Napa!

This weekend I got a chance to get away to Napa Valley to spend some time at my roommate Devin's house. Devin and I have live together for the past two years after meeting our freshman year when we lived across the hall from each other. Caty, Cory and I hopped on a bus Friday afternoon and met up with not one, not two, but THREE of my wonderful Burrow-mates: Devin, Lynne, and Erin. Lynne graduated in May and is currently on a plane to go back down to Costa Rica where she is teaching this school year. She flew in on Wednesday and was able to spend a few days with Devin before she headed back. Erin just finished up in December and moved home to the Bay area to start graduate school in Marriage and Family Therapy at the University of San Francisco.

The weekend was seriously perfect.

It was a wonderful change of pace to be curled up in BLANKETS (which I have been missing for the last month. Hotel comforters just don't cut it) and play cards and drink coffee and go wine tasting and meet celebrities (Aly and AJ, Disney Channel stars... so cool!) and read books and watch the Princess Diaries and have brunch at Erin's... It was slow and happy and full of love. Thank you SO much to the Whitmill and McLennon families for sharing their homes with us -- we were so blessed this weekend!

Our group has one full free-day in the city tomorrow (no school for Lunar New Year... Score!) and then two days in the classroom before we head out! SO weird!

(ps. wrote this yesterday but my computer died on me... free day, check. h&m shopping with caty and danielle, check. time for homework and relaxing!)

Bread Bowl: Check

"Well you know the routine so I think I'll just observe today."

Always the words you want to hear come out of a substitute's mouth early in the morning... I kind of went into today expecting that the sub would want me to do everything (since he didn't really do anything yesterday either) and that was exactly how it played out. Thank goodness I only had 8 kids there today because my sassy ones were extra sassy (one even threw up in the morning, or at least so she says...) and the good ones kept saying "Why do they keep being bad today? Do they want to get in trouble when Ms T gets back tomorrow?" It was a pretty hectic day but we made some progress and I "taught" and we'll see if anyone can tell still me what a mixture is tomorrow! I was very glad when 1:50 came today.

One of the best things about today was that all day I had the thought of "Fisherman's Wharf after school for jewelry shopping and a clam chowder bread bowl" on my mind all day! I was so excited to finally get my bread bowl here, I have been waiting all trip for this. It was so delicious, but I don't think I need another one while I am here! That thing was hearty. I also got to spend time with Caty, Danielle, and Liz afterwards too at the Wharf which was great to slow down a little and enjoy their company.

Two more days until I go meet up with Devin and Lynne Lynne Corn Dog! I can't wait to spend a weekend in Napa relaxing, watching TV, and spending quality time with people... And hopefully redeeming myself in some cribbage games :)
The current count on the trip: Caty - 5. Me - 0. It's bad.

Surprise! Your teacher is sick.

I am the fourth person on our trip who has had their teacher be unexpectedly gone one day. Today my students, a class of 12 fourth- and fifth-graders, went on a field trip to the California Academy of Sciences. I was quite surprised when another fourth grade teacher came up to me at our morning stretches and told me my teacher was going to be gone. We didn't have a substitute until we were walking out the door to get on the bus, and I spent a majority of the hour we were at school trying to take care of a girl who was missing a permission slip. But we still got to go on the field trip and it all ended up working out! It's quite intimidating to be put in a position where you are instantly shifting from a helper who's here for a month to someone who is responsible for a group of small children. Luckily we were going with another class and that teacher knew what was going on, but it was still a hectic and stressful morning. My teacher will be gone again tomorrow, she has the flu, so my stuffed-up self might be teaching a lot of tomorrow. Awesome.


I've slowly been getting better and I think I'm finally starting to get better, but I still feel pretty miserable and am blowing my nose all the time. We spent Monday afternoon lounging around at Golden Gate Park and it was glorious, minus the huge rip I found in my jeans that permitted me from doing much of anything! It was quite unfortunate. The elementary group + Caty + Cory made another sunset trip to the beach again tonight and though it was much windier (and therefore colder) today, it was still gorgeous and fun to spend quiet, quality time at the water together.


