I'm in Austin until Wednesday for a conference sponsored by TEA and the Texas Assessment Professionals Association.  Learning all about TAKS and how to be a successful district testing coordinator.  The content of the work sessions is most likely going to be pretty dull, but the Texas assessment program is HUGE, and I do have a lot to learn, so ( Read more... )

I'm sitting in my empty, undecorated, silent classroom, and I felt the need to record my thoughts on the day before I load up the last box and drive away from Grulla Middle School for the last time ( Read more... )

Reading The News-Herald online (I'm a hometown dork, I know) I was utterly irritated by the outrage people continue to show over school uniforms at Central. They've been ranting all summer and--let's face it, folks--the schools of Venango County have bigger issues to deal with than what students are wearing. So I crafted the following letter to ( Read more... )

Turning twenty-three is so...anti-climactic. I wonder if all birthdays in the "real world" are like this ( Read more... )

I feel like such a failure. The past couple days, I've just kind of been questioning what the heck I'm doing here. Whenever I talk to other teachers, I feel like such a failure in comparison. Especially tonight, I went out to dinner with some other TFAers I hadn't seen for a while, and they were talking about all these great activities they've ( Read more... )

Past time, in fact. I've been lazy about keeping people posted on what I'm up to, mostly because, as I explained in a long-overdue email to Ben, when I get home from school I'm generally too tired to do anything but shower, eat and go to bed. But then, that's really no good excuse, so here I am, updating the ol' livejournal ( Read more... )

It has been a while! Sorry about that; I guess I just haven't had much of interest to say ( Read more... )

Here's the column I wrote for next week's Echo...mostly venting my frustrations about why people don't appreciate religious diversity on this campus ( Read more... )

Lots to say...it's been a very full week. Easter was this weekend; it was great. Karen, Ben and I went to the Russian Orthodox service in Richmond, which I really enjoyed. Then I shirked working on a paper for Laurie (okay because I got it done on time anyway) to go to the CS service with Karen on Sunday morning. I find that even though I feel ( Read more... )

This week has been absolutely insane. I had an exam on Tuesday, a paper due today and another due on Sunday...which is Easter! The one due on Easter is for Laurie, and I had a meeting with her about it today. I felt kind of bad, because I was a bit out of it and stressed and hadn't done much work on the paper yet because I'd been working on the ( Read more... )