What a Week!

“The truth is, unless you let go, unless you forgive yourself, unless you forgive the situation, unless you realize that the situation is over, you cannot move forward.” 

― Steve Maraboli

Howdy Folks!

It's been a great week! Well, a really busy, tiring week, full of a lot of ups and downs, but a good week. 

I finished my first week with IRD. The weekday classes are harder but only because the commute is absolutely awful. I finish teaching classes right during rush hour and have to get on the busiest freeways in the Southern California areas...there's just nothing else around. Wednesday night it took me two hours to get home. I moved five miles in the first hour. Ugh. It's just awful. I did the math. For one week I travel 296 miles to and from home. Seriously, I hate it. One of those days I drive 82 miles round trip. Yeah, my life sucks with the driving right now. I can only hope the car holds out long enough to get me through the summer. Luckily, come September, CCMS is only 11 miles away. It takes me fifteen minutes to get there and if I have to it's a one hour bus ride. I could make that work! Sooo close, only eight more weeks to go. 

On Thursday, my day off, the assistant principal at CCMS called to ask me if I would like to make an "optional' visit" to learn the school culture, meet some of my peers, and observe a few classes. While, I was unhappy to lose my day off at school (with no pay), I was excited to get inside of the school and meet some of my fellow teachers. I also learned a lot about what my teaching would be like next year. One thing I was super worried about was how much control I would have in designing my curriculum. Sometimes you just don't know with charter schools. Well, I found out that I have a ton of control. I basically design my own curriculum map and get to make all of my lessons. I'm pretty excited about it. It's going to be a ton of work and I am going to have a super busy first year teaching. Still, I feel like I'm going to have a lot of support at this school. Also, the teacher I am replacing gave me a lot of her lesson plans and such to help if I needed some ideas. That was super nice! I also learned that CCMS goes from September to late June. This means a couple of things. I get out a lot later than most schools BUT I don't have to go back until AFTER Labor Day weekend. I'm pretty excited about this. It means that I can go to the Tree Planting Party and spend a pretty long time with the family at this time. Now I just have to make the decision (Brooke-0 you and I have to talk about this): do I take a really long vacation down to Utah before school starts or do I come for a really short weekend in October when the baby is born? Ugh! I can't decide! We can't afford to make the trip for both. Anyway, I need to get a better picture that shows the whole school but here's this: 

Daniel and I went to Universal Studios on Friday. We bought an annual pass. I'm pretty stoked about this. I quite like Universal Studios. They have less rides than Lagoon even but they have a lot of shows to watch. Also, DESPICABLE ME RIDE! Anyway, I had a lot of fun. We even splurged a lot and went to Hard Rock for dinner that night. We get 20% off with our annual passes (Hard Rock is in the City Walk mall right outside of the park)...it still cost a lot of money. I took a few pictures of the highlights (all minions). I got a minion mug too! 99 cent refills whenever I come back to the park! yay! Also, Shawn Brown said that if we can go to the park once every month then he will pay for our next annual passes at another theme park... Challenge ACCEPTED! I hope he knows Disneyland Annual Passes are around $400 each. 

To kick off my second week of teaching I locked the classroom keys inside of the classroom along with my cell phone, car keys, my teaching materials, lesson plans, and all my contact information, fifteen minutes before class started. I felt like one of the most brilliant people on this earth. When the janitor made it back to let us in (it was a Saturday so no one else is there) there weren't enough chairs in the classroom. This was a problem last week. I called it in to get it resolved, was told it was resolved, but it was not. So, I had a couple of angry parents (parents stay with their students for a workshop for this class). Well, one parent was so mad that she yelled at me in front of the class and said she was going to drop the class and get a refund. While I totally understand the problem and it is highly unprofessional that we don't have enough seats, it was still upsetting for me. To top the day off... I was keeping the keys to the classroom in my pocket (small woman work pants pockets) so that I wouldn't make the mistake of locking them in the classroom again and about an hour before class ended for the day I noticed they weren't there anymore. I looked everywhere, pulled out all of my materials, emptied all of my boxes, but they weren't there. So, I had to call the janitor and confess that I lost the keys. He got angry and yelled at me. Sigh, it was a rough night. I let my supervisor know what happened through email and somehow he picked up how super upset I was. He called me at about 6:30 pm and I was totally balling my eyes out. He was supportive and helpful but I still feel really, really dumb. 

So, one of my biggest driving pet peeves is people who don't use their blinkers. So, I was thinking that I could get business cards made up that say: I caught you not using your blinkers! Then on the flip side they could say something like: Your fellow drivers cannot read your mind. Please remember to signal your intent to change lanes or turn. While, I think I am amazingly innovative, I have some worries. One, I honestly can't follow everyone who doesn't use their blinker around all the time. I'll probably get arrested or shot. What I was thinking, is, I could just put them on random peoples' cars! So, maybe they didn't remember to signal but they probably have, right? This means that they will probably think about it next time! I don't know maybe I'm just insane. This has just been an idea I've been toying with as I spend hour upon hour stuck in traffic. How better to improve my driving experience?

That's all for this week! Love you guys! AND if you were in Yellowstone last week remember that you missed a blog post and that you can catch up below. 

<3/ Brandy