Bout of Books Day #1

Yay it is day one of Bout of Books!! If you're not sure, here is the sum-up

The Bout of Books read-a-thon is organized by Amanda @ On a Book Bender and Kelly @ Reading the Paranormal. It is a week long read-a-thon that begins 12:01am Monday, August 17th and runs through Sunday, August 23rd in whatever time zone you are in. Bout of Books is low-pressure. There are challenges, giveaways, and a grand prize, but all of these are completely optional. For all Bout of Books 14 information and updates, be sure to visit the Bout of Books blog. - From the Bout of Books team

Goals:
1. Read!! It is the first week of school so that is a huge goal. I am writing this at such a late hour because I came home around 8:15 pm after a back to school night.  Then I had to go to the grocery store and put all the food away....I haven't really read yet today but I will do a little bit before bed to wind down.
2. Finish The Princess Bride--book club is on Friday.
3. Finish my audio book--Jame and Austen by Stephanie Fowers...it is a little light romance.  It has been nice for the drives back and forth from school.

Wish me luck!

Five Minute Friday: Here

As I was thinking about this prompt today, I was thinking about where I was most of the day today--school.  School starts two weeks from yesterday.  I have been coming and going over there for the better part of three weeks, and I still don't feel ready yet! However, as I was thinking today about this word here...I decided that the reason that I spend so much time "here" is because that is where the most important work is.

Today I worked on organizing the list of students that need extra help learning English and support in their classes because English is not their first language.  I spent some time helping my fellow teachers set up a bit of their own classrooms and talked to them to see what they needed.  My classroom looking nice this year is very important to me. I spend a lot of time at school and I want it to be warm and inviting for the students, but also a place that I can feel proud of being there.

I should have taken some pictures today of my classroom and what I have so far, but it has a lot more color than your typical classroom.  One of my best teacher friends explained it one time to her mom as to why we take so much time and money at the beginning of the year to decorate our classrooms.  What is the one thing that you think of to compare the environment of a school to?  This mom said a hospital--it is so sterile, white, and plain.  Exactly our point--why would you want to spend a significant portion of your day in such a sterile environment. So I tried to make it not so sterile...


I will hopefully take some pictures tomorrow and add them to the post...

Book Review: Chasing Lincoln's Killer

This is my effort to restart this thing! Wish we luck :)

I am on a mission right now to try to finish a book every day or two. I finished this book Saturday and another book today!

Title: Chasing Lincoln's Killer

Author: James Swanson

Goodreads Listing

Genre: Young Adult Non-fiction/Non-fiction written in more story form

Rating: 5 out of 5

Why Did I Read? The 8th grade students are reading this at our school this year.  While I'm teaching 7th grade English, I am teaching 8th grade US History and I will have 8th graders in my ESL class so I wanted to make sure that I read it before the school year.

  

Summary: John Wilkes Booth is frustrated with the end of the Civil War. He has been wanting to take Lincoln out of the equation.  Now, the war is over and he really needs to stop Lincoln.  He finds out that the Lincoln family will be attending a play at the Ford's Theatre.  As an actor, he knows the theatre very well and feels that this is his opportunity to kill the president.  He gathers his fellow conspirators to also assassinate the vice president and the secretary of state. The next twelve days starts off a huge manhunt for the man that just killed the president.

What Did I Love: It was very well-written.  It was very readable and I miss being able to read a book that fast--it only took a couple of hours.  I appreciate learning a lot about that night in a really fun easy way.

It is a great book for teachers to use! With really needing students to read higher level things and read non-fiction that they can really connect to--this book really fits the bill!

What Did I Hate: It was only from the John Wilkes Booth perspective.  I really liked thinking about how it would fit in with some facts about the other conspirators--like how Mary Surrat was the first women hung by the federal government.  If you're interested--watch The Conspirators on Netflix.

From Google

Five Minute Friday: Try

http://katemotaung.com/ Go there for more info

So I haven't written very much o this blog even though I have TRIED and TRIED.  This is one of the reasons why I was so motivated to write on Five Minute Friday's prompt today. I saw it and it really got me thinking about how much I have tried to do this summer.  I am not use to this whole summer off thing--if you don't know me well yet, I'm a teacher and this past school year was my first time at a public school.  My previous school was a year round private school--and more than just your typical year round--365 days a year, year round.  They only didn't have school on major holidays: i.e. Christmas.  So I was actually really excited for the summer, it would be a chance to do all of the things that I never felt that I had time for.  I was feeling super ambitious and optimistic at the beginning of the summer when I wrote down a three page To-Do List separated into categories.  One of those categories was this blog.  I had also just found out about Teachers Write and I was excited to practice my writing, one of those things that I never felt good at personally and then felt even worse about as a teacher when that was the place that I had the lowest scores in on our end of the year testing.  But I just TRIED on this list--I haven't even had the nerve in the last few days to get it out and see how I have really done.

The biggest thing that I know is that I haven't come anywhere close to doing anything for this blog. I was going to have a schedule of when I was going to post stuff when, a schedule for the school year, and hopefully even schedule some of those posts and maybe even spread them out throughout the school year, but no such luck.

