Stress--How do you deal with it?

So I was searching through Pinterest for inspiration today and I saw this quote:

http://blogs.edweek.org/teachers/classroom_qa_with_larry_ferlazzo/2013/11/response_using_self-compassion_to_recover_from_a_bad_day.html

This quote caught my attention, because I have been thinking a bit lately about the stress that comes with my job.  How much it wears me out--and I wonder if it is because I don't handle my stress right. Which gets me thinking that if I handled stress better, would my overall life be better? The obvious answer to that one of course is yes---but then it circles back to the only way I can think of to control my stress better is quitting my job.  Currently that is not something that I am contemplating (though my more faithful readers know that I do contemplate this at my low points). So I clicked on this quote.

It came from an article on Education Week that is the third part of a series answering the question of how do you deal with a bad day as teachers. After reading the responses from various teachers, I realize that they are talking about the days in which the lesson doesn't go well, or the kids are driving you crazy, or you have those moments that just make you want to walk out.  And yes I still have those--but these articles didn't give me completely what I was thinking it was.  My job is stressful--as the quote says---it is the nature of the beast.  And it confirms what I have been thinking all along--it is not just this particular job.  So how do we deal with it? We can't just stop being teachers.

Some people offered the standard answers of taking care of yourself and leaving work at work--including in your mind.  And I agree with those, but others talked about things to do to prevent the bad days and when in the middle of them.  What about when you just get so tired of getting up in the morning? So in response to this response article....I thought I would offer what I try to do to deal with my stress.

1. As much as leaving at 3:00 when you get off is good for you...sometimes it is helpful to just stay a little longer so that you actually can leave work at work.  Even though some days I get home at 5...I go home without having to worry about anything.
2. Be willing to say no to things...having too many things on the plate along with teaching is hard.  Don't feel guilty just because you can't do it all.
3. I have noticed that if I don't take time for myself every night the next day is harder.  Even if it is a couple minutes of TV watching, book reading, Facebook, etc.--I recharge so much better.
4. In line with 2 and 3--make the important things a priority.  For me--church is a huge priority.  It helps me to deal with the stress of work--and it is a priority in my life.
5. Put your life in perspective.  Now this might sound really like a strange way to do so....but sometimes I say to myself, "Well at least I am not having to go through this like so and so is." I have a teacher friend right now who is teaching a full course load, directing the school musical that opens this week, and getting ready for basketball season that starts as soon as the play is over. And to top it all off her mom is currently fighting cancer.  Seriously....I have it easy compared to that.  It makes my stress not seem so over-whelming.  When none of you have horrible things happening in your lives (which is preferable don't get me wrong)--TV is a great replacement for--see my life isn't as horrible as it could be--especially medical dramas like Greys.

How do you relieve your stress?

Reflection on July

This month has been crazy!  The biggest thing this month has been participating in the To Kill a Mockingbird read-along...though I still want to give you an actual review of the book...it has been great fun to read most of it and share some of my ideas.  It has also been the month of traveling, packing, and moving!  So it makes sense that my top three posts this month have to do with that.

#3: TKAM Part 2 

#2: TKAM Reflection Part 1

#1: Homeowner

This month has two challenges in mind for me....the Austen in August and Bout of Books so I am excited to do some more reading this month!! I am going to add Pride and Prejudice to my current read list!

Bloglovin' v. Feedly

So with my reflections post, I commented that I couldn't decide which one of these blog readers to use.  A wise fellow blogger mentioned that she had used one and then switched to the other and recommended that I give them both a shot--it wouldn't hurt anything. I had been meaning to all month--especially since I was a little worried about what blog posts I was missing with SO many that I follow now.  Like seriously, I have a ton of e-mails of blog posts to go through and my Google reading list on Blogger was getting so big.

