Thursday, July 28, 2011

Well, Krystal might call me a 'slacker' again for not writing on Tuesday (), but I have a legitimate reason this time - I am sick again - can you believe it?  My throat is so raspy and it's hard to talk - and then on Tuesday night, the pain in my ear started shooting through - it was so painful I went and took two extra strength Tylenol that night.  Even with that, though, I couldn't get to sleep until 1:30pm and the night before I only got about three hours sleep.  Those sleepless nights were due to the stress I feel about teaching at this school.  I have talked to other teachers at the school and they are feeling the same thing.  We are doing too much disciplining and not enough teaching.  I also hate it that they want to push these kids beyond what they are ready for.  It really ticks me off that the 'powers that be' make these decisions when they really have no idea what they are doing - and they have no idea what it's like to be teaching 24 five year olds in this classroom in this area.  I can see how children like Colin (who's five and has such amazing support at home) could be doing what they want a Prep child to do, but these children (in general) do not come from homes like you girls have and so many of them come with issues which need to be addressed before teaching them to read at the age of five.  We are not supposed to have a play-based program anymore in Prep, but I said to heck with it and I actually let them play for fifteen minutes each day!  So sad, eh?

My program is starting to come together.  I have my language program at a place I am happy with and my theme program (where they do a lot of arts/crafts/language) sorted out to a place I am happy with.  I am also teaching them to 'read to themselves' during D.E.A.R. (drop everything and read) time.  The only area I am not happy with is my math program and so I am going to work on that this Saturday.  So, it's only taken me five weeks to get to this point.  Needless to say, because of the fact that I am not enjoying working, I am counting down the days - we have seven weeks left in this term and ten weeks left in the next term.  I am pleased that it's Friday tomorrow.

I had this mom of one of my kids come to me a couple of days ago to ask me if I could open up the classroom doors earlier (both Chantelle and Pam open their doors at 8:30am, but I didn't want to open them up early, even though Yvonne, the teacher I took over from, used to open them early).  The mom said that some parents want to come in earlier so they can look around and say good-bye to their children and put their child's stuff where it needs to go and go to the library.  I asked her if she couldn't go to the library before she came to the classroom and she said that really wasn't the point.  I felt that ten minutes was enough time for the children to prepare for the day.  Anyway, she also said that some parents were having to leave their children outside the room so they could go to work (am I their babysitter, I thought) and that rather than complaining about it, she thought she would say something.  I was quite annoyed at this (things sure are better at RJ Lee with no parents being allowed in the classroom and teachers not being expected to open the doors before the bell).  So, against my own feelings, I opened the door yesterday and today at 8:30am and guess what time that mother showed up both days: 8:42 - yeah, that's right - past the time I was opening up before.  Sheesh! :-(

Dad has been really busy this week between doing census stuff and family history stuff.  He has been making his final preparations and training his final people and visiting the last few places (like the fire station) because delivery of the census forms begins tomorrow morning at 8:30am.  He will be out on the streets beginning tomorrow morning at 8:30am tracking down each collector and walking with them to a few houses until he is comfortable that they are comfortable with what they have to say and do and the information they have to get from each house. 

He has also been busy making preparations for the mall display which took place today - the mall display is part of National Family History Week which is this week in Australia.  He had a large poster/sign made up advertizing the Family History Centre Open Day which will take place at our church on Saturday.  He also had little cards printed which had the information about the National Family History Week on it and an invitation to the Family History Open Day.  He was given a reprieve from Meals on Wheels  today (they had extra people on this week) which gave him the opportunity to man the display at the mall this morning.  He said that a number of people stopped by the display and said that they would be interested in coming to the Open Day.  He has also been busy making preparations for the Open Day on Saturday.   They are planning five different displays/activities: 1) live demonstration of the New Family Search global database; 2) demonstration of New Family Search indexing; 3) demonstration on the available online research courses re: family history; 4) demonstration of microfilm and microfiche reading ; and 5) demonstration of the available free premium family history websites that one normally has to pay for, but is free at our chapel. 

