Summer School, Summer Vacations, and Boredom!

I am done with my first week of summer school and must admit I love working it. I have taught summer school for the last 7 years. Five as a Para, and now two as a Teacher. There are multiple reasons teachers work summer school: interest in students continuing performance, extra summer pay, and find down time a little boring after the second week. I fall in the all of thee above realm. I found out very early in life I have to be doing something most of the time. I am one of the few people that love working. As a single parent it supplements for things I need. Plus, as friends of mine know, I get a little stir crazy after a week of rest. Luckily for me Alice ISD is an awesome district and they take care of my summer well. I get to teach, train, and rest. Not to mention I have awesome friends on the campus and we get together in the summer to just enjoy each others company. This creates team spirit. That leaves me with enough time to rest, read books, read journal articles, magazines, and the multitude of websites, burn on the beach, sun bleach my hair, swim and exercise losing those few pounds, catch up on the TV shows and Movies I want to see that I DO NOT have time to watch during the school year. Then, suddenly, it is over and I am refreshed and excited to meet and greet the new year!
Now, I have no vacations on my Agenda. But I have had several students contact me and tell me they are bored. I understand there are not many things to do in Alice. But, there are more than they realize. Here is a short list I gave a student. I will be adding more to my blog and posting for them.
Summer Boredom preventers:
1) Read your type of books! I cannot stress this enough! Mysteries, Vampires, werewolves, sciencefiction, dramas, etc. The Alice Library is a great place to check out books.
2) Play Lexolus or scrabble online. There are lots of free websites to play
3) Play Suduko online free
4) Draw!! A lot of my students are wonderful artists. Experiment with crayon, colored pencil, pen and ink.
5)Check out the subjects you will study next year! You might find the information interesting.
6)Create a powerpoint or a short movie in movie maker. Youtube has wonderful How to videos on all these.
7) Create your own blog at Blogster.com
8) Check out the free online games: http://www.jspuzzles.com/
9) Learn to cook a New recipe or even how to cook!
These are just a few. I will post more tonight. There is never a reason to be bored. There is always something to do, if you truly want to become active.
Alright I am gonna end this. I have a roast in the oven and biscuits with honey to create!!

Gentle Realizations

Well, I have been a teacher now for 2 years. The nine years I did as Special Education Para prepared me very well. Between the college training and the working as a Para I think I ma doing okay. This last year has been a year of realizations. One of the foremost was that I am a smart person. Not even college taught me that. You would think with a GPA of 3.875 I would have know that, but no. It wasn't until I started interacting with faculty and staff that I truly started to believe it. You see book learning is one thing, but combining the book learning with experience, great advice and common sense is truly what teaching is about. Sprinkle in there a smattering of imagination, creativity, a little craziness, a sense of daring, a tiny bit of risk, a great deal of faith and trust in God, and a lot of courage that about sums up a teacher.
I always saw myself as a follower. I found out I am a leader, and that I am a team player. I also found that as much as I may be realist I am also an optimist. God taught me that. May have the something to do with being saved and not having to worry about the outcome of the war because I know where I am going. I also found out I have a gift with kids. That was a little bit of a shock. So all those years doing Sunday school, Youth group, working in Elementary school as a para and sub, and being a PTO parent had a lot of reasons. I also found out that all those trials I went through, some mistakes and some just life, have made me better able to relate to those around me.
WARNING: IF YOU ASK GOD FOR WISDOM IT REQUIRES TRIALS AND SACRIFICE!
I wouldn't change it for the world. God has made me who I am and given me the path I need for the person I need to become in his eyes. I also learned a very hard truth a few years ago. The person I am to become is in now way similar to the person other people are to become. Yeah, you may say well of course. But there is a deeper truth there. The path I may want my kids to follow, may not be the one GOD wants them to follow. Because he has other plans that have nothing to do with me for them.
So here I am a History teacher in South Texas. I am a mom of three beautiful children. I am a stalwart friend. I am a pain in the butt with caring for my students! But ya know what? I am becoming even more than that, and I can't wait to find out who I will ultimately be and what future plans God has for me.
One other thing, I would really love it if some of ya follow my blog. Why? Well, it's a cool way to get feedback and ideas. Cause I am going to start posting new ideas here. I hope some are new.