So, yesterday I gave it a shot.  I created a Bloglovin' account and a Feedly account after looking at both and trying to get an idea what they would do for me.  I was actually not that pleased with Bloglovin'. It feels a lot like a social network site instead of a place to help me organize my blog reading and get information.  As I was creating my page, they were trying to get me to add specific people that they thought I might like.  So I wasn't too excited.  Also, I didn't feel like it was super explanatory with what functions did what.

After I got frustrated enough with Bloglovin', I switched over to Feedly to see what it was like.  I was a little bit cautious with all the extra stuff it seemed to have just like Bloglovin', but as I started to set it up it was SO helpful. I had a great checklist and explanations of what meant what.  I also knew exactly how to import my Google Reader stuff because they told me (Bloglovin' didn't tell me--just sent me to Google which didn't help). I also felt like I had a way to organize my stuff a lot better.  So the final verdict was Feedly.  We will see how it goes the next couple of days in terms of using it, but they are the ones I'm going to spend the most time with.  I am also excited about the Pinterest feature since I use that soo much for storage and bookmarking!  So the current vote is Feedly!

www.searchprosystems.com 

Food for Thought

So, today's post is inspired by a quote from Margaret Mitchell--author of Gone with the Wind. She said:

With enough courage, you can do without a reputation. 

Ever since I saw this quote, I have been thinking about what that really means.  You could interpret this in a few ways to me. The first thing I thought about was social capital.  Everyone has personality bank accounts. When we need favors from other people, we pull from this bank account.  When we give favors to other people, we are depositing into the bank account for use later.  Some people relate this bank account to your reputation, because it serves as the interest on the account. If you have a "good" reputation your interest rate is higher so there is a higher reserve there.  I wonder sometimes how my reputation affects my bank account.  But if you think about Margaret's words....you don't need this interest rate if you have the courage enough to stand up for yourself.  While I agree with this, sometimes it is a lot harder--so there is a price to pay for this courage.

But on the other hand, I was thinking about reputation like your own self-esteem.  If you worry about other people think of you, reputation means something completely different. You want other people to think well of you, so you please them to help your reputation.  But if you have the courage to stand up for what you believe in no matter what other people think, then you don't need a reputation because you don't care what other people think of you.

What do you think? Is reputation worth it? Or is courage more important?

Margaret Mitchell courtesy of Wikipedia 

Is It All About the Hype?

So, today I found out about this book blogger hop. I love following other bloggers and then finding out about all these cool things because they participate.  I will have to look into this blog hop more often!




This hop is hosted by http://www.coffeeaddictedwriter.com/ I will have to explore his site some more--he sounds like an interesting blogger. The point of the hop is to answer the question with a post. This week's question is: So would you read a book just because of the hype?

I have been known to become interested in a book because of the hype.  It will then end up on the list of books to read because of the hype.  I usually don't end up getting around to actually reading it until later after the hype has worn off.  But I did read all of the Harry Potter books--because of the hype..same with Twilight, and the Hunger Games.  I currently have The Help and The Perks of Being a Wallflower on the list of things to eventually read.  Sometimes I will read a book because a movie has come out on it--however I have this really big thing that I will read the book and then watch the movie. For example, because I haven't read The Help yet, I haven't seen the movie.  Might seem kind of strange....but movies ruin books for me--I have to do it in the right order :)

Reflection on Resolutions

So today I have an interesting train of thought as I have been looking at different things on the Internet. I have become very aware of how quickly life has gone this year.  At the beginning of the year, I had a lot of great plans for the year.  The only plan that I have stuck with is this one, which shocks me.  Honestly, some of them are a little bit more important (like renewing my license which I totally am procrastinating!!). Some of them are probably a bit more productive....like I had lots of readings planned for myself--both academically, enjoyment wise, and spiritually.  I haven't even come close to doing what I had planned with that. This became apparent when I signed up for RoofBeam Reader's Austen in August.  UGH! It is almost August. I had planned to read all of the completed Austen novels this year (well at least the seven in my complete works book) and I have only read one!