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Well, I HAD to make sure that I didn't forget to write tonight since Krystal called me a 'SLACKER' for not writing 3 times last week. :-) 

I was very happy to have Friday come - Fridays at school are fairly easy.  Literacy rotations (already set up) and gym, then it was activity rotations (already set up) and show and tell, music, learning about the worm farm, science (with Mr. Keatley) and computers.  After a very hectic and exhausting week, it was a nice way to end the week at school.  One of my 'challenge' children was not there on Friday, but one of the ones who has been pretty good in the past while was totally off, so I was quite tired by the end of the day.  I was able to get a ton of photocopying done on Friday which I was really pleased about.  The regular photocopier which counts how many copies we make has been on the blink and they have a loaner which does not count the number of copies, so I have been trying to use it as much as I can. :-)

Dad met with our friend, Rob, from church on Friday morning - they needed to plan the lesson for today for the Relief Society/Priesthood combined class.  The lesson was called 'Missionary Media Presentation".  The Pacific Area presidency is putting together a media awareness campaign for Australia about the members of the church in Queensland.  They have asked the members to create a written profile about themselves on mormon.org.  They are also asking members to create a video profile as well to be put on mormon.org and to be part of a television/media campaign.  So, on Friday, Dad showed Rob the presentation that  the area presidency had put together and several sample profiles which are already on mormon.org as examples of what the area presidency are looking for members to do.

Friday night we rented two movies - one of which Jennifer suggested we watch and another since we had a coupon to rent two movies for $6.50.  We watched the movie Jennifer recommended on Friday night which was called "The Next Three Days" and we thought it was a good movie - we rated it about a 7.0.  It was a long time setting everything up, but the exciting part kept our attention. 

We didn't have any special plans for yesterday (Saturday) so we just puttered around in the morning and then did some errands - I needed to pick up some things for school - we are doing a fairy tale unit at school and I needed to pick up some paper crowns so that the children can decorate them to be either Cinderella or the prince in that story (that's our fairy tale of the week this coming week) and also supplies to make Cinderella cupcakes as we have a cooking class each week.

In the afternoon, we watched the second movie we had rented - it was called 'Sanctum'.  It was basically about a group of people who go caving (exploring caves underground) and what happens to them when they get trapped in one.  It was a good movie - we rated it about a 7.0 - worth a rent if you might be interested in that type of movie.  There were quite a few surprises along the way which kept it interesting.

Saturday evening was spent doing school and church stuff - more prepping for my literacy centres and Primary Sunbeam class lesson and Dad reviewing his talk for today and also working on the two Family History events which will occur this coming week.  It kept us going until about 10:30pm.  I was thinking as I was doing all of this how nice it would be to have a job where it just went from 9am to 5pm and when I got home, there was nothing to do that was job related.  Oh well - that's never going to happen if I stay teaching. :-)

Today, Dad gave his talk in Sacrament meeting about Family History and he did a great job!  I was sitting in between two friends and both turned to me after the meeting and said what a great job Dad had done.  He was really prepared and the talk was really organized and he made it personal which always keeps people's attention.  One of our friends even told me that her husband said that Dad's talk was so good that he ALMOST convinced him (our friend's husband) to do his family history. :-)

During the Relief Society/Priesthood combined meeting today, Dad and Rob showed the presentation from the area presidency along with samples of written profiles and samples of video profiles of members of the church.  Four of these profiles were well-known Australian Latter-Day Saints and the fifth profile was Terri-Ann's (that was really cool!). 

After church, Dad and I started watching a movie, but both of us were so tired that we were falling asleep, so I suggested we have a nap.  It was a wintry day and so of course we napped outside. :-)  It is the middle of our winter and the temperature (according to our outside thermometer) was 26C, the sky was blue and the sun was shining. :-)  So, Dad and I took our pillows outside and laid down on our chaise loungers and fell asleep for 2 1/2 hours - I think that we are going to have to do this every Sunday. :-)  We spent the rest of the day relaxing - I love Sundays! :-)

Thursday, July 21, 2011

I can't believe that a whole week has gone by since I last wrote - on Sunday night, I just completely forgot and then on Tuesday, I remembered after I was in bed - sheesh - I am so way tired.  Anyway, I will fill you in on this past week like a Reader's Digest version. :-)

School has been keeping me busy - both with preparing things, searching for ideas and just keeping this kids in check (or rather, trying to).  I actually like preparing and searching for things - I don't have many resources for kindergarten or even grade one since I only taught K for one year and grade one for 2 years.  I also don't want to spend much money since I likely won't be doing this again.  I have been planning out my literacy rotations: reading, writing, spelling, printing, and computers for the kids.  I have five literacy groups and have found that I can get them to rotate through 3 areas on Mondays and Thursdays and the other two on Tuesdays and Fridays.  Chantelle and I have worked on our activities for our Theme units (fairy tales), so I just have to get them all ready (gonna do lots of photocopying tomorrow). :-)  So, now I just have to work out how I am going to do my math rotations and my phonics lessons.  Hopefully, I will have it all worked out by this weekend.

