Living the Questions

....at least in my life. as of 11:15 this morning, I'm going to back to Jamaica. It's been four years since my last trip. I love that island. And I'm leaving this Friday (I'm still in limbo -- it depends on whether I get a sub or not). Here's how it happened... On Wednesday, I went to jgroup as normal. A lot of our girls are going to Jamaica, and with them leaving in a little over a week, that's all anyone wanted to talk about, which is completely normal. In talking to Alice (another of the leaders -- we meet at her house), I made the comment that I would so be there if I could. Little did I know that that comment would make its way to other ears. The next day, Alice told Nikki, a good friend who is also going to Jamaica (and had mentioned me going a few times before). Nikki apparently then called James, the high school pastor. On Saturday, after I spent some time shopping, I got a call from Nikki, wondering if I had heard from James at all. I hadn't, so Nik...

So, it is really late on Wednesday (for me, anything past 10 is late :)) and I have a lot in front of me to do, yet I am here instead. I've been thinking about school this last week and my wonderful kids....and I wanted to share some things.... 1) My kids are amazing. No matter how frustrating they are or how upset they make me or how often I want to pull my hair out, I love them. I will miss them so much next year. I came to this realization during the writing test, when I had nothing to do but walk around and watch them write (fun, right? the joys of being a teacher....). I love my kids. Each and every one. 2) No matter how much I love them, I mess up A LOT. I hate even admitting this. Today, I came real close to telling one girl she was stupid and real close to using a couple of choice words with another kid. Ugh. I get so upset with myself when this happens, and I owe some kids apologies tomorrow. 3) My kids are convinced I need to be dating someone. Their concern for me is swe...

So, today was art day at school. A whole day (pretty much) filled with art. The theme was Australian.....so everything we did was.....yep, Australian! At first, the idea of losing a day when we have so much to do before the CRCT was really upsetting. We didn't really understand why it was scheduled for before the test, rather than after it. However, after going through today, I am soo glad we had it now. It was such an easy-going day. We made necklaces, listened to Australian music, made boomerangs and got to paint (I'm really quite proud of my koala dot painting!) We had a lot of down time, so we got to do a few things in class... 1) We did one of those "how well can you follow directions" tests. If you've never done one, it's a lot of fun. There are all these directions, like screaming out certain words, random math problems, spinning in circles, counting ceilling tiles, etc. The catch is that you are supposed to read all the instructions first. When you get...