But on the positive side...August will bring a great trip home to see my baby brother come home! I am so excited.  Hopefully by then I will feel like I have accomplished something...if nothing else I will be reading a little bit of Jane Austen! I hope to finish Pride and Prejudice (for the umpeth time) and Mansfield Park. Feel free to sign up too here.

Family History

Okay so my day has been BUSY!! Came home from work and had dinner and visited with Brian for about two hours.  Then I went visiting teaching. Visiting teaching is a great opportunity for the women in the ward to get together, check on each other and make sure everything is okay, and then leave a spiritual message.  I just barely got home...threeish hours later.  I visit with some great women and they sure like to talk a lot! But the message I gave tonight was about family history and I thought for a quick blog post I would share a great quote.

As members of Christ’s restored Church, we have the covenant responsibility to search for our ancestors and provide for them the saving ordinances of the gospel. They without us cannot “be made perfect” (Hebrews 11:40), and “neither can we without our dead be made perfect” (D&C 128:15).

Family history work prepares us for the blessings of eternal life and helps us increase our faith and personal righteousness. Family history is a vital part of the mission of the Church and enables the work of salvation and exaltation for all.

President Boyd K. Packer, President of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, said: “When we research our own lines we become interested in more than just names. … Our interest turns our hearts to our fathers—we seek to find them and to know them and to serve them.”²

It is great to be able to learn about those who came before.  Shout out to my aunt and grandmother who do such great work and always tell me about their "dead people" :P They are my inspiration today!

http://www.lds.org/images/Magazines/NewEra/Archive/neweralp.nfo:o:d59.jpg

Ode to Pinterest!

So today I have been trying to think of what to write about today.  I have been surfing around the Internet for ideas--including Pinterest.  This was why I am writing a little post on Pinterest.  They have been making some great changes recently.  Unlike Facebook, I haven't heard anything bad and I personally love all of them!

Great change #1....Being able to search all of my pins!! If I can figure out what they were called I can find them in a second.  I love it!!  I use to do a find search on the browsers, but that it doesn't work when it hasn't all loaded completely.

Great change #2...It tells you when you have already pinned it to the board!! I have found so many duplicates even right next to each other on my boards and I have been so frustrated! This is SO great!

My newest favorite quote from Pinterest!

Family

So....Brian asked me, "What are you going to blog about today?" And as I have sat here thinking about it...I have been watching around me.  I am visiting family in Provo.  My niece and nephew are playing in front of me.  We had the opportunity to go to church with them and their mom today.  It was a great time to be together as a family.  And then they came over to grandpa and grandmom's house to have dinner and hang out with us.

My nephew and I have always had a special bond.  I happened to be living with my in-laws for a period of time when he was about six months old.  His mom was in school and so he spent time at grandmoms.  I took care of him a lot at that time because grandmom had just broken her elbows.  I loved spending that time with him. He would light up anytime I was around which was my favorite thing. I was the favorite aunt! Then I moved to Roosevelt, and he didn't understand why I wasn't there a lot anymore.  Brian was still around then with our car situation at the time, and he knew we went together and I was told that he would always look around for me when Brian came in the room. He was disappointed when I wasn't there.  When I started coming for visits more often, he seemed mad at me.  It took a while until he warmed back up to me.  However, the nice thing is that to this day we still have a great relationship.  He made me a get well card after I got sick. This weekend he has told me a lot about what has happened to him and it has been great to spend time with him.

I love spending time with family!

This photo is actually really kind of old...like probably only one year after we moved to Roosevelt but it is seriously one of my favorites!

Top Posts of April Plus A New Challenge

As typical after each month I do a recap of the month before with my 365 project and a reflection of what I have learned about life/writing/blogging etc.  April was my A to Z Challenge adventure.  The cool thing is that this challenge also asks for reflections from participants so I am going to tie that into my own reflection in today's post.

First of I want to say that I am so glad that I followed a blogger that was doing this challenge that lives in another country.  She posted on her April 1st which was still my March 31st so I was able to learn more really quickly, sign up before the deadline was up, and post the very next day.  Because of that I didn't do anything with a theme...I just kind of made it up as I went along.  Some days that was helpful....especially being about to do "Ouch" and "Pain" when I suddenly had to go to the hospital.