I still am not enjoying teaching and neither is Chantelle - I told her that it's hard to enjoy teaching at this school as we are doing more disciplining than teaching.  I feel sad that my passion for teaching is not there right now - who knows if I will ever get it back - I never thought I would be saying that.  I truly do love teaching, but it's hard when I am not getting to do much teaching.  I do have to say that two of the students who were challenging are coming around - I still have two who drive me nuts and I am just going to have to get more firm with them - one of them missed his two play times today and will be missing the first one tomorrow - I am also going to have to speak to his mom tomorrow.  I think that I am going to refer him to our behavioural specialist and see what she can do with him.  He just can't seem to sit still, be quiet, focus, or put any effort into what he does.  The teacher I am taking over for started  this star chart where if they do something 'wrong', they have to take a star off.  If all three stars get taken off, they miss a playtime.  I am going to get tougher with this - I have been trying to give the kids a bit of a chance since I am new to them, but that's it - I am just going to start taking the stars off much quicker and hopefully, behaviour will change.  I still don't know what the future holds and whether I will be teaching next year or not, so we'll just have to see.  I am still thinking of going to talk with someone at the christian college (K - 12) near us to see if they are looking for teachers - I will keep you posted.

Dad has been very busy doing lots of stuff: census stuff - the actual night is August 9th - but the collectors start handing out the forms at the end of the month; church stuff - he is working on a talk for Sunday about family history, a family history presentation at the mall, a family history day at our chapel, and a lesson for priesthood/relief society on Sunday which will be about how members in the ward can put a profile about themselves on the church website so that people can go to the website and learn about members and what they think and believe;  house stuff - laundry, vacuuming, bathrooms; plus he still had his church meeting on Tuesday night, was at the FHC on Wednesday night, and did Meals on Wheels this morning and SES tonight.  I don't think that he has time for a full-time job. :-)

Last Saturday, Dad had the opportunity to attend an SES training session in Bundaberg (about 90 minutes north of HB).  The training was to learn how to be an air observer for airborne search and rescue.  If SES was called to participate in an airborne search and rescue activation, Dad could possibly be called out (eg; looking for a missing aircraft, a lost hiker, a lost ship, someone overboard, etc.).  The training consisted of six hours: learning about general aviation safety and observation techniques to be used so that you don't miss anything in your search area.  They were supposed to go up in a plane to look for planted items, but the weather was not co-operative - it was raining all day and so they cancelled the flight and are going to reschedule as soon as they can.

Thursday, July 14, 2011

Ooops - sorry I didn't write on Tuesday - and even last night - just way too busy and by the time I remembered that I hadn't written the blog, I was in bed and ready to crash.  Since I am writing about four days, I will do a quick synopsis so you all don't fall asleep as you read about our exciting lives! :-)

On Monday, it was a pupil free day.  We spent the morning meeting as a staff - the usual boring meeting - some housekeeping as they call it (to do with what's going on in the school, etc.) and then some professional development (talking about inference) - boring to me for two reasons: one, I had already seen the info when I was teaching at Kawungan and two: trying to teach inference to Prep kids would be ridiculous with the lack of what they come to school with.  For goodness sake, some kids didn't even know what a fairy tale was. 

I am teaching a fairy tale unit and started off the unit by asking the students to paint a picture of their favourite fairy tale character.  When one of them was asked what they had painted which had nothing to do with fairy tales, he said that he didn't know what a fairy tale was.  When I talked with Sam, my TA about this, she said that when they did the nursery rhyme unit earlier this year, a number of them had never heard of these rhymes.  Sheesh!

The rest of the day on Monday we were given time to team plan.  We actually didn't do any planning as we were all busy with trying to get our own classrooms sorted out.  It was good to have that time to get my classroom a little more in order.  I am trying to make the classroom a little more my own - it's going to take  time, but it was good to get a little start on it. 

