kris_bay_tfa

I've clearly been really bad on not posting. I know journaling, chronicling, my teaching is important. I'm setting a goal to post everyday. It will be my new homepage to help remind me.

So much has happened in the last nine months. I'm really sad that I've neglected to post. Over spring break, March 21st-March 31st I need to update livejournal on teaching, my personal life, grad school, family, etc.

More to come, stay tuned.

Great Earth Day story! I had my kids picking up garbage at our school on Friday and a group of kids found an old sports bra/underwear that was in the rain/outside so long it had turned a gross, dirty yellow. I gave them a 'bravery award' aka nothing for picking it up. No worries- they had gloves on. they squirmed and screamed though as I watched. It was funny. :) We're going to pick up some more trash on Monday too, followed by planting plants.

Big News: I'm moving. Don't know where yet. But either alone or with another roommate someplace. roommates.com has been a good source and hopefully TFA. But I'm definitely moving. I may be living in Palo Alto at Stanford this summer with Aabed's roommate who's in med school. I'll be studying for the GRE and preparing grad school applications, while he's studying for his year 2 boards.

I also got switched to Slonacker Elementary for next school year. I don't know the grade or anything yet. This all happened when our contracts came out on Friday afternoon. I picked it up Saturday at school when I was working on the Pinocchio play at school. Mr. MP was there and he got Cureton again. My principal was pissed and she already called the district office to complain. I'm going to the DO first thing in the morning tomorrow for my prep period. Oye vey. Who knows what I'll do. Or what grade I'd teach. I'm in a pickle. I LOVE my principal and like my staff a lot. I DON'T want to move or change grade levels at this point. Next year is all 'set up' so to speak. I still have a lot to learn. But it will be 10x easier. This district has so much bureaucratic, political crap going on its sad. The ones who lose out are the kids.

I had our last APEX seminar with Kim Sweeney on Friday until 6. I fell asleep at 6:30 and instead of going to Tiara's for 4-20 I slept. No alarm clock. and woke up at 8am Saturday. Quickly mailed out the college letters for our writing project in 5th grade, requesting information and banners, mostly to PPIA schools. Then, I went to the bank to deposit $1,000 from our field trip money. hmmm... what else? I was at the school on Saturday from 1-7 working on the Pinocchio posters and Marina, Amanda Tapia, and Miranda were helping. Cute girls. :) Great helpers.

I bought more things for the prize boxes.

Just 10 teaching days until testing. I'm most worried on math. With that said, I'm going to go long-term plan our math lesson time out.

Let's see if Mrs. Fehely lets me have a Saturday math study session this Saturday or next. Hmm...

Kris

Well, I haven't posted in awhile, so I might as well update on things.

Today I took four students from my class to the San Jose Museum of Art, followed by the awesome Recycled Bookstore on the Alameda. Thereafter, we checked out the playground equipment by the HP Pavilion. We stopped into the Tech, but didn't realize that they charged $ on some Sundays. So we'll make a return trip with some students on the second Sunday in May.

After the 2-5 museum fun, I went for an hour long massage and followed up with 5 laps run/walk around the Cahill Park townhouses. The layout reminds me a bit of Pittsburgh in some ways. I'm going to get into the routine of posting my workouts in the future on here. They'll probably be at night time, until I can make myself into a morning person. That may take another year. (seriously)

We had a 3 day weekend this weekend due to Cesar Chavez Day on Friday. I had originally planned on going to LA and the OC, but have postponed that until Memorial Day weekend. Instead, Colleen (my roomie from institute in LA- she's from Knoxville, TN and teaches 8th grade in Oakland) visited San Jose on Friday. We went to Mountain View (Jackie, Colleen, and myself) and tanned at the pool. After that, we got dinner on Santana Row and went to Palo Alto after- visiting the Old Pro, Nola, and the 'dancing place' aka the 'club.' Had some good times. Colleen stayed over and then went into San Francisco on Saturday morning for training at the exploratory science museum. Jackie and I went tanning again in Santa Cruz on Saturday. Saturday night was not too productive, aside from ironing and doing laundry for a couple hours. I cleaned up some of the all elusive 'stacks' of papers in my bedroom. *sigh*

Today, like I said, I went to the museum with kids, worked out, got a massage, and am now writing parent permission slips and other update notices to parents for the upcoming fieldtrips, etc. (science camp, etc.)