I would totally do it again because it was fun to come up with something for each letter everyday.  I loved the letters that Jeremy made...I always try to do a picture with each blog post but that is so hard for me to figure out sometimes.  Having the pre-made, made it so much easier to blog because I just had to put it in. When I do it again next year though I want to come up with a plan and have a theme--I saw other people's themes as I was exploring other blogs and that looked like fun! My favorite was Stephanie Scott's influential women authors...I loved seeing what she came up with for each day.

One thing that was hard for me was going to other people's blogs on my own. I got a lot better about going to the people that commented on my blog and came by and visiting.  I gain so many new followers which is SO cool.  I sometimes struggled commenting on other people's blogs too.  I really wanted to respond not just leave some sort of random "Just visiting from A to Z Challenge".  Maybe next year I will get more brave...but other ideas of what to say would be helpful. And maybe I will get an opportunity to do more hopping around in the next few weeks to other participants that I didn't get a chance to see.

Bottom line...thank you to the A to Z Challenge group  We SURVIVED! :)

Sorry this post is going on for awhile...you are a trooper to keep reading. But I need to do the top three viewed posts really fast...as is tradition.

3. I had a three way tie for this one....F is for Five Favorite Front-Page Features, H is for House, and J is for Joel like Billy Joel....the J one is by far my favorite.

2. Q is for Quite a Week...all about the crazy anniversary that occurred on the same week as the Boston Marathon

1. P is for Pain...this is the most views ever on my blog...which makes sense because it tells the WHOLE story at that point.

And as I always kind of set a "goal" for the coming month....I was trying to figure out what to do now that I was done with A to Z Challenge.  I found out about Jenni's Blog Every Day in May  She has a new post topic for each day of the month.  What I love is that she is very fluid about it...you can catch up and just post when you can etc.  So I will do a combo post tomorrow...since this post is SO LONG!!! Brownie points to you if you read to the end :)

Z is for Zoom!!

Does anybody feel like life is on a constant ZOOM!  I was realizing that April is like completely over...considering I spent about half of it on bed rest I feel like I missed it all!  We are already talking about May showers coming and the plans for the summer.  July doesn't seem that far away and it is still a couple of months away.  I already have had to cancel summer ideas because the planning didn't get done while I was down...not a huge deal just bittersweet. But seriously this is what I mean about ZOOM!  If we're not careful life just keeps moving right along without us!! 

So here are some other cool things about ZOOM!

1. I just love this quote from Wikipedia...

Zoom is an onomatopoeia sound that indicates swiftness.

2. I also think of zoom lenses...which are so useful when taking pictures of faraway things (as long as it doesn't get blurry)

3. I also can't help but think of the old car commercial in which the little kid whispered, "Zoom, zoom."

K is for Kimberly

So...maybe I'm just lame....but I had trouble thinking of a good word for K today. I had lots of ideas but no real winner. Then I thought of the fact that the A to Z Challenge is suppose to help other bloggers to learn about each other.  So today I will give you some more information about me...through an "I am Poem"

This week for National Poetry Week in World Geography and World History we talked about the theme of "Impact of the Individual" and did these poems about different influential members in history.  I thought about having them do themselves....so I'll do one for myself instead. For the format go to Read Write Think. Though actually this is a different format than we used in class.

I am organized and smart.
I wonder where I will be in a year.
I hear my to-do list in my head.
I see the day that is not so busy.
I want to feel successful.
I am organized and smart.

I pretend that I have a clean house.
I feel the feelings of inanimate objects.
I touch student's minds.
I worry that I will just coast though life.
I cry for hopeless matters, because there is really nothing we can do.
I am organized and smart.

I understand that even though I'm organized, I am really messy in other places.  (However, I don't understand why).
I say effort is required in everything.
I dream of the day that motivation is easier to come by.
I try to get my work done.
I hope for the day that I feel like I was really really accomplished.
I am organized and smart.