Tuesday, the kids were pretty good and I was pleasantly surprised and Wednesday, it was the same.  I began to think that possibly I might actually learn to like teaching here in HB.  Then, today hit - yeah, not going to enjoy it much if it keeps going on like this.  I was talking with Chantelle yesterday and today about this, and she is of the same mind.  When I mentioned that one third of new Ontario teachers leave the profession in the first five years, she said that she doesn't think she will even make it that long.  She is very disillusioned with the expectations put on teachers.  She told me that she is seriously looking at government jobs which will pay the same as a teacher makes, but with way less stress and certainly better hours.  I'm feeling the same way!

For the last four days, Dad has been very busy with census stuff.  He's been visiting with more establishment people trying to get them on board with organizing who is going to be doing the census collecting and meeting with a collector to go over the info from their area.  He has also been going through our boxes one by one and putting the items in the boxes away (you know the old saying, a place for everything and everything in its place).  He's also been working on preparations for the Family History Open House Day which will be on July 30th.  He is one busy boy!

Sunday, July 10, 2011

What a busy three days we have had - I will try and condense what we have been up to.  Dad had his training meeting with his census collectors on Friday (9am - 4pm) and so I took off for the day to the chapel.  My first counsellor and secretary from Primary were manning the FHC today and my secretary had suggested that we could meet there and have our bi-monthly presidency meeting instead of having it today after church - I thought it was a great idea and also I could spend the rest of the day after our Primary meeting to work on my talk.  I was able to read and mark several articles which I could use to write my talk during my time at the FHC. 

Dad had a great meeting - all eight of his collectors showed up before or on time.  Dad was able to run a very effective meeting as he had done so much research prior to the meeting.  He was given an outline of how/what to teach and it even included time for morning tea and afternoon tea.  The training meeting went very smoothly with his collectors asking many questions of which Dad was able to answer all but two.  He was very pleased with how well the training meeting went and with the enthusiasm of his team of collectors.  They were given all of their census forms and will meet with Dad again in August where they will receive training on how to collect the census forms (the training on Friday was how to deliver the census forms). 

On Saturday, we decided to have a day to ourselves to just spend the day together because the next ten weeks will be full-on with me being so busy with school and Dad being busy with the census.  We went to the tourist info place here in town and told them that we wanted to go somewhere for a day trip - we told them that we have already been to Bundaberg, Bargara and Rainbow Bay.  The lady there suggested that we go to a little town called Childers (3,000 people) which is an hour's drive away.  So, off we went.  When we got there, we went to the Tourist info place there and asked them what there was to see in Childers.  The woman there gave me a few pamphlets.  The one I liked the best was a walking tour of the town - I really like taking walking tours because it gives you a 'real' look at the town.  Childers has such beautiful historical buildings so I was in my element. 

Our first stop was actually a very sad part of the history of Childers.  It was a memorial to 15 backpackers who had died in a deliberately started fire back in 2000.  It was a beautiful memorial set in the original backpackers' building which has been turned into the memorial as well as an art gallery upstairs and a tourist info place downstairs.  When we got there, a woman told us the story of how the backpackers had died and then showed us the beautiful portrait of them which had been painted of them having a 'smoko' (work break) at the cane fields where they had all worked (each person's portrait in the painting had been painted from photos provided by the victims' families).  Another artist had put together a collage for each victim of photos given by the families.  Although, it was a very sad  part of the history of Childers, it was such a beautiful way for the town to celebrate the lives of these 15 people from different parts of the world.  The rest of the walking tour took us about an hour.  It took us to see some wonderful old buildings, an old train, a narrow guage sugar cane railway track, and some beautiful mosaics on the sidewalk of the town.  I have asked Dad to put together a slideshow of pictures of our day - he will try and have that up and running by the end of the week. 

