The Family Comes to Visit/School/Reading

(Longwinded Laura Posting) Today was an exciting day in lives of the Rosbury kids (well 5 of the 6). Daphne, my oldest sister if you do not know, brought the kids to visit my classroom (at HMMS). Aiden spent the night with my cousin Hannah so she wasn't able to come. She was sad but loved her time with Hannah. Daphne home schools her kids so most of them haven't been to a school or were little when they were at Momma's or Miriam's. It was so fun to watch their faces and see how they reacted to the things I see every day. They loved to write on my Activboard, but they loved their lesson on rocks even more. Yes, they got a lesson while they were at school and they didn't know they were actually there to learn. They finally got to meet Mrs. Guillebeau, one of my team members from last year. I talk so much about her I forget they have not met her. The boys first started looking at her hissing cockroaches then she showed them the rock collection. Her rock collection fills the entire science closet. She loved every minute of their questions and their personalities. She even gave them some rocks (and some cheat notes about the rocks) to take home. Momma and Daddy came too. Daddy hadn't ever been to my school either so he had fun walking around. He even got to meet my assistant principal when he entered the school. One of the first comments my dad made was, "Laura, Mrs. Guillebeau doesn't look like she's sixty." She's definitely no where near sixty and she laughed and said, "No, but I could be her mom!" She was the "mom" of our team last year. That's probably why they wanted to split our team up this year. It's a sad thing to split the sisterhood up, but we will manage. I loved having my family at the school today to visit. Thanks guys!! Since I spend much of my time there and talk about the people there, I am glad they now have a vision in their heads of what I am talking about. Today was supposed to be a "work really hard" day in my classroom. I was going to finish my library, bulletin boards, and complete some other things. Mrs. Guillebeau was going to get lots of things done too, however, we ended up talking to my family much of the time and then we talked to each other the rest of the time. We were constantly reminded of what time the school closed (by the custodians, AP, and the intercom) .... I mean really like we would stay late and talk or get locked in...

Like I said in yesterday's post, I have been up at the school a lot this week. I finally got my library finished. I didn't hold down the rubber cement for a few seconds though and some of the envelopes are already coming off. UGH. Well if that's the worst of it, I can handle that. My room is taking shape. I will take a picture of it next week and post it. 

It hit me today that school starts next Friday. This was my last free weekday. I start preplanning on Monday. I am truly excited. I love my job, but I do love my summers too. We've had so much fun this summer, it's sad to think every day will be planned out for me. After many tears and taking it in that I would be moving to another team this year, they let me stay and instead they moved Mrs. Guillebeau (Erin). That makes me really sad because we work so well together (also sad b/c she has SO much stuff to move). Mrs. Pelphrey (Brandi) was my other team member last year. We all formed the sisterhood. We bonded and the kiddos knew it! This year I am still on the blue team with Brandi, but we are now a four person team with two new-new teachers. They are brand new teachers. Brian Gibbs will teach science and Joseline Maner will teach language arts. I will get to teach math (yes just math this year- no social studies). Brandi will teach social studies. This summer my master's program has kept me busy reading and I've thought so much about this upcoming year. I have learned some new things and will be implementing some of them into my classroom. Hopefully it will be a good year. I am truly praying it will be a good one. We will be a fairly new team. Our team's total combined experience will be 6 years (Brandi-5, Me-1). GO BLUE TEAM!

I'll get off my school kick so I don't bore you too much. Right now I'm reading Breaking Dawn by Stephanie Meyer. She is the author of the Twilight series a series for adolescents. However, I am not sure if I agree that middle schoolers understand it as an adult does. My sixth graders were into it last year, and I wonder how much of it they understood. When telling people about the books, I get strange looks and comments,  "Vampires?! Werewolves?!" Well, I just connect to the books and I'm not so strange. Read them for yourself!! I promise I'm not crazy. Jeremy (so graciously) went with me to the release party at Barnes and Noble last Friday night. While I completed Twilight trivia and smiled at the people who dressed up, Jeremy read comics. I admit I got a bit nerdy and found the education section and started reading all kinds of math books (I mean we were there for 2 hours). I couldn't bring myself to putting them back on the shelves so I bought them. We counted down to 12:00 and then they started calling people to get their books. We were out of there by 12:06 AM. How nice, and I was number 41. I've had to slow myself down on reading though because I needed to focus on master's work and HMMS work. Enough for now-- L