Go Pandas!

It's been a crazy weekend, but I survived. The whole week was crazy getting things all ready and making sure all the KEY clubbers had their forms in (Some where still turning them in an hour before we got on the bus!) Plus, our school had a student die this week. She was at a Catholic youth conference in Ohio. They had just arrived and went accross the street to get breakfast when she was hit by a truck (the driver didn't stop). She was on student council and very involved, so it's been quite a shock for the school.


I got to school on Friday night about midnight, to get everything ready for the 947 Key clubbers going to Magic Mountain. Since our school was the departure spot, Patty and I got to run around a lot finding things and setting up. Plus, once everyone was on the buses (all 20 of them!), we had to put everything back and lock up (and alarm) the school before we could leave. We had some problems with the alarm but managed to get the buses going around 3 am.

We had a lot of fun at Magic Mountain. Our high school brought 33 students. While at the park, we attended Fall Rally. There were key clubs from all over California, Nevada, and Hawaii. They have to split the rally into three sessions to get them all in! It's pretty amazing to see that many young people all united to do community service and raise money for a good cause. We eventually made it back to Vegas. Two buses broke down so all the others had to take on extra kids, and of course took time. I think I finally got home around 2 am on Sunday.

Hash House A Go Go

I went out with some friends from work to a restaurant called Hash House A Go Go. The portion sizes were out of control. I don't know if you can tell, but my plate is about a foot and a half across!! My friend Ashley's chicken pot pie was HUGE!! My friend Patty got the fried chicken on a bacon waffle tower, what a combo! Although the food was ginormous, at least I have lunch for tomorrow.

Monday, Monday

Life remains crazy at school. Today, the whole school got evacuated because of a gas leak. We had 4 fire trucks come out, followed by several trucks from the gas company. We wound up spending an hour standing around outside. They eventually had to make a choice - either let us back in or send everyone to our evacuation site (a nearby junior high) and then send everyone home from there. At the last minute they decided it was safe enough to let us back in. It was kind of boring outside, but on the up-side I only had my rowdiest class for half an hour!!

The biggest box I have ever seen...

I'm not exactly sure where UPS found the box to send my dishes, but it's big enough to eat someone!!






Or maybe the box ate my roommate!!

Thank you Kathy!!

Thanks to Kathy, I now have the complete set of Grandma's maple leaf dishes. I brought most of them back to Utah with me a few years ago (or so I thought), but when I opened all the boxes, I realized there was a lot of stuff not there. Kathy found the missing boxes (about 5) and managed to ship them out to me. Apparently the guys at UPS were under the impression that they all needed to be shipped together, because when I got home today there was a very large box in front of my door that weighed 86 pounds!! (I have no idea how they got it up the stairs, but I'm sure glad I didn't have to do it!) Anyway, I now have the largest set of dishes I have ever seen. There's even a lot of stuff that I'm not sure what it's for! Only one large bowl was tragically lost in the shipping. I also now have enough packing material to last a life time. Maybe I can use the packing peanuts for a science lesson...

Oh What A Day!!

