.

B12 is only absorbed in the ilium, the very last part of your small intestine. Mine hasn't been working properly for several years now, so it's a good thing your body stores LOTS of B12 - enough to last you a year or so with little deficiency. Unfortunately, due to my poor absorption in the past and the complete lack of ilium now, my reserves have reached their end. Symptoms of B12 deficiency include poor memory (James will vouch for this one), chronic fatigue, muscle fatigue, sleepiness, and stress. Oh, and some pretty bad neurological disorders that I won't mention. Fortunately, personal anecdotes and online research have shown that even a day after the first injection, my stress will decrease, I'll have SO much energy, and my memory will start coming back. Woot!

Delicious!

We've been talking about your digestive and immune systems in Science recently. One student last week asked if it was dangerous to drink your own urine. I casually said no, that urine was generally sterile. Another student asked if *I* would do it, then. Of course! I said. It's no big deal! -But I couldn't do it then, as I had just gone to the bathroom.

So, knowing that the next time I saw them they'd remind me that I'd said that, I planted some white grape juice in the staff bathroom. Of course they reminded me. Two students escorted me directly to the bathroom with empty cup in hand. After a minute or two, out I came with cup, complete with pale yellow liquid. We went upstairs, showed the class that there was, indeed, real "urine" in there, and I drank half of it, dramatics and all. Oh, how I relished their disgusted reaction! The gasps! The "eww"s! The gags! The rumors in the subsequent days! Some students don't quite believe me. Others believe and refuse to talk about it anymore. Some beg me to do it again.

I think that the crazier my students think I am, the better.

Skunk Month

I hereby declare April as Skunk Month.





























Oh, he looooooves raisins!











No, I did not put him in there. He crawled in while I was trying to do laundry.













Skunkie was on my lap and spied my vase of flowers next to me. He reached to smell the tulip, so I brought him closer, and before I knew it, he had snatched a petal in his mouth and began eating it. I decided, hey, if he likes it so much...

Phone Punk'd

I realize that I don't talk much about school, and I think I should share more. Today something great happened - it's not everyday I get a good guffaw in (during class time, at least).

There's this punkish student - let's call him "Johnny" - who has a pretty laid-back nature. Today I caught him texting during class. (He thought he was being super sneaky, and I let him do it until he thought he got away with it when I really had been watching the whole time.) I took his phone away, and he was devistated. "It's my whole life, Mrs. Wright! I can't wait until after school! Can I please have it back? I'll do anything!" Of course, the answer was always no. I DO get some sick pleasure watching students squirm. Anyway, a few minutes later he used one of his bathroom passes to go to the bathroom. Several moments later his phone began vibrating in my pocket. I looked at the number and recognized it as the office. I walked down to the office, picked up his phone with him watching, and told him that no, he couldn't have his phone. Laughing, we both went back to the classroom. I let about 15 minutes pass, then slipped out into the hallway. I pulled out his phone and dialed my classroom number. After it started ringing, I heard the students debate over whether or not/who should answer it. Finally someone did, and I said it was MHS and that I was looking for a "Johnny." They got him on the phone and I said, "You still can't have your phone!" as I walked back into the classroom. The students started laughing so hard, and said, "Dude, Johnny, you just got PUNK'D by MRS. WRIGHT!"

I can't imagine more wonderful embarrassment than the kind you get when you're tricked by your math teacher. Oh, I relished it.

Port Townsend with Gage and Jessica!

We were fortunate enough to spend a weekend with Gage and Jessica up in Port Townsend last weekend. Tobias was more than pleased to play with his new girlfriend, Aroma - after an intense two hours of "courtship," they snuggled under the bedcovers. The humans went to both a magic and a rock show (not the nerd kind this time), and had the most delicious dinner/dessert ever. Thank you, Gage and Jessica, for inspiring James to make Bananas Foster for my birthday! Oh how delicious! The next morning: a French bistro, an antique car shop, a drive around parks/beach, and a perusal of an 1868 book called "Advice to Wives." (Make sure you don't ever sleep in an un-ventilated room!)

You know you want some.

My mum works for the American Museum of Natural History, as many of you know. About two weeks ago, we were chatting on the phone when she casually asks me if I know who Stephen Colbert is. Uuuummm, yeah, one of my favorite shows. Irreverence + politics = greatness. I don't think she had ever heard of him before, 'cause she then said, "I think he has a show."
Anyway, she then explains that he was at the museum's water exhibit filming a bit for his show and that they ended up chatting and that "he's a really nice guy!"
At any rate, I watched The Colbert Report's show on water last night, and let me tell you, the curator that he was interviewing had the most tragic lack of sense of humor I've ever seen. Sorry, Mom, if you know this lady. I'm sure she's very professional. But if you are going to be interviewed on national television, the least you could do is some research about WHO is interviewing you. Stephen Colbert has NEVER done a serious interview. This one was painful and hilarious at the same time. Please, enjoy.