It is hard for me to spend money sometimes when the prices seem ridiculous, but I decided to 'throw caution to the wind' today and we made two food purchases (oh, wow, I hear you say ).  At the end of  town, we saw a peanut stand (like a chip truck) which sold a variety of flavours of peanuts.  We saw a sign which said something about how we can't pass up buying some peanuts.  So, I said to Dad that we should buy some. :-)  There were so many varieties, but we ended up choosing lime and chili peanuts and hickory smoked peanuts.  We have only tried the chili/lime peanuts so far, but they were really yummy.  The other treat we bought was some Mammino ice-cream (home/hand made ice-cream).  They cost $5. per ice-cream and each one was only 150ml - but we took the plunge and bought one each.  I had a jaffa macademia ice-cream and Dad had a passionfruit ice-cream.  They certainly were extremely creamy and extremely flavourful.  Both Dad and I enjoyed eating them, but I guess I am not as much of an ice-cream connoisseur.  I think that I prefer ice-cream like Kawartha Dairy ice-cream.  But, it was an experience and that's what today's purchases were all about.

Once we were done experiencing Childers, I suggested to Dad that we drive to the coast and enjoy the little town (800 people) of Woodgate Beach.  The pamphlets given to us from the tourist info place made it seem like a little bit of paradise.  I told Dad that I had been thinking that when we retire, it might be an idea to move up here - to a lovely little place with only a few people and living right on or near the beach - quiet and relaxing and quiet. :-)  When we were travelling along the road to Woodgate Beach, Dad said that he recognized where we were and he said that we had been there before.  I sort of had the same thought, but I wasn't sure.  When we got there and started driving along the esplanade, I told Dad that I knew what the house looked like which we had seen the kangaroos in front of before and if this was the same place, we would see this house - lo and behold, we saw the same house. :-)  So, we had been there before, just like Dad thought. :-)  Oh well - we saw tons of kangaroos again in the town, so that was worth the visit. :-)  We also noted that there were signs in front of almost every house on the esplanade and others in town which said 'holiday letting'.  This made us think that perhaps it wouldn't be an ideal place to live.  To us, it meant that there would be holiday makers probably year round making lots of noise and clogging up our beach there.  We quickly decided that staying in Hervey Bay sounded a lot better.

Our day ended by buying some take-out for dinner - I just HAD to have a sausage roll :-)  and Dad had his seafood (prawn cutlets, scallops, fish, squid)  and chips (french fries).  We brought the food home and watched  'Air Crash Investigations' while we ate our delicious dinner - it was a wonderful way to end our very lovely and relaxing day together.

This morning (Sunday), I was a bit nervous about giving my talk.  Since I had not spent as much time as I usually do preparing it, I felt that it was very disjointed and not flowing at all.  I also usually spend a lot more time preparing talks and then spend a lot of time going over and over the talk and refining it.  I also usually add a lot more of my own personal experiences and also add stories to my talks, so I was not very happy about giving this talk which I had prepared.  So, I sent a lot of prayers heavenward before Sacrament meeting started.  My topic was 'The Lord's Love for Us' and I was given two scriptures: John 3:16 and John 14:15.  The first portion of my talk was based on the first scripture and the second part of my talk was based on the second scripture.  The first speaker, Jeanne Meixner, was supposed to talk for 10 minutes, but she ended up speaking for 16 minutes.  As I saw she was going overtime, I checked my talk to see what I could leave out.  When I got up to give it, I realized that my ten minute talk needed to be cut down to five minutes.  I ended up taking seven minutes, but because I was speaking at a slower pace than when I had practiced the talk at home, I only ended up giving about 1/3 of the talk (only the first portion of the talk).  As it turned out, that part of the talk was pretty well organized and flowed quite well - so it went very well - many people came up to me afterwards and told me that I had given a really good talk - I made sure to give credit where credit was due (the influence of the Spirit in answer to my prayers). :-)

Thursday, July 7, 2011

Well, I don’t know what to say - my system seems to be going up and down and nothing is making sense to me. Yesterday, my system was good in the morning and then played up a bit during the day. But, this was one day which Dad and I could spend together, so I just sucked it up and off we went. We actually spent the morning doing not much of anything - I watched ‘Touched by an Angel’ this morning and I heard a great quote from one of the characters (Tess, one of the angels). She was talking about how a child does not ‘belong’ to either of his/her parents, but rather to Heavenly Father and that parents are guardians of these children here on earth. I loved that - what a great way to think about being a parent.

