Chuck E. Cheese

Since I did not blog very much this school year and I have lots of time off, I'm taking the time to blog events that happened this year. The first one is when my mom and I took my niece to Chuck E. Cheese for the first time. She was excited and scared at the same time. She loved the music, games and food, but not so much the dancing puppets on the stage or Chuck E. Cheese.

Here are some pictures to enjoy...

My mom making sure she didn't get too scared.

She is dancing to the music, but she would not get any closer.

We told her we were going to go play games and she took off running.

I made her stop and smile!

She loved this ride!

Staring at the screen in concentration.

Her cheesy smile...

She was amazed with the balloons.

She had a wonderful time and can't wait to go back again! :)

BUGS!!!!

Well this is going to be a little gross so if you don't want to read anymore that's okay. I'm going to rant about the bug issue in my classroom.

So every year I have dealt with the issue of killing cockroaches almost every day. The always appear when the weather starts to get a little warm and the bugs start to come out. Well this year was no exception and beginning end of April the roaches started to appear. So every morning there would be a couple of roaches in my classroom and a student would come in and kill them for me. It became a routine so every morning I would open my door and look outside for one of the two boys that would kill them and then would walk right over. Some days they would already know and open the door with me and start killing them. I would reward them with food, drinks or candy (after they washed their hands of course).

One day during 5th period I picked up the phone and screamed (yes screamed) when a roach came out from under the phone. So when the secretary asked if there were any classrooms that needed to be sprayed because of bugs I emailed her right away!

So last Wednesday I went to work for cheer practice and went to my classroom to pass out shoes to the girls. The lights were off and when we turned them on there was about 50 roaches all over the floor that were dead. The custodian came and vacuumed them up and that was the end of that. Well today I went back and there was more!!!!! UGH!!!! So in closing I am leaving you with a picture so you can understand......

Mind you this is not nearly as bad and only a portion of the floor.

House Update...Kitchen

Well I haven't updated everyone on my house in a really long time so I thought that I would do so now. When I purchased my house I only wanted to remodel the hall bathroom. Well this turned into me changing out both bathrooms and adding an entry way and then doing the kitchen/dining room as well. After finishing these items I thought I was almost done...until my dad really looked at my kitchen and said "Well...we can change the cabinets." When looking at the kitchen cabinets with the lovely new diamond tile it was difficult to think I would have to live with my Andy's Mint cabinets. So we decided to take out the cabinets and are now waiting for the cabinets to be finished. Here are some pictures to take you along the process...

The kitchen when I purchased it (before my new tile)

Day 1...most of the kitchen is out (only the soffett and uppers remain)

Day 2...all of the cabinets are out!

Now it is time for my cousin to come in and do all the drywall work and the cabinets to be installed. I can't wait!!!!

Patience

Well there are only 12 more days of school and I have run very low on my patience. I know it's the end of the year, but the students are annoying me more everyday. They have decided that since "testing" is over they are done with school. Unfortunately this is definitely not the case! I have been fighting their lack of motivation for over a week now and I have completely lost my patience! I need to stop and try and be positive everyday, every period, every minute but it is sometimes too difficult. So I am asking for all of you to pray for me to have this patience with my kiddos for the next 12 days. Without this help, I might say something that I will regret!

Why I love teaching...

So this week has been a little bit of a rough week with my students. We have started testing and I know their brains are fried, but then again so is mine. So I have been exhausted all week and my patience was running thin. Today I went to my box (where you find all sort of things for you) and found a green paper with my name and the schools name. It was stapled shut so I was curious as to what it was.

It read:
Dear Ms. Recendez,
This past week we watched the movie Tuesdays with Morrie. It made me think about some of my past teachers. I wanted to thank you because not only were you an excelent teacher, but your class showed me that you can express yourself, have a fun time, and learn a great deal of work. As I thought back to all my classes and teachers yours is the one that stood out to me the most. I am also glad that I was in your class right before high school because it prepared me a lot for these four years that are now soon going to end. Thank you again.

This was a great thing for me to get after this week. It makes me feel good to know that I have influenced someone's life. As a teacher it is difficult to know if you are making a difference in someone's life temporarily or permenantly. This student was from my first year of teaching. For those of you that know...that was one rough year! I was still able to make a difference! :)

Testing...

So testing has begun...the CST has finally arrived! I am still stressing out about it since I am not done reviewing in my Algebra courses, but I'm hoping they will suprise me and do awesome! Well not suprise me, but do me proud! I have been reviewing and reviewing and reviewing with 7th grade math which has made my life boring for the last month and a half. I am ready to start teaching again and I can't wait until testing is done.

F0r the first time ever I am not testing my own students. This was difficult for me to put my head around since I have always had my own students and I feel that sometimes they do better with me in the room. I know I can't help them and they know that too, but it puts them at ease that I am in the room. So I am testing my friend Renee's 7th grade honors class and it is an experience. Not only do I not know their names, but I do not know their personalities either.

It has been a fun three days of testing (2 days of testing & 1 day of testing block). The last two days they were actually testing for Language Arts. Today though was a different story. I was to entertain these students for 135 minutes! Yikes that's a long time. So I decided that we would do missing work/extra credit first. This worked out since most students finished at least one assignment. Then we were going to play Jepardy. I made a math one for first semester concepts and we played this for the next 45 minutes. Now I should have paid closer attention to the schedule and my math skills on counting time because we were only at an hour and a half (roughly). So I thought the students were about to leave my class when I looked at the schedule and realized YIKES, they have another half an hour with me. What to do what to do?!?!?!?

Well I decided let's play "Heads up, seven up!" They played this for the next 20 minutes when they started to get restless. A student asked if they would play "4 corners" and then they did this for the next ten minutes. All in all today was not too bad with these students that I do not know very well. It was a fun 2 hours and 15 minutes. :)

Spring Break

So the last week I have been off of work due to spring break! I love the fact that I get to still have spring break at the age of 28!! :) This year was the first year that I did not have to worry about starting school at CSUSB in the middle of the week, which was awesome! So I thought...maybe I would go somewhere. Well this did not happen....did I mention that I bought a house five months ago and I'm currently working on remodeling. So here is a list of some things I DID get to do during spring break...

• dinner and a movie with Robyn and Jennifer (Remember Me...it's soooooo sad)
• shopping trip to Lowe's and the Floor Liquidators store (picked out some flooring and priced windows)
• went to the movies with my mom (Our Family Wedding...it was good, made me laugh at the Mexican jokes)
• watched my brother give a presentation on his fieldwork for his masters degree (he passed...don't worry)
• spent a long time at the mall (5 hours to be exact)
• went to the movies with my mom and dad (The Last Song....sad too, made me cry a little)
• spent Saturday shopping at Costco and making confetti eggs for Easter
• spent Easter with a lot of my family at my Great-Aunt Jenny's

This is a short recap of the major things I did during spring break. I did have fun and it was quite relaxing...I'm now ready to conquer the last eight weeks of work and start my summer vacation. :)