The 25th Hour ~karenjcardoza.com~

Even Sugar's dressed up!

Since I’m just getting back to work and last week felt like a disaster, I’m very thankful for the easier schedule this week. As each day goes by, I’m feeling better and getting stronger and feeling more like myself. I’m purposely making an effort to dress up more for school this week to distance myself from my lounging clothes. Just wearing heels makes it feel more like a work day than a rest day so while I come home tired and dying to get out of my shoes by the end of the day, I’m dressed for the part while I’m there and feeling good.   Today was a great day at school and I taught a fun science lesson to both groups.. getting together to team teach is just one more sign of normalcy and it feels great!

NaBloPoMo 12

Yes… I’m still here.

No.. I haven’t fallen off the face of the earth!

I’m back to school and it’s been one of the most challenging starts I’ve had since my very first year of teaching when I was blindsided and given  all of the kids with Behavior Disorders. That’s not the situation this year, but it’s been difficult to meet a particular student’s needs within the confines of my school.  So, lots of mental energy and time have been spent just keeping above water this first month. Things let up quite a bit this week (don’t know why but I’ll take it!) and it’s actually been bearable. Here’s hoping that it will continue and school life will run more smoothly from here on out.  And….. not a moment too soon since state testing (NECAP) and the dreaded Alternate Assessment window begins on Monday.

This is one of the rare weekends that I don’t have any commitments and I’m thankful.  I’m hoping to do some fall cleanup in the yard, do the usual housework and errands tomorrow and  watch the Patriots game from the couch on Sunday.  I really need this quiet weekend  because work has been stressful and I’ve also had a lot on mind.  The weather has just turned so fall is in the air and nothing will make me happier than a relaxing weekend with a some good books and pots of tea.

It’s  Patriots Training Camp  Eve and I can feel that familiar excitement building…!  It’s going to be strange not attending every single session because of work but I’ll get there as much as I can. With the advent of technology and “Old Media” embracing “New Media” and the fact that I won’t be there every session, I’ve decided to forgo my traditional Mrs. B’s Training Camp Reports. I still may make some posts but the sense of urgency and need to rush home and drop everything to post is no longer necessary.

The PFW dudes will be live blogging from the tent and many people will likely be tweeting as well. Naturally, Mike Reiss and the other reporters will be posting from camp too and it’ll be all over the message boards and dissected and discussed before I even make it to my car.  I’ll literally have nothing to say two hours later when I finally make my way through the traffic and get home.  Besides that, there has been a ton of stress and other RL (real life) things to fill my mind these days and I really need to just go and enjoy camp without the stress of being “on duty”.  So, I’m not saying that there won’t be ANY reports or podcasts but I’m giving myself permission to just play things by ear and enjoy myself.  Fair enough?

School has been going well and even if I hated it I would still need to do it from a financial standpoint this year.  But… I don’t hate it at all.. I actually Love It!!  I’ve got a great group of students and while I love teaching my Severe Profound class during the year, I’m enjoying teaching academics to a higher level group this summer.  It’s a treat to be able to cover different material and work with them. The hours are also great and who can beat a 4 day weekend all summer?

Yesterday, I took a nice long ride on the Blackstone River BikeWay and it was great.  I’m lucky to have it so close by and it’s beautiful.  I had planned on riding my bike back and forth to school a lot this spring and summer but unfortunately, we’ve had so much rain, it’s been hard to plan it.  I hope to get back out on the path again soon.

As for right now, I’m hoping do some reading before crashing tonight because once camp hits it’s Patriots and nothing but Patriots for me from here on out!

Look what happened, overnight!

It’s been a very long time since I’ve posted and it’s because I’ve been very busy with school things and real life. My time online has really been dwindling and I jump on and off to check email, Twitter, and Facebook statuses but I’ve been doing a lot of reading and trying to get outside to take the girls for walks. (I even ran Lincoln Woods last weekend so I’ve been getting back into that as well.)

This is the final week that I can work on the State Alternate Assessment for my kids and I’ve been going full force since April vacation. I’ve literally been going in early every day, staying late, and working through EVERY prep period and planning period for the last month. It’ll be close but I need to have it ready for pickup Wednesday night when I leave school.  This week is going to be hairy as I already know that I’ll be alone tomorrow ( Assistant is sick…) so I’ll have to keep my kids and won’t have a prep to work on it because they can’t go to gym and music alone. I have quite a few medical appointments to attend as well, so there won’t be much after school time available. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I’ll be able to eek it out.

It was a busy weekend with going out to dinner and to  see Foreigner (blast from the past!) last night with friends and spending today at the Special Olympics with my kids. This is the first time I’ve been online for more than 30 seconds today so I dropped this quick post at the last minute. I’m really hoping that with the end of the Assessment comes time to get back to more social media interacting and new media creation.  Until then… see you on Twitter or Facebook and wish me luck!

Without getting into much detail, I must say that the past few months have been a blur…. We had a medical scare here and while we still don’t have all of our answers and know exactly what was wrong, we now know that some serious, scary things have been ruled out. With the coming of spring and the good news, it’s time to get back to a normal life and schedule here. I’m hoping to be able to finally get a good night’s sleep without spending hours tossing and turning. I’m so ready to finally wake up rested for a change.