In the afternoon, we headed off. Our first stop was to our hairdresser, Christa’s, as both Dad and I needed a hair cut. I love going to get my haircut by Christa - I can just say to her ’do whatever’ and she always does such a nice job of it. It’s shorter now and will be easier to look after and will look better for the next ten weeks (for this school term). Christa’s partner has done Dad’s haircut for the past two times we have been there and she does a good job of it. Now Dad looks much more presentable for his training meeting with his collectors tomorrow. :-)

Our next stop was to the ice-cream store - we had a coupon from the library slip we got when we took out a book the other day for two ice-creams for the price of one. When we got to the store, it was closed for ten minutes. During that time, my stomach started to get upset and so I asked Dad if we could go home and have some lunch (just some plain toast). After that, I suggested we go for our walk by the beach - even though my tummy wasn’t doing too well, I didn’t want to just stay home all day. So, we headed off to the ice-cream store, picked up a couple of ice-creams (me: lemon sorbet and strawberry; Dad: rum and raisin and strawberry) and took them to the beach. It was such a beautiful day yesterday (I can’t believe it’s winter - it was about 24C in the afternoon) and it was just fabulous walking along the edge of the water and talking - we must have walked for over an hour - it was such a lovely way to spend the afternoon. :-)

Today, my system was acting up again, but the worst part was the lower back pain. I find that if I sit in our big chairs in the family room, it worsens. If I put heat on my back or have a bath or have Dad massage it, it feels better. I am beginnng to think that it’s possibly a chiropractic issue. I am going to call one who was recommended to us by my friend, Chantelle, and see if he can fit me in. Also, if nothing shows up in the test I had at the hospital the other day, I am going to call my doctor and see what he thinks. We haven’t been to him yet, but the doctor I saw the other day at the hospital said that our doctor is a great doctor and she is even going to sign up with him at his office - Dad and I figure that if a doctor wants to sign up with a doctor, that is a really good recommendation. I ate pretty regular food today and other than the usual burping, my body didn’t react any differently than when I ate simple foods, so I think that I am going to just start eating ‘normally’ again and see what happens.

I was able to partner up with Dad today for ‘Meals on Wheels’ and it was so nice to be back delivering meals again. We got to do our ‘regular’ route plus another route. They were all short routes today and they were short people to help deliver the meals, so Avis doubled up some routes or added some people to other routes. It took us ages to do the route - we even ended up having to go back to two people’s places as they were not there the first time we went to drop off their meal.

Dad went to SES tonight where the training was focused on ropes and knots.  He learned how to sling a stretcher so that it can be lifted by helicopter or lifted up a cliff.  In the second half of the session, he learned how to put the correct knots in a rope to make a safety line to prevent you from falling off a roof.  At first, Dad and his friends couldn't remember their knots very well, but it came back to them quickly.  He can really see the benefit of the type of continuous training they do at SES.

Tuesday, July 5, 2011

Well, I am really on the mend - I think.  Yesterday, I thought I was feeling better, then the tummy started up again.  Today, other than a lot of burping, I seem to be okay.  This is the first time, though, that I have ever taken Tums - that has always been Dad's medicine - but today the gas was so bad, he suggested I try it.  Turns out - it works. :-)  I actually ate a decent supper tonight for the first time in ages - we had the missionaries over and I asked Dad to do a barbecue.  He cooked chicken and sausages with onions and I made a garden salad and a potato salad.  It was very yummy and it felt really good to be able to eat 'real food' for a change.  I was able to do some real work around the house today, too, which, although I do not like doing housework, actually felt good. :-) 

Yesterday, I worked on school stuff - cutting out and laminating and then cutting out again some language cards/games which the students will be using during our literacy rotations.  Today, I spent the afternoon working on my plan for next week - it felt really good to get it all sorted out, including the things I need photocopied and laminated.  I know it doesn't sound very exciting to you guys, but I really like to be fully organized before I start a week of teaching.  Tomorrow, I will plan out the next nine weeks of the term, in general, so that I have a broad idea of what I want to do - as we go from day to day, I change things as I need to. 

Dad has spent the last two days doing census and church stuff.  He worked on next Sunday's lesson for a while, but spent most of his time preparing the training he will have to do with his collectors, meeting with some people at the establishments which need to do the census collecting themselves and training some of them, and marking a 'home study exercise' which his collectors did so that he can figure out which areas he really needs to focus on when he does his collectors' training this Friday.

Again, another exciting two days in the lives of Mom and Dad. :-)