Wow--five minutes can go by so fast when I just sit down to write...I will leave you with this concluding thought and get to the positive part of what I was going to say because I hate it when I turn to this blog just to whine to cyberspace.  The word tried doesn't mean fail.  I have to remind myself of this on a daily basis.  I attempted, I did something, that does not mean that I did nothing.  And you can always try....and because you tried means you didn't completely fail. So I didn't fail at my summer just because my list isn't done...I tried at my summer and I can try again next year as a wiser, more experienced summer person.

Teachers Write Week 1 Catch-up

The first week of Teachers Write is over and I missed all but the first day.  Getting ready for trek this week and then going was a great experience! I really should sit down and write about that instead, but I spent the evening reading through comments and blog posts from the guest authors and really felt like I needed to put pen to paper.  (And I was glad I found an empty journal to scribble in--I learned I write better fiction old school...weird huh?)

The hardest part for me was the fact that I really needed a story.  I don't have a WIP or an MS already going, but I thought that if I am going to do these prompts well that I need to start something--even it if it is just a simple short story or a random narrative that doesn't go much farther than the summer.  It can even change so that I have more than one going on at a time, but I needed something.

This week seemed to have a theme of sorts--character development through observation and imagery along with specific voice for your characters.  I decided that it would probably burn me out to try to catch up on all of the prompts from the week, but I decided that I would try to flesh out some characters and give them a distinct voice. It really evolved while I wrote it--and I'm kind of excited to see where it takes me. Here we go....

Mom is so tired that she can't move anymore.  Her baby is crying so loud and no matter how much she bounces that baby it will not be quiet.

Her teenage daughter (probably about 14) looks at her mom (as she turns up her I-pod even more) with a look of disgust.  "Why did she have t have another kid?! Did she not get enough of this with the first two?"  Her little brother is hiding somewhere.  The ten year old annoyance was actually not being annoying at the moment.  Maybe he was just as annoyed about the newborn baby as she was.

Yep, he was annoyed alright. He had been the one mom had spent her time with. Allison was turning too much into a teenager for mom to want to be around her.  What was with his sister? She's all mood and angry all the time.  It worked out for him though--he got to spend all that time with mom. "Got" being the key word there--past tense.  That was all gone now. This baby had infiltrated so far into his mom's life that she didn't even have time to sit and talk anymore.

Excited for week 2 to see where I can take these three--and see if I can't flesh out a possible dad in the mix.

Day 1 of TeachersWrite

So I haven't written on this blog since February.  My bright idea of writing everyday in 2015 crumbled much faster than I had expected.  This school year really kept me busy and I let my writing slip.  One of the things that I learned this year is that my lack of confidence in writing is harder to deal with when I'm focused on teaching it 100%.  Yes teachers aren't suppose to focus too much on their end of year test scores from their students, but this was an area where my students definitely struggled more than others in my classroom.

This lead me to think about what could I do to improve my writing teacher ability. I thought about taking a class, but I didn't want to be tied to something with deadlines/money/etc.  I stumbled across TeachersWrite on Facebook and I immediately decided that this might be something for me.  It will encourage me to write everyday, put me in the position of a student again, and even better: it is geared to teachers!

One of the things that I feel like will make me unique in this group is the fact that I am not working on a novel nor do I plan on coming up with one. I have often thought about doing that and maybe something will start with this exercise.  Today's prompt asked us to wonder and to make a list of those wonderings.  I have been thinking about it all day and I don't know how many I really have but we'll give it a go...

• I wonder what other wives of the Founding Fathers (other than Abigail Adams) thought of their husband's political careers and the new nation.
• I wonder if I will ever be really crafty.
• I wonder if I will get my house ready for the school year.
• I wonder how people really just keep moving and never stop--like those Energizer bunny people that are always busy and scheduled and seem so perfect.  How do they do that without burning out?
• I wonder if I can keep the blogging up during the school year--I wonder if I can have a better outside of school life this year or not.
• I wonder where this journey of writing will take me.

The other idea given out today was to basically make a list poem of the project that we are working on right now.  It seems more geared to people who are working on a story....but I guess to an extent this blog will be my story of this journey and it is really my project for this month.

This blog is all of my musings as I think them

I often write about knitting, reading, and teaching

That's how I came up with Inspirefly--it is everything that inspires me. 

I started it to get some web presence with the idea of maybe one day having a business.

It became more than that--it became a place to interact with people on a different level

It became a way to express what I was thinking and feeling

It became a way to write

I started this journey to improve my writing

To help my students improve their writing

To give both groups a place to keep writing and writing and writing

I hope that at the end of this month I can look back and say that I definitely learned something. 

Looking forward to this amazing journey!

For more info: Click here 

The Thoughts of a Tired Teacher

I have gotten really behind on this blog....because I am always so tired as a teacher everyday.  This is what I was worried about when I started this challenge again.  It was hard for me to do it the first year I did it because my job always wore me out. Having to teach all day long with 120 students is a different ball game.  It doesn't wear me out as much some days--but intellectually yes.  So that makes it harder to really come up with good stuff to write.

I saw this today...and it really hit me today that this was my day!! I gave up my prep and lunch so that students could work in my room.  I didn't mind, but it was just one more thing.  Then I had a parent e-mail wondering why her son is failing my class--very often the answer is he didn't turn in his homework.  Yep exactly the problem here. Thankfully I didn't have someone throw up on me!!!

Thanks to Unique Teaching Resources