Nomination of a deserving teacher

Last year my son had a teacher who seemed to be done teaching. Everyday was a struggle to get to go to school because he was so bored and frustrated with much of the stuff that happened in the classroom. By the end of the year, he was proclaiming daily that he hated school. This was first grade! It made me really sad and frustrated to hear him saying that.

This year is a VASTLY different story! His teacher loves her job and loves her students. She is engaged and so are the kids. She is incredibly enthusiastic and her students feel that and respond to it. He comes home everyday how much he loves school. We are getting notes home telling us about his progress in class and how well he is doing! His behavior is improving and he is progressing academically. Besides inspiring her students, she is actively involved in the PTA, although she has no children of her own, to help all of the school’s children succeed.

Our school has a large ESL population as well as a high percentage of kids who live below the poverty line. All of the teachers spend money out of their own pockets to help the kids have the things they need to succeed. So far this year, I know for sure his teacher has spent her own money to purchase special pencil grips for some of the kids to teach them how to hold a pencil and learn to write correctly.

If there is a teacher who deserves this award, it is his teacher this year. She took a little boy who hated school in May and within 2 weeks of starting school in August, made him love learning again. I’m sure before the end of the year she will have spent additional money to keep her kids learning ad growing throughout the year.

or @adaymadebetter

The day

It started with me running to the store to get some turkey bacon since my mom was making breakfast, but I don't eat regular bacon. After breakfast, RF helped my dad haul out their busted dryer then I went and did some gift shopping. We got home about 11 and went grocery shopping at Aldi's. Brought that home and put it all away, using the fab t-shirt bags that Missy made me.

By then it was time to "rest", although rest time amounted to us laying there for an hour. I alternated watching stuff on my computer while ignoring her and yelling at her to lay down and be quite. Neither work and we just wasted an hour. We got up and RF and I went to County Market while the kids stayed with my mom. We spent outrageous amounts of money at the various stores and it made me sad.

Home and put away the groceries, again. Then I cooked dinner while my mom played with the kids in the yard. After dinner (grilled chicken with salad and tater tots), we went to Target to do yet more gift shopping. I had planned to buy school supplies (so don't even get me started on school supplies, I ranted about it last year at this time and I feel the same way this time around)today, but I couldn't get online to print the list so by the time I found one at Target, I didn't want to shop for them anymore.

Now we are home and watching TV. The Boy wants me to help him get through a level on Lego Indy, so we may work on that and then ice cream and bed :)

Nothing exciting here and I'm really ok with that. Yesterday was a long day and it was nice to have a day where we didn't do much :)

School supplies

I LOVE LOVE LOVE school/office supplies! I could go to Staples and easily spend an hour, lusting after pens and markers and paper. However, I don't like HAVING to buy school supplies, especially when you are hunting the sale. Normally, sale shopping is the only thing that makes sense to me. I refuse to pay full price for nearly anything.

Walmart has school supplies on sale crazy cheap this week (glue for 20 cents, markers for 88, etc) and I thought "C is going to need all this stuff in a few weeks, might as well get it while it is on sale" What a pain that turned out to be. We went on Sunday afternoon (the day the sale started) and found that they were out of markers and scissors and only had one suitable backpack (everything else was either pukey pink or 14.96, instead of 6.96) Fortunately, C digs Spiderman so it was ok and the one he actually picked out. Also fortunately, there was another brand of blunt nosed scissors that was regularly priced, cheaper then the sale scissors. So I was able to get those and all the glue (he needs 12 craploads of glue for school) he needs. We went back today and bought the last box of classic color markers they had (they had some pastels, but only one box of them). Major PITA.

A secondary rant to buying school supplies is the supplies I'm expected to buy. They are asking for Ziplock bags, Clorox wipes and Kleenex. IMO, those are things the school should supply. The bags, I sort of get because they do the "book in a bag" program and the bags are to protect the books and keep everything together. I imagine they get beat up fast. But Clorox wipes? I really don't think so. I'm sending some because dh practically begged me not to start out as a trouble maker. The other thing? The supply list wants several bottles of glue, glue sticks etc and then says "don't put your name on this stuff, we'll share" Again, I think not. I'm labelling EVERYTHING, including individual markers. I bought decent stuff for MY CHILD and I'm not having him using crap because someone else decided to buy junk. Selfish? Maybe, but I don't have a ton of money to spend and I am providing for my children, not everyone else.