This weekend I am going to my roommate Devin's house in Napa about an hour away from here and I am so excited to get to spend time with her and a few other of our friends sightseeing and relaxing! I have been wanting to try and figure out how to get to see her house for a while now and this worked out perfectly.


It's really crazy to think that our last day in the school is a week from tomorrow. I adore these children (well, most of them) and it will be hard to pick up and leave. Although I do miss my kindergarteners like crazy! I have to try and figure out how to send pictures in an e-mail to them. I think that will be my goal for tonight...


Hope everyone in Washington is enjoying the snow :) My brother and sister had a snow day today... Totally weird to me as I walk outside in khakis and a shirt!

Set Go

My weekend in as few words as possible:

Biking, Golden Gate. Sausalito. There and back. Hip flexers = OW. Worth it.
Siri's birthday. Mexican food. Dancing.
Sick with a cold. Very annoying to me. Very annoying to my roommate.
Glide Memorial Church. Gospel. Awesome.
Haight Ashbury. New jeans. Win.
Homework.

I have come down with a cold and am so thankful we have a three day weekend so I can keep trying to recover tomorrow. It's very annoying when neither DayQuil (my go-to medicine) nor Sudafed do anything. Time to watch New Girl (my new favorite show! I want to be Jess) and take some NyQuil. Happy Martin Luther King Day!

Graduation Ceremony

One of the most exciting things that happened this week was receiving an e-mail from Betty Williams, my advisor at Whitworth, telling the special education department that our petition to sit as a department in the graduation ceremony this year was approved.

Let me explain why this is so exciting for us.

In years past, the School of Education (elementary, secondary, and special education) has been chunked as one big group at graduation. Many secondary majors chose to sit with their content area (e.g. math or science) because secondary education is technically a "certification program," not a major (it's kind of silly). As special education majors, Whitworth requires us to get an elementary major as well, so it made sense to have us all sit together... At least, it made sense in the eyes of the people running graduation.

This year, there are seven people graduating from the special education department. Two of us will be done this spring, while the other five are coming back to do their final student teaching in the fall. Six of the seven of us have had a large chunk of our classes together and have become a very tight-knit community. All of us are passionate about our special education classes and futures and have every intention of being special education teachers... One who wants to do secondary resource room, one who is really interested in Behavior Intervention, three with early childhood certifications as well, one who is getting an additional endorsement in Deaf education, a few of us who really want to go to grad school, a couple who want to work with people with severe disabilities... We are a varied and wonderful bunch. It's not that we don't love general education, the professors we have had, and the people we have our block classes with. All of us will student teach in general education classrooms and we love our kids to pieces. And the people I have gen ed classes with are some of my favorite people at Whitworth. I'm in San Fran with 12 of them right now, for goodness sake! But we wanted to be able to sit with our department at graduation because these people and this major are what we love.

So we had to petition.

We stayed for an hour and a half after Tuesday night class one night to pump out a petition to go to the Education department.
Then three of us had to meet with Betty.
Then the Education department had to approve it.
They did.
The the Graduation committee had to approve it.
I heard they weren't going to.
Then they did.
And now we have changed thing for the better.

Students have asked about sitting with special education in the past and they were denied.
They said "But we're a separate major! Business, marketing, and accounting might all be in the business department, but they get to sit separate... Math gets separated by a BA and a BS... Why are we the exception? Why can't we sit with the major we want?"

Now we can.

Somehow the group of us became affectionately known as the "Dream Team" by our professors. At first, it made me really uncomfortable. We are just students who love what we do! That's the way it should be.
But these people are some of my favorite people from Whitworth.
I love phone calls from Morgan that usually have to do with what cute thing a small child is doing.
I love Azteca dates after finals where we laugh until we cry, and two hours later realize we're the only ones left in the room.
I love sitting on the ground during night class because Dana says "do whatever you need to do to be ale to learn!"
I love "friendly review games" that turn into cutthroat competition. Though that might have been my fault.
I love Cy's animal facebook pictures that come up as a constant source of conversation.
I love taking food from the Psychology lounge during night class and hoping it wasn't important to one of their experiments.
I love that we have a Facebook group called Dana's Groupies and Dana both knows about it and finds it funny.
I love that our professors are our educators, our mentors, our employers, and our friends.
I love that our professors trust us with their children.
I love that we have bonds and experiences and future career paths that can keep us in touch for many years to come.
I love our acronyms and our inside jokes and our endless conversations about data and interventions and reinforcement of our roommates and ourselves and our pets.
I love how nerdy we are together and how well we embrace it.
I love these people and the roles they have played in my life.
Dream team for the win.

