Happy Thanksgiving Almost

Can't believe its been twoish weeks since the last post!

Lots to say
First - Eric is now the owner of his first home, a cute 150 year old Lambertville sweetie. He closed last Thursday and spent the weekend smiling from ear to ear and priming and painting every available surface! One of his and Maia's friends is a designer so she went through the house and told them which colors to pick, he stopped over Saturday morning on his way to the paint store (less than a block from his house, about 6 miles from ours), when I asked him what the colors were he pulled out his list and said things like Sweetwater, Chamomile but couldn't actually remember whether it was blue, green, orange. So many Lambertville people have been way too great to them, from the abundance of gift baskets of food, drink, and supplies to the outpouring of help with sanding, painting, plumbing, you name it. How nice that they have such a great support group. I took a few before pictures, once its closer to done, I'll put before and afters up.

School librarians convention - way too much to tell but suffice it to say awesome! Met up with some of the Rutgers crowd, including the infamous absent minded professor. Did learn about a great video software program by Pinnacle, which is cost effective enough for the home and burly enough for kids productions, lots of cool things to do especially the ability to turn analog video into digital.

Back to reality today, we got our 2nd marking period schedules, the vice principal in charge of schedules was unable to complete them before Friday (realize that most schools in the world have a schedule at least by the beginning of the school year, but we are in Trenton, after all), when I went in this morning and asked for class lists, she told me its not her job to make class lists and what did I need to know who was coming other than this class or that would be there at a particular time. Gee, rosters? Attendance? How many handouts to prepare? Just a few things that come to mind, now I know why she's been passed over for principal jobs for at least 5 years.

anyway my kick-butt schedule went by the wayside and I'm now back to teaching 5 classes a day, which means that none of the other kids/teachers can use the library when classes are in there. All in all a bummer, reading is not a priority apparently, but I do have a request in to the principal to come up and see what was dismantled to see if there is a little bit of leverage. If she had scheduled in classes that would benefit from the library it wouldn't be so bad, but its back to the babysitting service - preK for 45 days in a row, this year's crew still don't know their own names, reading to them is fine, but trying to get a little comprehension - forget about it - I asked one little cutie what we had just read (Brown Bear) and he replied by pointing to the ceiling and saying lights. Another class is 7th grade emotionally disturbed, one of the boys has to be at least 6'4 and about 250 lbs and can't keep his hands off the girls. Normally they are split into 3 different classes for math, language arts, science etc. in the library they are all together, think of 24 challenged kids from the violent to the picked on, at least they come with an aide who tells them 'stupid is no excuse' an interesting way to look at it.

A bright spot is for the first time in 9 years, I have a #1 class - 6-1 to be exact, they are the best and brightest of the 6th graders so my hopes are high and I already told them I was so excited to have them in class and can't wait until they get started.

Enough already, I will not let this minor setback make me into the kind of educator that does nothing - even if I have to resort to dittos with 7th grade, there will be something library related everyday! Famous last words

On a fun note, try this to see if you're right or left brained, a cute site, while there check out the music link.

On the knitting venue, Christmas stockings on the needles for Eric and Maia's new home. The plan is to make felted red and green stripes. Did some felting for my sister in law, she has the stocking bug and gave it to me.

Before this turns into a tome, lets call it a day!

Happy Thanksgiving one and all!!

It's been a while...

Didn't realize it's been almost two weeks since I posted here.

A lot and not much has happened. Saw War of the Worlds which was fantastic! Next year is the 70th anniversary ~ wonder if there will be a major celebration. I've become hooked on Sirius Radio's Radio Classics, the original broadcasts from the hey~day of radio! Every morning during my drive to work I hear Gunsmoke, never been a real fan of the Western, but now I look forward to what Marshall Dillion is up to.

Last night, Dave and I (and half of New Jersey) went to see American Gangster. We were able to get seats on the top row, and being the kind people we are, we left two empty seats between us and those next to us, just my luck, a couple with post nasal drip/allergies sat next to us and honked and snorted and yucked through out the whole movie. Thank goodness I watch the History Channel and was able to understand the background of the film, which was somewhat lost in translation. Russell Crowe steals the movie and is way better than Denzel Washington, who plays, hmmm Denzel Washington as we've seen him in so many other movies.

An upcoming movie, National Treasure: Book of Secrets looks interesting, too. Another re~write of American History to keep the Social Studies teachers in business!

Halloween was fun in school, I wore Eric's UPS clothes and so many kids kept coming up to me saying "Mrs. Lee, where's my package?" I loved that they were able to get it. Lots of cute witches, Spidermen, vampires, and little princesses.

In school news, totaled up the books that went out of the library from Oct. 1 to 31 and we blew out the expectations! One thousand one hundred and twenty-six books were checked out ~ and only two were lost (and one is already paid for) YEAH!! Trenton kids are reading!!! Without the library assistants it would not be possible to get the books shelved (although, I'm hoping that pretty soon, all the assistants will know the alphabet and their numbers and be able to shelf books pretty close to where they belong) When I ran the report, the assistants who were in the library went crazy cheering and hooping and hollering! How cool to be excited about learning, especially in Trenton!! I just want to say ~ Look at that ~ you local newspapers who have been trashing our kids and staff lately.

I will put up some pictures next post as I'm too comfortable/lazy to go downstairs and get the camera right now.