the beast

Since today was the last day of school before spring break, and half of my students had already left for Europe and therefore were not in class, we had contest to see who could build the strongest bridge out of only a few sheets of paper. Here is the winner:

It held 100 lbs of weight without collapsing. It could have kept going, but we ran out of weights. It is named The Beast, for obvious reasons.

I am leaving school in exactly 29 minutes and heading home to pack for my trip to SPAIN!!!

what i've been up to

The majority of my time these days has been consumed with counting down the days until Spring Break and I leave for SPAIN! If you hadn't noticed, it's been kind of all-consuming.

For the sake of well-roundedness, I've taken a few breaks from counting down to listen to non-stop Air Supply and Chicago. I need to defend my title as name-that-cheesey-love-song champion. Brian has no idea what he's getting himself into.

Besides that, I've been reading, enjoying the lovely spring weather, talking kids into signing up for my robotics class, and getting ready for the summer.

numbers

1 - number of weeks until I am in SPAIN

4 - school days left until Spring Break

4.5- average hours of sleep I've been getting per night this week

5- hours of napping Friday afternoon

16-times my roommate and her "boyfriend" have broken up over the past 3 months

5,000 - hours I have spent listening to my roommates complain about each other. Rochelle now calls me "Switzerland". Haha.

tongue in cheek

So last week one of my students left a note on my desk telling me what a great teacher I am and how she learns so much, but still has fun. So nice.

And of course, I hung it up on my bulletin board and made all of my other students read it so they could also appreciate how great I am. I thought it would brighten their day.

Jeff (the same Jeff who lets me call him Betty) has made it his personal mission to win class MVP, and obviously could not be outdone. So he pulled out a piece of paper and with tongue in cheek, wrote the following note:

Dear Ms Reed,

Your work ethic and all-around excellence have continued to impress me daily. Your upbeat attitude and energy infuse the classroom with excitement and adrenaline-pounding anticipation to learn. You give every student an insatiable hunger to want to learn more and more. Great job so far and keep up the good work!

-Betty

spain spain spain

The trip is less than 3 weeks away, and is looking like more fun every single day. So far the plans involve:

• Finding a great deal on a rental car that was a good $150 cheaper than anything else. Same rental company, same car, less money. I don't know how I do it, but I amaze myself with my bargain shopping more and more every day.

• Flying into Madrid on Saturday, and heading down to Granada to see Brian's friends and explore the city. We'll go to church in Granada on Sunday (Easter Sunday), see a little more of the city, and then head out.
  
• We're spending Monday and part of Tuesday biking and exploring around here:



• Then we're headed out to Valencia to see the City of the Sciences, parks, and other adventures:


• Then back to Madrid to see the Museo del Prado and anything else that looks cool. (The details of this part of the trip are still in the works:

ooh, jealousy

My students are doing a project where they pose a question and try to answer it using physics. Most of them picked Mythbusters-type questions like "can dropping a penny off of a skyscraper really kill someone?" or "how many helium balloons do you need to lift yourself off the ground." One kid, however, decided to test the horsepower of different cars, and see how closely it matches the power output on a closed course. Which means that he has access to multiple cars and a track on which to drive.

So he turned in his preliminary data tables last week, which included the tested horsepower of six different cars, including:

Lexus

Corvette

Aston Martin

and another car I've never even heard of, but which I was informed is worth $1.5 million. It's a good thing he's such a nice kid.

school, school, school

So the few weeks before spring break are generally the most frustrating of the school year. While most of my students get more adorable and lovable every day, those few who are not quite as adorable and lovable get under my skin just a little more every day. And I'm pretty sure I annoy them more every day too. Not a good combination. Lucky for me, I only have about 3 kids who frustrate me, but they are definitely trying their best to get to me. Kids can be sneaky like that.

But on another note, I gave a really tricky quiz in my advanced class today, and they did awesome on it. It's so much fun to watch them struggle with a problem they've never seen before, and then conquer it. (Well, most of them conquered it.)

happy weekend

My weekend turned out fabulous. Fun-filled, excellent weather, good company. Saturday, Rochelle and I went to the japanese robot exhibit. The robot part was just okay. More geared towards kids, but I did learn a lot about Japanese culture. Their development of robots is much different than what you see in the US (not that you see much of it in the US) because of their culture and immigration policies. Fascinating. Along with the robots, however, was a "polka-dot" exhibit because "the universe is full of polka-dot forms." Pretty funny.

Then we headed to Guapo's for a mexican dinner. It was pretty good, but nothing to write home about. I still am craving a Beto's-type restaurant. The fruit tart we had for dessert was just okay. Next time, I am making a homemade lemon tart topped with fruit. Much better.

Sunday, we made a Japanese dinner. (Turns out most of my friends here are Japanese, or love all things Japanese. They're rubbing off on me.) It was make-your-own-squid-ball night. Delicious. They're cooked in an ebilskever pan in the middle of the table. In case you can't tell, I had just woken up from my long, long Sunday nap.

For dessert, Brian made brownies and Merry made a rice cake with pretty flowers on it. Both were a hit.

happy friday!

I need this 3-day weekend like nothing else. I am counting down the minutes till I'm free. I have a fantastic weekend planned.