Six more school days!

So we leave in 13 days and only have six days left in the schools... Work hard, play hard :)

Our group has made two trips to see the San Francisco sunset over the ocean this week and it's been beautiful!

Last night a group of 10 of us went to NightLife at the California Academy of Sciences. It's an after hour half-price admission to the museum and it involved seeing penguins, so I was sold. But the CAS is neat because it has an indoor rainforest dome, a planetarium, and a bunch of other cool exhibits to check out. Caty and I went to peek at the "Living Roof," aka the roof of the facility with a wide variety of plants growing on it, and ended up listening to a man talk about constellations and the night sky... It was really interesting! They also had a telescope set up so we could see Jupiter.. Double win.

School is great and I'm becoming really attached to my kids. I've had many instances where my special ed training has come in great handy... I spent a lot of today trying to coax a kid back into class after he walked out when he didn't want to do work. It didn't help that there were a ton of adults involved and he's used to getting what he wants, but we  bonded over four-square and jump rope... Then he proceeded to spend a lot of the afternoon calling me a stupid teacher. But I've gotten much worse from kids before so I'll take it! But these kids really are great and I am loving getting to know them. We talked a lot in our group today about how transitioning back to extremely non-diverse Spokane is going to be really weird!

Most of us are renting bikes tomorrow and trekking around the city and over the Golden Gate bridge! It's also Siri's birthday so we're going to Mexican food somewhere. I've heard nothing but good things about the Mexican food here in the city so I'm real excited.

Beach Bound

This week has felt like it has dragged on forever. Not in a bad way, it just feels as though we have been in school forever. I am getting more comfortable in the classroom and with my kids. My three little fourth graders are darling... Well, two are the sweetest (and funniest) kids ever and one likes to drive me up a wall by saying nonsense answers even when she knows the right one.

"M, where would the Indians have gone fishing when they first came to California?"
"The pool."
"Ok, where in nature could they have gone fishing?"
"The pool."
"M..."
"The pool! That's where they went fishing!"

Drives me mad, but usually one of the other two will pipe in and go "the river!" Thank you, fourth graders.

I have had a couple conversations this week with my teacher about there students, where they come from, what their home life is like, and it is really interesting and overwhelming to get background on my students. I have three students from Yemen, five who are African-American, two who are Vietnamese, one who is Latina/Italian (my un-favorite... because I don't have favorites. Definitely not. No way.), and one who I believe is Hispanic but that might not be correct. And my teacher is not white, but she grew up in San Jose and lives in San Francisco now and grew up going to Catholic school, so the culture of an inner-city school is about as foreign to her as it is to me. It's hard to hear that half of our students (6 of 12) are WAY below grade level, and of those six, 5 come from single-parent homes and the other has a learning disability... There are so many stories and so many heart-breaking situations that these 10- and 11-year olds have already gone through, it's really hard to imagine what their lives are like and will continue to be like.

My highlight of the week was the opportunity to go with Liz, Caty, and Margo to tour... The Facebook headquarters! Liz has a friend from home who's boyfriend works there, and they met over Christmas break and he offered to give her and three others a tour! So we traveled down to Menlo Park yesterday and got to see the place. Those employees are SO spoiled, it's a little crazy... But they all know it and try to be really humble about it. It makes me a little jealous of Alison Wilbur, future Amazon.com employee, and the others I know (aka my sister) going into the field of technology, where there is MONEY and lots of it.

A lot of our group is off to the ocean tonight... I cannot wait :) We have been to the bay but this is our first time to the actual coast... Score :)