So, yesterday has to have been the craziest day of my life! So it all started as I was checking homework in 1st period. Our school has a policy that if the Freshman don't turn in their homework, they get detention. So, I checked the homework and prepared the detention slips and started giving them out. My coteacher was getting the powerpoint ready and we started to smell something electrical burning. We investigated, but couldn't find anything. So, I went to give out the next detention to one of my little SpEd kids, and she starts crying uncontrollably. I take her out in the hallway and try to calm her down. She's sobbing and giving me excuses and even changes her story ("I wasn't here!" - after I had already seen the incomplete worksheet!). Anyway, she won't calm down, so I tell her she needs to suck it up and get back inside because she's missing notes and will get further behind. So she stomps back inside and I look over at my coteacher, who is in the middle of having her computer hauled off by our techie. He's hooking up a new computer and replacing the hard drive as I walk in. After such a disorganized start, we never even got to the lab we were supposed to do.
Next period, I have an IEP meeting. As I'm getting ready to go to the meeting, I go through the science store room and almost get sick (the most incredibly bad smell has been building up in there, despite our weeks of efforts to find the source.) In walks the chemistry teacher, in full lab gear. She has just found the source of the smell and is cleaning it up. (Apparently over the summer a bottle of butyric acid was knocked over in the chemical storage room. It had been improperly stored and was in the wrong cabinet. Basically, after eating through the lid of the bottle, it had started to eat through the shelving of the cabinet as well.)
So, I go to my IEP meeting and everybody is late. I am sitting there with the student for about 15 minutes, just waiting. The facilitator is in the next room, speaking rather loudly with a concerned parent and everything is very awkward. The parent finally shows up, saying she is late because there is a fire truck and ambulance in the parking lot. We get on with the meeting and I am with the parent at the counselor's office, making an appointment, when a girl in a wheelchair is escorted by the campus monitor into the nurses office. Then, the principal comes over the loudspeaker saying the the science and social studies area has been evacuated and will be closed for the rest of the day! I am standing there in shock, trying to think of what to do. I finish up with the parent and head back toward my room.
As I get upstairs, the school police are taping off the entrances to the hallways. I go in and get my things real quick and as I come out I run into my coteacher. She apparently had been on her way to the bathroom when a student came around the corner shouting that a girl had fallen down the stairs! (The same I saw earlier in the wheelchair.) They run and get help and that was why the emergency vehicles were in the lot.
In the meantime, the acid spill in the chemical storage was still being cleaned, but apparently the fumes were getting pretty bad. Although the teachers had been inhaling this stuff for weeks, now that we know what it is and the side effects, we had to evacuate all the kids.
So, we make our way down to the courtyard and there are about 400 students wandering around. The next period they have all our students meet us in the gym. (Imagine about 400 students and about 13 teachers all trying to find the right group!) I am running around trying to make sure all my little SpEd kids find us! (Some of them are so confused all the time!) Everything finally settles down and classes start moving around the campus, trying to find a spot. We stay in the gym for a while, but the kids won't settle down, so we take them to the courtyard. That seemed to work for a while, but I guess we'll see how well they do on the test on Monday!
For our last class, we found a teacher on prep who was willing to let us use their room. It all went pretty good. (I spent a good 10 minutes trying to track down one of my autistic kids in the gym until I found him with the assistant principal!) We had a faculty meeting after school and the science teachers were all talking and we noticed something interesting - we all had been having sore throats and respiratory problems! Hopefully these will all be better soon, now that it is cleaned up.
I was also supposed to have an online session for one of my master's classes. Of course, my webcam and other stuff was up in my classroom, which was still technically closed. I tried to go to the library, but that closed early, so I wound up sitting in my classroom for the online session. I had a pretty sore throat last night, but it seems to be getting better now.
Anyway, that was my craziest day ever. I'm sure I left out stuff, but I think you get the picture!!

Homecoming...

So, there's not a whole lot new going on. Last week was homecoming and it was crazy with assemblies and tailgate parties. The key club sold funnel cake, which is a lot of fun and we get good business, but it sure makes a mess!!

Things at work are pretty good. They decided to cancel all the Guidance classes (kind of like study hall for special ed.), so now I co-teach 3 biology classes and 3 principles of science classes (Freshman!!) My supervisor is trying to get me into a training to become a Special Education Instructional Facilitator. The classes are full, but she really wants someone at our school to be prepared. Our current SEIF is really struggling and there are rumors of a major illness with his wife, so we want to be prepared. It's more of an office job, dealing with all the IEP's and all the special ed. students in the school. It would be something of a promotion, but I don't think there's a pay raise. I would be sad to not be in the classroom anymore, but I was thinking about going that direction in 5-10 years anyway, so why not now?

My Master's classes are keeping me pretty busy. There's a ton of reading and it's all from crazy science and education journals that use lots of words I don't understand. Right now I'm just hoping to make it through this semester!