The end is in sight...

I graduate in sixteen days. Crazy!

Yesterday was a really rough day. My kids have been WILD, and yes, on some days I would classify them as HELLIANS. Yesterday was one of those days.

One student in particular has been very hard to love on some days. She's really young and pretty immature for a second grader. She started kindergarten a year early, at a Montessori school. She then switched to Whittier for first grade, and she came in not knowing her letters and their sounds. Basically, she's still a year behind and should probably repeat second grade, even though her parents don't want her to. Anyhow, her only way of coping with anything is to cry and throw a fit. And it gets pretty old real quick. Yesterday afternoon I was teaching science (and was being observed!) when this little girl started to cry for some reason I could not figure out. She went over to the wall and started to pound her head on the wall while crying. In the mean time, I had 21 students sitting in their seats in stunned silence, wondering what was going to happen. All eyes were on me, and I didn't have the faintest idea of what to do. So I got the kids started on gathering their materials and I tried to talk to the upset student. Aye aye aye, my class is nothing but drama-rama!

There is one little boy who cracks me up. He's a student I would love to take with me and teach every year. Today he had all his literature cirle work done, all of his other work done, and had read all of his library books. I asked him to please find something productive to do, but he couldn't think of anything. So I had him clean transparencies. It was awesome. I had a stack of about 30 transparencies that desperately needed cleaning, and he actually loved doing it. I despise cleaning transparencies! And he was really cute while doing it, too. First of all, he got absolutely soaked. Second, I kept hearing cute little outbursts like, "How does she do this?! This is hard!" and "Purple ink is the worst!!!" Oh, they crack me up :)

We ended our day this afternoon by practicing our square dances for our potluck that is next week. I had a blast just dancing with my kids. It was great to be able to have fun with them and just dance around. One thing is for sure, though - our kids sound like definate city kids when they say "Yee haw!" We're gonna have to work on that...

Whew, what a week!

Some of this week's highlights -

Last weekend -
Went down to Wild Horse Canyon, a Young Life Ranch outside of Antelope, Oregon. I went with my friends Christin and Laura and we spent the weekend weeding the entire camp, hanging out with Christin's boyfriend, spotting cougars in the E. Oregon desert, and playing the longest game of Uno EVER. It was a good weekend! And one thing that is cool about Wild Horse is that the ranch used to be owned by the Rajneesh back in the '80s - they were an occult from India who tried to take over E. Oregon and the town of Antelope by poisoning people with salmonella. It was pretty messed up and creepy, but now the ranch is used as a Young Life Ranch, so it's amazing how God works...what people have intended for evil, God intends for good!

Monday - my birthday. Uh-huh, I'm 24. One year left of being in my early twenties. It was a good day. My kids surprised me with cards, tissue paper flowers, and they decorated my chair with a banner. It was awesome :) I'm also going out this weekend for my birthday, so more celebrations are on the way.

Tues/Wed - nothin' too exciting...

Thursday - Job interview! I interviewed at the Snoqualmie Springs School and it went really well. They told me that they were very impressed with me and they really loved to hear abut my flute and how I incorporate music into my classroom on a daily basis. I should know around Tuesday if I got the kindergarten position.

Friday - our Canadian friends came down from Vancouver! Yay! They're hilarious and it was good to spend time with them tonight :)

The rest of my weekend is looking pretty busy, as well. I need to get to sleep. I'm fading. Oh, how my bedtimes have gotten early and early as my student teaching has become busier and busier...