H is for House

So...I was thinking earlier today what to do for H--nothing seemed obvious until Brian and I went and looked at our first house option today.  EEK!  I can't believe that I am really thinking about buying a house.  We have talked about this on and off for the last six months or so.  We have really been thinking about this because of how much money we have been putting into rent for the last 4 years we've been married...and our time before that too. So it is hard not to think about how much money we could have been putting into a house.  I mentioned once on here before that last year was the first time I had never actually moved...so I think that's another reason we are looking at our options.  We've been in our little town almost three years now so that seems to be a bit permanent.  BUT....!

Buying house=SCARY!!!

So seriously I know like nothing about buying a house.  People throw out these fancy words like escrow...inspectors...offers... Realtor....closing costs...etc.  So that makes it really really scary.  Then there is the money thing--do we really want to spend this much money?  Do you realize that a 30 year loan won't be paid off until 2048! That's intimidating....and the fact that you need to be in the same spot for about 3 years to make it worth it....that is worry making too. I can't predict where I will be in a year....maybe I have just learned with my life constantly changing.  But seriously if I keep thinking that I will never buy a house.

So we are starting to stick our toes in the water...we might not end up buying a house but we might....stay tuned!

P.S. Any advice?

D is for Differences in Learning

I thought it might be time again for another education op-ed type thing. One of the things that I hear a lot as a teacher---especially in my particular school is from parents and sometimes students--"My son/daughter/I have learning differences."  They usually say it in this whiny voice with an intent to look for an exception or a teacher to spend ALL of their time with them and ignore all the other students that they have.  I have taken to saying something like, "That's nice, so do I."

Parents will usually pause and the kids will stare at me like, "Really you are a teacher and super smart?!"  I continue talking about how everyone learns differently.  If we all learned the same, we would all have the same personalities, and then we might as well be robots.  We have to figure out what helps us to learn best--but we can't use it as an excuse.  I know that I learn well with visuals and sounds--so when I am learning something I figure out how to make that happen.  That is what our students need.

As parents and teachers we want to help our students to be independent.  So, don't let them use the fact that they are totally different from everyone else as an excuse--use it to empower them.  You learn differently?  Great! What are you going to do to help yourself?  How can you advocate for yourself?  Just because you have an IEP does not give you license to not work and it definitely does not allow you to just sit back and not work hard.  Will you have to work hard then another student because of that?  Yes it is possible, but they have to work hard at something else that is easy for you.

Be okay with the fact that we are all different.

C is for Cedar Ridge Academy Therapeutic Boarding School

C is for Cedar Ridge Academy Co-ed Therapeutic Boarding School....because I work there!! Yes it is a mouthful! Often shorthanded as Cedar Ridge Academy/Cedar Ridge/CRA. I thought that since I spend almost my entire day at this school, it made a perfect letter C.  When people hear I work at this school I get very common questions...so here comes my FAQ for teaching at CRA.

What exactly is a therapeutic boarding school?
A therapeutic boarding school to a certain extent is exactly what it sounds like. It is a boarding school so the kids are there 24/7 and we focus on giving them help with through therapy.

What kind of students do you get/why do they get sent to your school?
So first of all, for the confidentiality reasons I can't really say why a student has been sent to us.  But overall, they have had some bad cards dealt to them in their lives and they don't know how to deal with it.  Most of the time they have chosen to deal with it by doing drugs and they aren't really going to school anymore because they avoid with the drugs or something else.

What do you teach exactly and what grades?
I currently teach English and Social Studies to all high school grades (9-12). Yes I have the "prep" nightmare that many teachers talk about--and I do both subjects alone, hence all my grading complaints.  But I am grateful everyday that I have a low number of students so that I only have a few kids in each prep.

