Before The Fall... and Other Novels

I'm pretty sure I read more during the school year than I've done this past summer - I'm ALREADY writing in past tense, as if this summer is done already. I technically have one more week of "summer." Buuuuut, I am shamelessly admitting that I'm going into my classroom on Monday to start setting up. If any of you have seen my classroom, you would know why. It is a bear to set up, but it's worth it.

Usually, over the summer, I read at least ten books. Why wouldn't I? I stress out during the school year because I try to cram in my person reading amongst the grading, curriculum reading, magazine-editing reading... and I manage. But this summer, I haven't had the time or the drive to read. Although, those novels that I did end up reading have been fantastic.

Before the Fall by Noah Hawley was a gift from a student at the end of the year. She knew me too well. It was one of those "whodunnit" types where a plane crash happened and it goes through the backstory of all of the passengers to figure out why it happened. Without giving too much away, the novel was definitely a comment on how we are just a victim of circumstance. Some may be disappointed by the ending, but I found it kind of self-fulfilling. Maybe the readers who didn't like it as much wish that they could be more in control of what happens to them. But, to a certain extent, you're really just NOT. So suck it up and just be.

I've also read a few novels related to magazine review edits, but I don't feel like writing about them here. Nothing has been OUTSTANDING to the point where I want to write a review about it twice, so I'll leave it at that.

Books that I'm currently reading all at the same time...

Golden Son by Pierce Brown: I flew through the first installment because, of course, it's a dystopian set-up where one part of the civilization just isn't happy with the way they are living and thus, REBELLION. And it was great. It was a totally new plot, with the same dystopian storyline. The second installment, however, is kind of moving slowly for me. It's all action and battle and killing - and while that's all good and fine for me in the movies and on TV, reading it is a bore for me. I don't know why, but it just is. So it's lacking my attention.

Glass Sword by Victoria Aveyard: Same thing as above, for all the same reasons.

Maybe I should just give up on dystopias for awhile. Let it relax. It was really hard to follow after the last book of Justin Cronin's The Passage series came out. I'm probably experiencing withdrawal symptoms from that.

I think I'm going to try to fit in another novel before next week. Because if you aren't reading, consider yourself braindead.

What is... Summer?

Today marks the first week of FREEDOM for the summer time. And then, in two weeks, it's back the grind.

I was lucky enough to participate in the Curriculum Writing Academy for Daily English 10 (one of the subjects I will teach next year, and what I taught this past year). Our fabulous team created the entire first semester from, what I would consider, scratch... Considering that we didn't have a Daily 10 curriculum last year and just went off of the Standard 10. Which was difficult - Standard 10 met every other day, and we met EV. ER.Y. DAY. So Daily 10 teachers will finally have something to call their own and hopefully be more comfortable reaching their students who need the most support in reading and writing.

Plus, I met and worked with some of the most fabulous teachers in the county. I may be biased because, hey, English teachers ARE fabulous. I wouldn't have traded those many, many hours of sitting in student desks, staring at my computer screen for anything because I made some new friends that I hope to keep in contact with.

Plus, there were food trucks. So... Food driving to me? Yeah.

I completed my LAST summer grad school class. Graduation date is set for May 2017 - after 5 years of grad work, it is long overdue. But, that's what happens when you take one class per semester. I wouldn't have been able to afford it otherwise. The woes. But, the YAYS are I will have my Master's and get that pay raise!

And the one thing that's going to make it hard for me to go back to work...

My Manny, the black lab.

He is sleeping on the couch as I write this and it is the cutest thing in the world.

I have been bugging Eric for a puppy for months. Every time I would see someone walking their dog out in the neighborhood, or bringing their dog to his softball games, I would make a comment or post a Tweet or text him something along the lines of - WHY CAN'T I HAVE A PUPPY? But perhaps a little less needy. Perhaps.

And he would always shoot the idea down. 

"No, we can't get a puppy, you're at work all day."

"We don't have time for a puppy."

"Not right now."

Basically, my future looked bleak in the puppy department.

Well, sneaky Eric had been planning to buy a puppy since May and left me out of the loop. Everyone else knew. I used to think that I was pretty good at catching on to people when they were lying, but now I don't even know own self!