Tomorrow will be Day 130 at school, with 50 to go!  It’s that time of the year that I have lots and lots of paperwork and various individualized plans and assessments  to do for my students. In order to make it, I’ll be staying at school late and bringing work home a lot. April vacation starts on Good Friday, 4/10, and I’ll likely be working every day  on it during the following week.  I’m not going away anywhere and I have an appointment every day but the agenda will include  school work, working out, and yard work. I’m really hoping to have a good chunk of work done before vacation starts so I can do some relaxing too.

I finally was able to get my Pats website updated this week, after spending time fixing the bugs that prevented me from automatically updating. I also banged out a real quick Podcast after school today and hope to be more consistent with the draft approaching. The one thing that I’ve managed to do a lot of these days has been reading.  Since I’ve not been online much at all, I’ve been banging out the books!

I’ve also been able to go to the gym quite a bit, have been working out at home and after school with coworkers, and may run a 5k this weekend…. we’ll see how it goes! Meanwhile, despite the craziness in my life of late, I’ve personally been trying to take very good care of my health and balance it all.

It feels good to be back….

Spring has sprung!

A time of new beginnings… and hope. <3  Things have been crazy here due to some medical things going on and the endless tests and waiting for answers.  I’ve pretty much been on auto-pilot for the last two months and have been pretty quiet in the social media/new media space. Thankfully for Pats fans it’s the offseason so they’re not missing much due to  my lack of podcasting. (Honestly though, family comes first so even if it was right in the the middle of the season, there probably wouldn’t be many shows anyway right now.) Hopefully, we get the answers we seek by the end of this week.

School is chugging along and with it, the dreaded Alternate Assessment hanging over my head… (I won’t get into how much I despise it and disagree with it here AGAIN…. let’s just say that it almost has convinced me to switch positions and leave the kids that I love teaching just to escape it, more than once!) It’s the time of the year that paperwork is piling up and I’ve got lots of IEP meetings to try to schedule as well.  I also need to really decide what I’m going to do in terms of taking more classes to apply towards my re-certification. I would prefer to work towards something that will give me some more options for the future rather than just take a bunch of random classes and end up with lots of credits.

I’m dying to get out in the yard and get my hands in the earth.  I’m planning on expanding my little garden and want to put in a raised bed across from it but we have to do some repairs to the fence first.  Last year, I had a great tomato crop and pole bean crop but many of my other vegetables didn’t do that well because of the cramped space. I’m hoping that my expansion will work out well and I’m looking forward to getting to work. My compost bins have been doing their thing and I’ll be uncovering my rainbarrels soon. (I’m such a nature girl.. always was and always will be!)

Although it’s grey this morning, I hope to get out to Lincoln Woods later today for a nice walk around the pond. I’ve also got the usual laundry, library, CVS,  and marketing to do before heading back to school tomorrow. Hopefully, I can squeeze in some reading time in there somewhere. Here’s looking forward to a productive week and some good news along the way.

Loves of my life...

So, we’re back to Winter in New England.  As much as I love snow (and snow days) I’m really ready for this to be the last taste of it so we can get on with Spring! It’s been frigid this week and we’ve got about a foot of fresh white stuff on the ground. Honestly though, the past couple of weeks have been a blur and I’ve barely taken notice of much. There have been some family things going on that have taken up most of my time and my energy.  It really reinforces just how insignificant everything else really is…  All I can do is have faith that things will work out and continue to pray.

Now that February vacation is over, we’re in  long stretch until April vacation. Things are ramping up at school and I’ve got lots of assessments,   IEPs,  and various individualized plans to do for my students. I also need to take a course for my certification renewal and I’m trying to decide which direction I want to go in. There’s no longer any lifetime certification so I’ll be in school until I retire… (It’s not like I would ever stop wanting to learn anyway so that’s ok with me.) But, I need to think about where I want to be in the future. If I’m going to spend the money and the time taking courses then I want to take things that will allow me some other options down the road.

Possibilities are Reading Specialist or Library Media Specialist, which both would require another Masters.  I love my kids,  but honestly, I’m not sure if I can deal with the paperwork and assessments of Special Education for the rest of my career. Doing the reading courses will help me in my current job and may lead to some small group remedial reading opportunities later down the road, and library is a nice “dream job” to finish my career but  won’t really do much for me right now. Sigh… decisions, decisions. Now, if I could just win the lottery then I really could solve it all and do what I really would love to do right now … RETIRE and STAY HOME!

Today was our annual classroom Thanksgiving dinner and we all had a wonderful time. Syd (my co-teacher) and I put the turkeys in the ovens early this morning, then when the kids came in, they prepared the rest of the meal (with our help of course.)  It was a great day and everyone pitched in with the cooking, set-up and clean-up. Before we ate, everyone shared what they were thankful for.  I love that part.

I’m personally so very thankful for my family (human and canine , my health, that I have a job that I love (despite the paperwork and the fact that I have to work), that I have a modest but comfortable home and that we’re economically stable. Of course my life is not perfect and there are things that I wish I could change but all in all, I have a GREAT life and I’m a very lucky girl. <3