Why do you work there? It sure sounds hard!
There are many days--as I'm sure my regular readers know--that I wonder that same thing myself.  As my husband often puts it--the one or two troublemakers in one teacher's class are now all in my classes.  But I love working with the small class sizes that I do get.  Tomorrow I have a class period of only 13 while when I was teaching in public school I had 35-40 in a class.  I also help to shape lives of teenagers in a way that public school teachers can't...you really build a good relationship with students and get to know them.

So if the students are there 24/7, what kind of school schedule do you follow?
Thankfully we're not like other programs that do "moonlighting" teachers--we do school at the regular times from 8-3 everyday--all year long.  That's right...no summer break, no winter break, no spring break, and no random days off really like other schools.  We do take off holidays---like I had President's Day off so there's no school, but that's about it. We also don't have semesters because students can enroll at a time.

Wait no semesters, how does that work?!
Well it does get a bit tricky--but students work "independently" through their courses.  Pretty much they are given the course online and they work through it at their own pace. I supplement with activities in class, answer questions, and fill in the holes when the information isn't making sense for the students.  They are required to do a certain amount of work at a certain quality each week so to a certain extent it works out for everybody.

Well there we go...I think I thought of all the big ones!  Feel free to ask in the comments section if you have one to add to the list :)

Flirting...Really Still Necessary?!

Okay so this blog post has been written like three times..I keep starting and stopping. I would like to share some wisdom with the male population today-but I have had trouble wording it.  So here comes this new try.  Men seem to feel the need to flirt with women to get their way.  Can someone explain this to me?  So why do I have this question you ask...

I went to a financial institution yesterday to sign some paperwork that Brian had signed previously.  So this male employee assisted me with this task by basically handing me papers to sign and then pushing buttons on the computer to continue to sign the application.  In the meantime he was like grilling me about my life and wanting to know everything about me.  When I wanted to know what exactly I was signing or asked questions about it...I had to interrupt him. So...what should be a more informational moment and the actual part of his job--became a chore. His voice tone would completely change and he would almost sound frustrated that he had to explain.  And then today when Brian gets on to see if everything processed, he realized that there might be something wrong with the whole thing.  My response--he was too busy flirting with me to pay attention!  If he hadn't hurried through the job stuff and been so focused on talking to me, maybe he would have done it right for sure. The other kicker...he knows I'm married--he and Brian are friends..and he is married too--I even asked about his wife, two kids, and her current pregnancy.  I mean seriously!?

I guess women cry to manipulate...men can flirt to get their way--but really why can't we all just act normal?!

Have Fun!

So the other day this was the Goodreads quote.  "I have never been convinced there's anything inherently wrong in having fun."--George Plimpton.  

So there were two things that attracted me to this quote.  First was the little bit that they told me about George. He was, "A contender for the title of Most Interesting Man in the World, writer George Plimpton wrestled Sirhan Sirhan to the ground when Robert Kennedy was assassinated and once got into the ring with boxer Sugar Ray Robinson."  Pretty cool guy!

The other thing is that it is a really true quote!  I fully believe in having fun....I just don't know how much I really do it because my brain is on other things. So go out and have some fun!!

Thank you to Pinterest...it was really the only picture that made sense with "having fun"

How Are You?

We, as a society, seem to ask this question of people a lot.   A lot of us use the phrase..."I'm fine." But do we mean.....

You can trade nervous for neurotic too

I have also heard, "I'm good" or "I'm alright"....but the person isn't actually any of these things....we don't want to start the big conversation or get into the nitty-gritty of our personal lives with people.

I happened to have Pandora on in the background today ...and before you say it....yes I have hear of Spotify but personally if it ain't broke don't fix it...and this song came up



The end of the first verse and the chorus stuck out to me today:

Yeah, life throws you curves
But you've learned to swerve
Me, I swung and I missed
And the next thing ya know, I'm reminiscing
Dreaming old dreams, wishing old wishes
Like you would be back again

I wake up and teardrops that fall down like rain
I put on that old song we danced to and then
I head off into my job, guess not much has changed

Punch the clock, head for home
Check the phone, just in case
Go to bed, dream of you
That's what I'm doin' these days
Yeah, that's what I'm doin'

So have you learned to swerve?  Or are you constantly swinging and missing? Or are you living in the past and wishing life would go back to the way it was?  Does life seem like it is on a constant loop like not much has changed? Hmm...then maybe we aren't so "good" and more like "fine".