I have just 4 days left of teaching (I'm taking Good Friday off) and flying into Madison on Thursday night. Flights are just too expensive from SFO on Friday, so I'm flying earlier.
I'm definitely looking forward to the 10 day weekend. I plan to finish about 3 books of reading. Right now, I have the Joy Luck Club, My Life Bill Clinton, Nickel and Dimed, The United States of Walmart, The Perks of Being a Wallflower, and Earth in the Balance on a pile on my desk... just looking at my sadly. "read me Kristin... read me" they cry. :( I'm sad too. I hope, like I said to finish 3 of them. This trip home will be odd. I'm actually HAPPY to go home. (and to return to my life in CA). Things are like night and day from what they were over winter break. I haven't made as much academic growth with my students as I would like, but I'm catching them up where there were 'holes' in material from prior years... and I'm learning from my own mistakes. A rookie mistake on my part this year that I regret is that I spent too much time on one academic standard in math. That is, most new teachers do tend to spend too much time reteaching academic material.. and getting off pacing plans. Then again, my school district is screwed up and never gave me an accurate pacing plan this year. (I still don't have it, go figure).

Right now, I'm looking into housing options for next year. No offense any new TFA corps members out there, but I don't want to live with you next year. One year of a first year teaching is enough. I don't want to relive the experience next year, by living with another first year. :P

I'm looking into one bedroom and two bedroom apartments. Perhaps with Jackie at this point. Maria is not sure of her plans for next year and Vanessa would prefer to live alone. It seems our time at the Cahill townhouse is down to T-3 months at this point. And I know our landlord will start asking us in the next month or so our plans for next year.

Shawn got a job too at Renaissance Learning in Rapids post-graduation. :) Congrats Shawn. The offer was made this past week and he accepted. Yay :) Hooray for money and a job post-college.

Sarita, Tara, and Shawn's birthdays are approaching and we plan to celebrate over the upcoming break. woohoo :)

The only other new news... I'm thinking of coaching volleyball for George Middle School next year, if there is a need. We'll see how this pans out in upcoming months...

Well, down to 11 days until break. I'll be going back to WI for that and that will be fun. Shawn and Sarita (and Tara) all have their birthdays. In 4 days I'll be going to SoCal with Jackie and Colleen. We'll be spending 3 days on the beach- Huntington, Newport, and Laguna. :)
Yes!

I spent today shopping- returning things at Kohls, delivering Marilyn's Valentine's bag to her aunt's house, and going to Gilroy. I popped in at the Banana Republic Outlet store about 15 minutes before it closed and still found everything I wanted. and more. :) I love that store. got a few 'going out' shirts, outfits, and some fun shirts.

I went out to Palo Alto on Friday night with Maria, Liv, and Nate. We met Josh (from Berkeley) and had sushi, followed by a couple bars off of university. A really good crowd, much improved from 2 weekends ago in San Jose with Jackie and Vanessa. I'm getting used to the West Coast and find myself even happier these days. Maybe it's because I'm taking more time for myself on the weekends. I'm not sure. But I can see year 2 coming up (and the end to APEX in just 3+ short months)

Only 52 teaching days left.. but hey, who's counting?

My principal told me this week, before the science fair on Thursday, that I'm doing a good job teaching and that "if I were displeased with your job, performance, you would have known a long time ago."

Alrighty, with that, I'm going to print out math worksheets for Selena and Elizabeth. They'll be gone for 2 weeks to Mexico. Starting tomorrow.
Eek.

you no longer want to sleep during the weekends. Instead, you rather be more productive with your day off. I find myself getting up at 9:00AM (not too early, but still wayyyyy earlier than in college) to get things finished. .....


okay, off to day 2 of tanning by a poolside. Yesterday Mountain View. Today, Santa Clara. 80 degrees and sunny (the past 2 weeks in the bay area). :)

This past weekend I saw a number of people planting flowers and working on home additions and construction outside. It's been 80 degrees, humid, and sunny since Saturday. I wanted to go outside, but instead, ended up doing paperwork (boo). I also stayed 'indoors' on sunny Sunday, but spent it at the Kezar Pub in San Francisco with SeeYew, watching the Badgers (#3 seed) to Ohio State (#1). The game sucked.

