Ready for Change

I don't have much to say lately, but at the request of Laura, I decided to update my blog... a little.

Lately, I have been feeling restless. I think I need a change. Really, I think we just need a change of scenery. We have really been missing our Ohio friends and family lately and every time we drive by the highway, Jason says don't you wish we were driving north to go home? My answer is always "yes". Especially last night when we were heading to Rum Runners to watch the OSU game instead of Columbus.

While I'm not sure we will be heading back to Ohio after Jason gets out of the AF, I do know we will be heading out of Valdosta. It's a nice place to live and southern culture is fun to learn about, but it is not OUR home.

School is going well. I am LOVING 7th grade and all the challenges it brings, which I have forgotten about over the last 2 years. My team is AWESOME (still), but I am having some issues with my partner which is bringing me down lately. I'm not so upset about my professional issues with her, but they are starting to hurt our friendship, which I miss.

Basically, I did all the work for her the last 2 years. It didn't bother me because it was work I had to do anyway and she was not trained to be a math teacher. It provided me with a new challenge and a chance to use my master's degree to teach another teacher. I never wanted the credit for the work, but it annoyed me that she took the credit. So after talking with some people about this, I have decided that I have raised her enough and I pushed her out of the nest to fly on her own. Since we are teaching new content this year, I still share my activities with her, but I don't write her lesson plans and I thought she knew the material. Well, she doesn't and she is teaching some of the things wrong. When I tell her about it she gets mad at me so I stopped worrying about her and that made her mad too. So I gave up on the whole thing since I can't win.

On a happier note (for me at least), I am taking classes to become certified to teach gifted students. My school is paying for it and I LOVE my gifted students. They bring a new kind of challenge and make my day very interesting. Jason loves to come home and ask me what new stories I have about these students. I'm pretty sure that Jason was a gifted student, but all students in private schools are placed on a gifted curriculum (although not necessarily taught using gifted methods) so they don't test for giftedness.

This year, I got some of my gifted kids to join math club and we are working on building a Future City for a competition in January. I am really excited about it especially since Jason has agreed to be our volunteer engineer for the project and he will be coming out to school from time to time to work on it with me and the kids.

Outside of school, we have just been trying to keep busy hanging out with friends when they are not busy and training for the Disney Marathon in January with a few other races thrown in along the way.

So, I guess I did have a lot to say. I know it was moistly about school, but it's pretty much all I do these days. As for my need for change - Laura and Jaime I know what you are thinking and no, I don't think a baby is the kind of change we need at this time. :-)