Day one of year six is in the books! To be honest, this was probably the least nervous I’ve ever been about the first day of school. There’s always a little fear that you’ll get some terrible student that will be a major pain in the behind, but you learn to deal with them

I’ve got six classes this year with no prep time, so that should be interesting. It means I’ll need to get more done before school and after school.

My biggest class is at 42 students right now, which fills up every single desk.

I’m super excited that I already have power points prepared for the whole year. I want to continue tweaking and improving them, but this will be a HUGE relief. Last year I spent a good 3 hours or so every weekend working on them.

So after day one, the year is off to a good start!

The school year is about to start, and that means getting my classroom ready. Luckily I didn’t have a ton to do.

At the end of last year I put a bunch of fabric up, so that looks nice and should last years.

I went in a couple days this past week to finish getting ready. My main goals this year were to get even more organized. I added HW boards, and pockets to hold missed assignments. This should prevent lots of unnecessary questions! And I made soon cool titles to go with all of it.

This year I’m teaching 3 pre-alg and 3 algebra, both of which I’ve taught before. Yes, that’s one more than usual, but I get compensated. Just means I have do all my grading, copying, and planning after school.

Here are some pics!

It’s hard to believe, but I just finished year five of my teaching career. I feel blessed to have a career at all, and even more so to say that I enjoy it more every year.

Summer should have just the right amount of things to do. Remodeling our bathroom starting in a week. Camping in July, and Vegas in August. In between all that I plan on scanning family photos, and hanging with the boy.

Here are some photos from my newly updated room.

When I came downstairs this morning, it officially felt like Fall. Does that ever happen to you? I know the official first day of Fall is Tuesday or something, but it’s like that exact moment when it feels like the season changed from being hot/summer to cool/fall? It’s still too hot, but I’m ready to light a pumpkin spice candle and decorate in brown/orange leaves.

This year we adopted a new math textbook…which is good and bad. It’s nice because it’s all new, but it’s bad because it is a LOT more work than last year. Everything has to be adapted this year…HW, tests, PowerPoints, etc. It looks like I’ll be dedicating a good couple hours every Sunday to get ready for the coming week. Next year will be loads easier, so at least it’s only one year.

Back to editing slides on one-step equations.

No, I don’t mean “work” school, but “college” school. I’m taking my first (and last) class at Cerritos. It’s an online only class about spreadsheets that lasts 9 weeks.  After finishing all my required teacher traininig I’m still two units shy of maxing out on the payscale. In case you don’t know how it works, teachers typically get paid more for two reasons: college units and years of service. These two units will result in a $3k pay increase every year until I die. Woot! I know, it sounds like a really hard class, but I’m going to do my best. The extra cash will help cover sending the little booger to daycare.

I have been bitten by the Rubik’s Cube bug.

Last year I bought one off Ebay because I thought it would be cool to have in my classroom, but I never seriously got into trying to solve it. I could do one side, but after that it became impossible.

Stacie went out and bought a real one from the store, and inside were the first CLEAR directions I’ve read for how to solve the thing. Every explanation I’ve ever read online is super confusing. So I started to futz with the new Rubik’s Cube and the directions, and following them step by step, I was finally able to solve it!

Now some people might stop there and be satisfied, but not me. Total there are 7 steps to solving it (using this simple method) and some of the steps require 8 turns! Not only do you have to turn them, but you have to memorize which sides and which direction! I’m not a very good memorizing person. I can’t memorize 100 digits of pi. But finally, after messing with it all day, I finally solvled the cube without looking at the directions, all from memory.

My goal is to be able to pick it up, solve it fairly quickly, and make my students go “wowsers!”

The last week of school is finally here! After ten months of work I am rewarded with something most adults only look back on with fond memories: summer.

Technically I have to work all week, but it’s much easier than that. We only have students for four of those days, and one of those four days I will be at Knott’s Berry Farm. Of those remaining three days, one of them students leave at noon, and another they leave at 1 pm. The only full day that I have to be there we have a two hour awards ceremony. All things considered, I’ve officially started my summer vacation NOW.

I’m looking forward to a lot of things this summer. Andrew and Sarah are getting married, we’re going camping one weekend, on a cruise for a few days, and there are several things I want to do that are hard to get done during the school year. I still have a lot of old family photos to scan and archive, I want to spend a lot of time working on my novel, and the house badly needs to be cleaned from top to bottom!

And I shaved off my beard!

There are 8.5 more days of school left.

I can’t wait.