Note: Lyrics from <a href="http://www.elyrics.net">eLyrics.net</a>

Quote to Ramble about Today

So I have been actually home for like two hours today and I have to go to bed soon.  But I need to write something quick!  I saw this quote on Twitter the other day and it struck a chord with me: You only live once, but if you do it right, once is enough.--Mae West

Sometimes I wonder if I live life "right". How would you define that? I feel like I complain a lot--and am really busy a lot.  Yesterday for a Church activity we did this like "speed dating" get-to-know you game and one of the questions that they asked was "If you have six months to live, what would you do first?"  The first thing that popped into my head was to quit my job!  Ever since then it has gotten me thinking--if I would quit my job if I knew I just had a little time left--why am I still there?! Rationally I know that I'm suppose to be...and if I really had 6 months to live then I would be filling my time with worthwhile time with family and friends which you can't do 24/7 if you're not going to be dying soon--you need money to live.  But I wonder what job would anyone want to keep doing so that they "live life right"?

Because there really isn't a better picture for this post than family....
Happy Birthday to my little sister!!! 

My Response to CNN: We are ALL a Team

So this weekend, I saw this article from CNN about the 10 things parents and teachers should know about each other.  I have talked on here before how parents and teachers should be a team, and that parents shouldn't demand things of teachers--just as teachers shouldn't demand things of parents. And again...these opinions are mine alone, but I wanted to respond to this article.

Briefly, this article is a response to an article that they did probably about a year ago about what teachers want to tell parents.  I saw that article then and liked it enough to share it on Facebook.  To me, this new article discusses that parents and teachers are on the same page--some of the time.  They give a couple of quotes--some I agree with and some that I don't. As the article asks at the end: "What do you think about this list and what would you add?" I will do a list of three quotes from the article with my own commentary.

Quote #1 from the article states:
"Parents need to know we're in it for the kids; obviously not for the money," said Facebook user and Florida teacher Cindy Hoffman. "We're in a partnership, trying to do the best for the children as possible. Please don't treat us as adversaries."

I agree because as I have mentioned before, no teacher is in it for the money.  If parents know that we are a team--things go so much better.  Students drive the train (especially in high school) while the parents and teachers work as the staff on the train to help support the engineer.

Quote #2 states:
"As a teacher (oh yes, I am both) I want parents to stop blaming teachers and start working with us," Williams-Solod said. "We can't fix everything, but remember we are humans and we aren't perfect. Also, teach your kids to respect us."

I like this quote because it comes from a teacher-parent.  Sometimes teacher-parents are the worst--because we know what we would do as a teacher for our own kids.  But I think this mom hits the nail on the head--teachers are only human.  And one thing that I have to remind myself of everyday is that parents are only human too. I deal with a lot of kids who might not be in the situation that they were if there were different choices made in their upbringing.  So...again we are a team.

Quote #3 states:
"ADHD is not an excuse; it is an explanation."--Melynda Hartley Johnson, parent

I disagree with this quote to a certain extent. I agree that in some cases ADHD is a real thing--and something that the student needs to learn how to overcome.  However, I think that it can be used as an excuse even when it is a real thing.  No kid that is in a wheelchair or has glasses or any other visible difference says that they can't do something just like everyone else.  They figure out how they can do it their way.  That's what I as a teacher wish the parents that come to me with, "My kid has ADHD." would understand.  I wish I could hear, "My child has ADHD; can we help him learn despite of that?  I want him/her to be able to reach their potential and not be a kid defined by this."  That's really is the biggest thing--we can't define our kids by an explanation--they have to define themselves by what they CAN do, not what they CAN'T do.