He said he had to work a catering one night for Famous Daves (which he does, regularly) and I had Paint Nite with my mom and sister, so I didn't think anything of it. He wasn't going to a catering - he was driving, with his family, to Lancaster, PA to pick out a lab puppy for me.

Needless to say, I walk upstairs, completed Paint Nite painting in hand - ready to show Eric what a stellar job I did creating a blob of leaves on canvas and renounce my career in education for an even poorer job in artistry - and I see Eric and this tiny little black creature ambling up to me. 

My first thoughts were, "Is that Lola (Katie and Tim's dog)? That's too small to be Lola. Oh my god, that's a baby puppy." And the first things I said were, "What is that? What is that?"

I laughed. I cried. I was being videotaped by Eric's sister, who was hiding in the background along with his brother and mom. So many people talked about how the video of me, laughing and crying, made them laugh and cry. 

So, we have Manny - named after Manny Machado of the Orioles. You could say he's my best friend and I'd agree, regardless of how silly that sounds. Yes, I talk to my dog. Yes, I've slept next to my dog more than I've slept next to Eric. But ya know. Puppy life.

He'll be 12 weeks tomorrow. AND I'm going to have a terribly hard time going back to work. Can I just bring my puppy? How do I go about registering him as a therapy dog so I CAN bring him to work?

The next two weeks: puppy, reading, puppy, binge watching shows (UMMM, Stranger Things? The Night Of? Orange Is The New Black? Vice Principals? Done, done, done, and done), puppy, my sister's bachelorette party, puppy, hang out with my godson, puppy, hangout with friends, puppy, volleyball workouts, puppy....

You get the picture.

Hope everyone enjoys the rest of their summer!

First Quarter - Check

I absolutely cannot believe that the first marking period is over, and we are already 3 weeks into the second one... On the verge of Thanksgiving Break! Our county is awesome (rare, I'll get into that later) because we are the only county to have the entire week off for break. Of course, "off" means Monday and Tuesday no kids, just parent-teacher conferences. But I get an incredible amount of work done during this time, that it's refreshing to get caught back up and ahead of lesson planning. My co-teacher is bringing some old traditions from our middle school and some new ones to this week too: the Chili Cook-Off and a flag football game during our "half-work-day" Tuesday. I am SO looking forward to it. One more week to go.

So what on earth has been going on?

Coaching volleyball...

I love our spirit shirts. They are super comfy to wear, even if a medium was ridiculously large on me.

Our volleyball season ended on such a sad note. I have grown to bond with these girls every single day after school (for hours upon hours) and now, when the school day ends, my classroom is empty of volleyball gear/bags, girls studying/eating bagels/chatting about their day... And many of the girls were "recruited" for the varsity team when they went to playoffs. We are planning a student-teacher volleyball game to fundraise for our player's brother who passed away at the end of the season.

We have an incredibly dangerous road in the community's neighborhood: students swerved and ran off-road at the start of this past summer and then there was an accident on Halloween night. It was so very heartbreaking and the school is still reeling from the losses and injuries of that evening. We have a "Dena Promise" where students make the pledge to never drive drunk or distracted - and never get in a car with a drunk/distracted driver. Our county executive has issued a study to be done on that road, so hopefully something good can come out of such a dark time.

But, I love these girls and can't wait till next season - or when we can start conditioning for next year.

Being a student...

Grad school is kicking my booty, but that's nothing new. I'm in my research class (next semester, actually completing the ACTION research) and studying the effect of participating in school-sponsored sports on academic achievement. It was fitting, and should be relatively easy to do with my volleyball team and other student athletes. Hoping to pull off this A. I've certainly put in a lot of time!

Love life...

Eric moved into the place in September, so we've been living together for a couple months now. He keeps me a little more organized! It gets hard during the school year, I still feel like I don't have time to do things around the house and actually GET FURNITURE... Why does that always seem like an issue? I think I'm nervous about spending money. I stopped working at the restaurant, but it seems like grad school has filled in that time.

Friends...

Also spent some time with my godson and best friends. I love them! I cannot believe that Chase is going to be two next year and Ash is going to have little Cassie in February. 

