High Five for Friday! 

I am starting a new blog tradition called “High Five For Friday.” Each Friday, no matter how stressful or hectic my week was, I am going to take a moment to be positive, optimistic, and grateful for the 5 highlights of my week. I am going to focus on what is good, and what went right!

So this week definitely felt like it was 9 days long, but I made it to Friday! Here are the highlights:

1. We found Rocket! Ugh, what a story. On Wednesday night, Ryan and I took Rocket out for his last evening walk. Suddenly, Rocket noticed a rabbit and instantly took off running. Ryan didn’t have a great grip on the leash, which slipped out of his hand. We both watched – stunned, numb – as our dog ran off into the dark night. We live by a busy street, so this is not good news, people. Well we split up and started darting in and out of backyards, calling out his name. My throat slowly started to squeeze and clench, and I could barely squeak out a high-pitched, “Roooooockeeeeeet!” – riddled with panic. After 5 minutes, Ryan hopped in his car and started driving up and down the street and alley. That’s when I had an idea; I ran home and grabbed a squeak toy. Oh boy, did I squeeze that thing. I squeezed the life out of it. Again, I darted in and out of backyards, morbidly checking the street out of the corner of my eye every now and then for a small body in the middle of the road. It was dark, I was alone, and terrified. FInally, I paused for a desperate moment under a street light, listening. I squeezed one more time, and THERE HE CAME barreling toward…. the toy. Not me, the toy. The stinker has no idea how he gave me a near-death-experience. I feel as if I aged 4 years that night. Oh I am SO glad to have him back! It was the worst 20 minutes (felt like an hour) ever! I am grateful for him every minute of every day.

2. Open House was a great success this year. I had so many parents with great questions about the curriculum, my expectations, etc. It was a nice turnout. It felt so rewarding to hear some parents saying that their older son/daughter (who I had in previous years) said that they were happy that their younger son/daughter got to have me this year because I am “the best!” It’s great teaching the whole family – there are some parents that I have gotten to know by teaching 4 of their children – wow! I love building a relationship with the families and communities. It’s part of what makes my district so special.

3. The 5 Keys – Currently, we are reading The 7 Habits of Highly Effective Teens. We are doing our best to use the iPads and ebackpack for taking notes, doing assignments, etc. This week, however, we’ve had more than a few technical glitches. Our district needs to expand our wifi network (which is getting inundated and really slow), and ebackpack keeps crashing on us. The students are being good sports about this, but I can tell they are getting really annoyed with the dysfunctional technology. I had an idea this morning on my drive into work to quick whip up a graphic organizer for our reading today of the 5 Keys to Goal Setting, Habit 2. You should have seen the look of relief on their faces when I told them today that we were going ‘old school’ and taking a technology break. I’ve never seen them so happy to have a graphic organizer. They loved filling in the notes, and they honestly did a fantastic job with their summaries.

4. Signature Stamp – Wahoo, it finally arrived! I’m going to have a blast filling out those blue and yellow slips for PBIS!

5. Seat Marker Success – I am SO impressed with my students. The seat markers are working out like gangbusters. Even in the middle of class, students will get up, grab a seat marker, then head to the bathroom. They never have to interrupt a lesson. You might imagine that this could get out of hand – that students would want to go at all the wrong times, or abuse the system. This is completely not the case! They are being incredibly mature and responsible. I think they are grateful and honored to be treated like young adults, and they are rising to the occasion. Of course, if I see students abusing the privilege, I will revoke it, but it’s so nice to have this mutual trust and understanding.