But the weather here is wonderful! No more seasonal affective disorder (SAD). It seriously makes me so happy. I smelled the lilac on campus today at SJSU and plan on hitting the beach in Santa Cruz all day Saturday to get some color! :)

I need to go back to Wisconsin in April with a tan.

Alrighty, back to work.

The fieldtrip on Friday was a success. My kids today really did a good job of trying to trick me. We're reading the Declaration of Independence in OCR and we were discussing how you had to be 35 years old to run as president. One person said "Will you run when day when you're old enough?" hahaha
I almost said yes, or I'd think about it. Then I caught myself. And said "Well I could definitely run right now." It's 76 degrees in Santa Cruz for Saturday. Yay.

Lilisbeth Sanchez was student of the month today and was so surprised at our assembly. :)

Also- the science fair is coming up on Thursday night, March 22nd. ALL of my students are working on projects. So it'll be good to see what they come up with. So far: astronomy, volcanoes, air pressure, flowers (absorbing food), etc.

Alrighty, on to work now. Then bed. I got to bed last night at 1:30AM. big mistake. majorly tired.

I just got a piece of mail from my mom today. Her handwriting, my childhood address. Memories flood my mind. (seriously). In a brown envelope lies two pieces of mail for me (a bill and another piece). I see her handwriting and think of WI and as much cultural and professional growth I've had in the bay, I miss my family a lot. Sucker? yeah. Quite possibly.

I may have mentioned in a previous post, but in terms of 'long term' .... I see myself living in either Chicago, Pittsburgh, or Madison. I think Chicago would fit the bill the best though. A 4 hour drive to my parents house (so I could still do weekend drives, etc.), yet Chicago still offers professional and cultural aspects that a big city provides.

Today.... I feared Mercedes would return. I may have mentioned Mercedes in a previous post. I'm not going to take the time to check though if I did. To sum up, Mercedes has had a very rough childhood- bouncing from foster home to foster home (and staying in a shelter for 2-3 months this fall). Recently, she was assigned to a foster home this January and since the new foster home was out of the school district boundaries (20-25 minutes away), she was relocated to a new school district. Apparentlly, she had a 'meltdown' two weeks into her new foster home and threw things purposely at people. Needless to say after 1-2 days of this, the foster parents put her back at the shelter. Guess what that means for me? She's been out of my class for 2+ weeks now and since she's left I've noticed a big difference in our class culture. More productivity, students are able to focus. I don't hear *sighs* from her a lot.

But since I have the lowest number of 5th graders in my class (than Mr. DeRyke - 31 or Mr. Marney-Petix-31), I'm supposed to take her with 29. So I went cautiously to school today, expecting to see her face at the door. I was fearful actually, dreading what reaction this would cause in my now-more-positive class culture. I know TFA says we need to work to make sure ALL children receive an excellent education, but I find myself seriously doubting that if Mercedes would return to my class, that my class or her would benefit positively from it.

Mrs. Fehely (my principal) approached me this morning and said "let me give you a hug Ms. Boerner, Mercedes is back, and she's going to be in your class with the lowest number."
I told her "you had mentioned this to me on Friday before the break and this is all I thought of over break. I really don't know if it'd be in her best interest. Some of the girls are really doing better. Focusing a lot. I'm worried they'd backslide. I know I have the lowest number of students and of course, if she comes to my class, I'd welcome her. But, I'm just wondering, if it'd be possible to maybe put her in another 5th grade class and switch another kid into mine."

She and Mr. DeRyke agreed! So she is going to go to Mr. DeRyke's class and I'm going to get Adrian, a boy I already have in ELD. I'm excited, yet nervous/cautious on this transition. Holding my breath to see how it goes down tomorrow.