We had such a great time at Gaver Farm! The best part of the day was watching little man interact with the animals. He loved to see them and stick his fingers in the cages (although that resulted in a goat nipping at him... he cried for a second and still didn't learn that it was probably a bad idea to keep putting his fingers directly in the line of an animal's teeth). AND WE SAW COWS! I love cows. I don't think anyone knows how much I love cows unless you've actually seen me cry about people eating cows.

I have to say, the more that I think about everyone moving on to different parts of their lives - getting married, having babies - I become a little bit more nervous about leaving this part of my life behind. I'm actually perfectly content with where I'm at, but the pressure to get married/have kids/etc. is out there. People like to say it isn't out there and that it's easy to ignore, and I have to say that THAT IS A LIE. For some of us, it's easy to get away from social media and the latest engagement announcement... But for others, it's hard not to feel a tinge of feeling left out. Feeling like the rest of your friends are kind of "moving on" without you. I could go on about this, but I'm in a relatively good mood right now, so I'll stop while I'm ahead.

Teaching in the county...

There have been so many issues going on with our county lately, and I won't delve into a lot of them because of sensitivity issues. Bottom line is: our step increases have been frozen for 7 years, teachers are angry...

High school...

I love this high school teaching world more than anything. And I knew I would. I miss my coworkers from middle school, but I wouldn't go back to that level. It takes a special kind of a person to teach middle school, and that person is not me, unless I wanted to have grey hairs before 30 and stress issues for the rest of my life. Granted, there are stressors at this level, but I enjoy it so much more. That's not to discourage anyone from trying out the middle school field... Please do. It taught me so much and I would not be the teacher that I am today if I did not begin at that level.

I'll be posting some of my lessons and strategies soon!

Run Teach... Coach... Sleep?

This summer has gone by in a whirlwind... Between volleyball open gym workouts, TRYOUTS and cuts (yesterday... one-on-one cut conferences are not a thing to boost your day), setting up my classroom, getting lessons in order, trying to figure out my new school and remembering names of new coworkers, going to conferences, AND kicking off this Team BeachBody coach experience... I don't know where all of the time has gone.

Teachers start back on Monday and the kids come back a week later. Year 6 is already under way and in full swing.

I'm signed on as volunteer coach for the girls' volleyball team, probably primarily helping out with Junior Varsity. We had a number of girls come to tryouts and had to make cuts (as mentioned above), but we ended with 13 girls on Varsity and a possible 11 on JV. I'm excited to start coaching again because when I had to give it up to start grad school two years ago, I was missing the coaching/team bonding aspect of my career. I absolutely love to coach and to have a team of girls that I am responsible for, playing the sport that I love!

On that note, I have also decided to start coaching for Team BeachBody. My coworker and friend, Morgan Heymann, started her journey a few months ago and looks fantastic. She held a Shake and Share party last night at her place where she gave me the lowdown on how to coach, a bunch of us did one of the 30 min workouts from the 21 Day Fix, and she shared some recipes from Fixate. So needless to say, I'm hooked.

When other parties (Mary Kay, Pampered Chef) tried to get me to join on as a member of their team, I wasn't really invested. Yes, I can do my make up, but I can't do other people's. Yeah sure, I'll cook for myself, but my time and expertise in the kitchen is limited. But working out? Eating healthy? I can do that. I can also help other people do that. I'm doing it already! Working with my trainer twice a week since April has already seen vast improvements in my body structure and my strength. I was never able to do a push up... A MODIFIED "GIRL" PUSH UP even... but now I can do the modified ones, bench or bar pushups, AND (drumroll please....) a *few* REAL ones. WHAT? My high school volleyball coach would be amazed. I'm actually thinking about sending her a video of myself doing real pushups and tag it as "Knew It Would Happen Eventually." Where has this upper arm strength been my whole life?

But back to the Team BeachBody note. I am excited to start and to get other people to join me on my team. I want to inspire people to be healthy because we only live one life. And yes, you could make the argument that ONE LIFE?! LET'S EAT EVERYTHING WE WANT TO AND DO WHATEVER! Yeah, you could look at life like that. But that life is eventually going to limit you in what you can do.  If you're constantly eating unhealthily, your bodily functions are going to prohibit you from exploring the world when you're retired or cut your life short. That's not a way to go. It's more than just going on a 21 Day Fix. It's a lifestyle change. The 21 days is just the start. And I'm excited to get this under way!

More info to come and I guess I should think of a cool team name? Yeah, I'll work on that.

Ubuntu

My 8th graders focused on society: challenges society faced, challenges individuals faced because of society, how to positively contribute to society, who is in charge of society, what is society... And the list goes on.

We were going to read the short selection "Out of Bounds" by Beverley Naidoo in our Interactive Readers, but to preface this reading, the students had to know about apartheid and it's effects on South African society. We brought in the idea of interdependence and ubuntu.

Ubuntu is the philosophy that we are all connected; all humans rely and depend on one another because we are human. The idea of "I am who I am because of who we all are." We all belong to a greater whole and if one of us is humiliated, then all of us are.

This concept was kind of hard for my kids to grasp at first:

"But I don't need to rely on others, I can do what I want for myself."
"Ms. S., I'd rather be a hermit."
"The guy from Castaway didn't have to rely on others, he relied on a volleyball."

Yes, all of those were responses that I received from a variety of my students. And many of them had similar thinking. Haven't we always taught them to be independent? To rely on themselves for their success and their success alone? That no matter what their peers are doing, they should never be sucked into those negative pressures?

Yes, we've taught them that.

But ubuntu has a bigger picture. That if we are independent, we must not forget that when others need our help, we must be there for them. That if we are independent, if we realize we need the help of others, we must not hesitate to ask. That our overall success doesn't mean pushing others down in the process, but lifting everyone up. That if our peers are engaging in negative activities, then we need to figure out a way to help them. That's ubuntu.

I had to figure out an activity to make them see this. One of my coworkers suggested the rubber bands-red solo cups-string activity that she found on another teacher's blog.

I'm always up for a challenge, and you know my 8th graders were too.

We needed red solo cups (6 per group), rubber bands (one per group), and string (tie the pieces of string to the rubber bands. I would suggest 4 per rubber band so you would have groups of 4). If you clicked on the blog link, you would see the instructions for that activity - I wanted to challenge them further to show them what ubuntu was all about.

The challenge in that blog ends with students stacking all 6 cups in a pyramid using teamwork. I took it a step further and said that all group members had to close their eyes except for one. The ones that had their eyes closed could maneuver the string and rubber band apparatus to stack the cups into a pyramid, but the member with their eyes open could not touch the apparatus at all. These students were the ones that had to instruct those with their eyes closed. They were "in charge." They were "the leader."

Needless to say, that challenge to much longer than the first one. But, it was successful. After all was said and done, we sat and had a discussion.

The students realized that when everyone had their eyes open and they worked together to pull and adjust the rubber band accordingly, it was easy to accomplish the task. But, when there was only one leader and the rest of them were hindered, it was harder to do. They realized that they all must rely on each other to get something done in a cohesive, quick, and efficient manner. One person leading a society of people who are "underprivileged" or "set back" in some way is not ubuntu.

At the end, I showed them this video, "The Allegory of the Long Spoons."

We reflected on the video and how it fit into our challenge activity. Then, we took it back to our essential question about society.

By the end of the year, I didn't have enough fingers and toes to count the number of times that my students brought up this activity, what it taught them, and how fun it was. They were engaged and enjoying it, but it also forced them to think about what they see as independence vs. interdependence.

Needless to say, my 10th graders are going to get the same lesson. Our year-long focus is not society, but personal responsibility. And I'm so sick of lame icebreakers, so I'm bringing in the Solo Cup Challenge to the high school level. Let's see if they're as good as my 8th graders at working together.

Sleeping In Is Overrated

...at least I try to tell myself that.

Why is it that I go to sleep at a late, late hour and wake up at an early, early hour? I know this blog is called "Run. Teach. Sleep." but at this point we can totally nix the whole "sleeping" part.

Here I am, up at 4:30 a.m. Although the time on this blog is going to read a little bit later, I'm sure you can take my word for it. There's no sense in bragging about being up at 4:30 in the morning.