Apparently, Mercedes DID come to school today, but its policy that she needs to have proper paperwork to let her into our class. She didn't have it, so as the principal talked to her social worker in the office, she talked to Mercedes and to Maria, our secretary. I didn't see Mercedes, but Maria said that "Mercedes hadn't changed. She's still the same. Drama queen, whiner, attention seeker." She's really, really mature too for her age. She told Maria, "I can't wait to get back to Ms. Boerner's class." Maria said "Well Mercedes, you may not get placed back in with Ms. Boerner." Her response? "I know when I left, there was 1-2 seats still open in the class, so I know she has room for me." Who thinks of that or remembers that? At age 11?

She's very mature. I'm a little/lot nervous.

State reports start tomorrow. About 11-12 kids did not have their state reports done today. I'm disappointed. I seriously expected every kid to have it done.

This Friday is Read Across America, where kids get to read to younger kids at school.

I just had a night of Apex until 9PM. Mid-March is going to be a rough time for a lot to be due in Apex. A paper for Rickford, Marcela project, and our pact videos for Sweeney. Yikes!

My friend Yaraliz, at UPenn, got a 3 week Sri Lanka fellowship for the upcoming summer. Congrats on that! :) Hopefully we will both be at the same grad school in a year and a half. :) One can hope.

Off to do some paperwork, then bed soon.

Today I've been reading the NEA (National Education Association) magazine from February 2007. I came across an article (p. 46) 'Don't Lose Your Head.' In this article, it had a good paragraph summarizing my thoughts and first year experience in the corps/teaching.

"Because teachers have so much responsibility but increasingly little say over what goes on in their classrooms, they're at risk for feeling inadequate or concerned that they're not doing enough for students... As rewarding as teaching can be, combine the pressure kids may bring to school from unstable home environmentes with teachers' personal desire to do their best, and you've got a work environment that's a perfect incubator for emotional intensity, stress, and anxiety- even depression."

apparently my journal update yesterday was too much for Mel to handle. Sorry about that. I feel the need to make a public apology (on Live Journal) to her for that. So Mel, I'm sorry. I'll keep it short and sweet in the future.

Today... I got up around 10AM.... unpacked a little. Well, my room still has piles of things to do *sigh*. That's for Saturday. Then I did errands. I went to San Jose State University to get some paperwork taken care of. Then, I went to the Post Office to mail out tax stuff to the State of WI, went to Kinko's, went grocery shopping, unloaded groceries. Sounds soooo exciting. Or not. Also, I very rarely address rude people in public. But as I was bagging my own groceries at the supermarket I left my wallet on the little shelf the supermarket provides for you (near the credit card swiper). My wallet was like 2 feet from me as I bagged groceries. I bought some red wine and the jackass behind me, with two kids, who told them (both about 8 and 10 years old) "if you want something, you need to get a job"....

Great..

Well, this guy (not attractive either) proceeds to look on the shelf where my wallet is sitting. I had taken out my WI driver's license so the nice checker (a guy) could check my license. I also had out my safeway club grocery store card, my UW-Madison student ID, and my debit card to pay. My student ID happened to come out with my WI driver's license. It didn't really need to be out. The point of my story...

the jackass behinds me with the kids says "That's a lot of credit cards you have there." I responded by saying "those aren't all credit cards. Only one and it's a debit card." I think he got my tone. For the record, I was only pissed that some stranger decided to look at my personal cards sitting there. I guess you had to physically be there to understand the situation, but the guy was totally coming in front of his cart, coming out of his way to see my info. I'm watching my bank activity online, should something happen. I really don't think it will happen. He's just an idiot.
Then the guy proceeds to say "Oh! Wisconsin. (as he saw my WI ID). Did you just move here?" I said bluntly "No. I moved here a year ago." He then said "I'm sorry if I was nosy."

Yeah. It's called social norms jackass. Learn some. I'll pray for your kids.


Ok... I'm on to straighten up my room, piles, etc. and I'm getting tired already. :(

I'm actually missing Madison and snow today. Who would have thought I'd miss snow?