Yet, even though I'm up so early - I have no immediate desire to get up out of bed. It was hard enough to go down and turn my Keurig on, but when I'm up, I'm up for good. And not only am I up so early on a weekday, I'm up early on a Tuesday.

For my audience that doesn't know the significance of this: Tuesdays and Thursdays are my days of sitting in traffic for an hour, post up in the lecture hall for 4 hours, try to stay awake through class for 2 hours and 15 minutes, and then drive back home (sans traffic, thank goodness).

And why does my psycho-pants self get there so early, you ask? I have this innate fear of being late and this intense anxiety of sitting in traffic. If I left any later, I would sit in traffic for over an hour. If I left after the traffic, I would more than likely be late. So my happy remedy for this dilemma is to leave extraordinarily and ridiculously early, do work that I would just be doing at home anyway, and leave it at that.

So I guess today's early wake up call is going to mean an extra cup of coffee down the road at some point this evening. Which goes against doctor's wishes in my last post. Whoops.

Summer Time... And The Livin's Kinda Easy

I can't complain. I don't have to wake up early on purpose, sleepily get ready, and maybe scroll through my Twitter feed to see the biggest news stories of the day / hilarious retweets. I just wake up early because that's what I do, make my cup of coffee, and read all of the blogs in the land. Probably go on a morning run before the humidity and heat hit. But all on my own time! No 6:30 am obligations. (Although, my doc said that I need to cut back on the caffeine. I don't think she realizes that caffeine has replaced my blood and without it, I die.)

But before you say that teachers have it easy in the summer time, please consult the list of things that I have done NOT because they're thrilling, but because I need to... for work purposes:

- Type up 3 case briefs, a midterm, and a final exam for a School Law class Tues/Thurs from 7-915 at a "supposed to be 30 min, but more like an hour away because traffic is horrendous and speed cameras make everyone slow down from 70 to 35" location.

- Re-type first and second semester curriculum, not just so I can familiarize myself with my new position, but because whoever okay-ed the layout on this curriculum may not have kept those of us in mind who need a linear lay out of activities, standards, and assessments.

- Re-read Animal Farm, Lord of the Flies, Julius Caesar and read Fahrenheit 451, I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings, annotating the bejeezus out of them for vocabulary and elements that my students need to understand before they grow up to big giant juniors.

- Write my lesson plans, gather my materials, browse and shop TpT stores.

- Went to the MSDE conference last week at Reservoir HS. Learned a lot, but still a lot to learn.

- Figure out how to make more $$$$ to pay for this full-price grad class coming up. Yeah, you thought they paid for everything? Think again.

OK, so that's my proof that I'm not just sitting around doing nothing. Which is what I did today, but in all fairness, I did create a couple lesson plans before my Netflix-binge-watching needs took over.

Now that I've listed all of the mundane things about my summer, let's recap on some things that I've done for my own enjoyment.

Wait... I actually have to think about these:

- Read Jurassic Park (seriously, read it) and One Second After (again, read it). Currently reading Cress from the Cinder series.

- Watched Orange is the New Black season 3 in 2 days. Kind of disappointed, but after season 2 there was a lot of living up that season 3 had to do, so my expectations were really high.

- Continuing to watch Grey's Anatomy. I restarted the binge-watching right before school ended and I'm only almost done with season 6. Grey's used to be our show to watch as we waited for everyone to come over before we went out on Thursdays. During commercial breaks, we'd run downstairs to let people into our dorm building. Ah, the days.

- Continuing to watch Entourage with The Boyfriend. When the movie came out, he suggested that we start watching it because we prematurely ended How I Met Your Mother and Arrested Development (oh, how those shows fell off in their last seasons). Now, I'm hooked. Currently on season 4.

- Saw Jurassic World, which inspired me to read the book that started it all.

- Laid by the pool... but seriously, it's been so cloudy/rainy that I haven't had much time over there at all.

- Worked on my fitness. Because "Oh My Quad, Becky Look At Her Squat."

I refuse to count down the days until school starts (who does that?!), but I can't lie that I've been waking up in an anxious cold sweat about what the school year will bring. All I know that is coming is CHANGE.