• wake up at 4:30 tomorrow morning to take my roommate to the airport. she is so lucky to have me around.
• come home and eat the breakfast my other roommate promised me if i would get her out of taking laura to the airport. she's a great cook.
• go to the robot exhibit at the Kennedy Center. it's going to be awesome.
• dinner at guapos before stake conference. mexican restaurants in this city are few and far between, but i've heard great things about this one.
• watching children of heaven and eating a fruit tart to celebrate rochelle's birthday.
• a long, long sunday nap
• homemade japanese food on sunday to continue the birthday celebration
• hopefully finishing a thousand splendid suns and re-reading east of eden
• try to plan an interesting lesson on electromagnetic waves. this could be tricky

58 minutes to go...

a nice break

So sometimes teachers and students all need a break from lecturing and note-taking and the overall brain-numbing that high school sometimes is. For my classes, today was that day. It's Friday. It's sunny and warm outside. Nobody felt like sitting in a desk, and I didn't feel like making them.

So a couple of weeks ago, while we were learning about rotational motion, we did a lab involving angular velocity and moments of inertia of a skateboard. But apparently skateboards are going out of style and razor scooters are the new cool thing to have these days. Who knew? Being the good samaritan that she is, Debbie brought her scooter to class today, so I could learn how to be cool too. Now, for those of you who don't know, 15 teenagers + 1 razor scooter = zero attention span. Even with good, hard-working teenagers like the ones I teach. So I scrapped my lesson plan, roped off the hallway, and gave them "razor scooter challenges" , which involved riding the scooter up and down the hallway and running some calculations. Anything I could think of that did not involve sitting in a desk.

The point of the story is, I love my job.

letters

Dear Penn(sylvania),

Thank you for letting me call you Pennsylvania. And thank you also for tolerating all of the borrowing pens from Penn jokes. I know you probably got tired of them somewhere around the first grade, but I just can't resist.

Also, please take robotics next year. You will love it.

Your favorite teacher,
Ms. Reed



Dear Roommate #1,

I have one more recommendation for getting along with your roommates. When my pay stub falls out of my purse, do not examine it and calculate my yearly salary. And then do not compare it to yours. There's a reason I've never told you how much I make. Because it's none of your business.

Thank you,
Poodle


Dear swim team,

Trust me, I am way more happy than you are that the season is finally over. I am praying that I never have to coach again. However, you are all still delightful children.

Love,
Coach Reed


Dear IRS,

Thank you for the tax return. And for allowing me to itemize my deductions. I am looking forward to a nice fat check in the mail.

Love,
Poodle


Dear DC metro area,

Thank you so much for the beautiful weather recently. While I would still love at least one snow day, the warm sun is fantastic.

Love,
Poodle

a must-see

Today I watched A Class Divided. Watch it. You won't regret it.

how to confuse high school students

So our school decided that since our kids work so hard (which they do) and the winter is long and cold (which it is) we would give everyone a day off from classes, and prepared a "Beyond the Books" program for today. Which we did not tell our students about until they showed up at school. We herded them into the auditorium for our weekly assembly and the principal told them to take off their ties and untuck their shirts because all classes were cancelled for the day. And then they stared at us in confused, baffled silence. It took a good 15 minutes to convince them that this was not a joke.

unanimous approval

I presented the proposal for my robotics class to the curriculum board today, and they unanimously approved the course! Mainly because it sounded really cool and they don't know enough about robotics to question what I was telling them.

At one point, I mentioned C programming and that I was sure they had all heard of it. They laughed at me. Turns out curriculum committees are not usually made up or programmers.

i love snow and ice

Simply for the 2-hour delayed start. I love working at a school!

the other one

So I have this other roommate. Not the same one that eats my food and tries to curl up on the luvsac with the Elders, but almost as amusing. And she loves to shop.

So she came home from her most recent shopping venture and was showing us all of her new clothes by trying them on. (something much like a fashion show.) After several lovely outfits, she comes into the room wearing a coat. Nothing but a coat. And this coat has a grand total of three buttons.

Um, Laura, I think you forgot to put your pants on.

No. This is a dress.

Now that's where you're wrong. It's actually a coat.

Well, I know that. But I think it's a dress, too.

Trust me. It's not a dress. Not even close. And she's wearing it to church on Sunday. She has thankfully agreed to wear a skirt under the "dress", but no shirt. We're still working on that one.

tips for living with roommates

This post is written especially for my roommate Julie, who sometimes fails to pick up on social cues. Nevertheless, I love her dearly.

1. When the Elders are over, and one of them decides to sit on the luvsac, since we have limited seating and the luvsac happened to be open, do not sit on it with him. Especially do not crawl onto the luvsac and lie down behind the poor Elder. It doesn't matter that you're not touching him. He will be terrified.
2. When your roommate tells you that she made soup and has leftovers, and that you are welcome to help yourself to the leftovers, this offer only applies to that particular batch of soup. It does not apply to all food in the refrigerator, nor does it apply to batches of soup or other food that may or may not be made in the future.
3. When your roommate promises to leave her camera in the living room so that you can load the pictures we took onto the computer, and she forgets to leave the camera out, you probably should not dig through her closet and drawers searching for the camera. Just wait until she comes home. Pretty please.
4. When one of your roommates gets mad at you for the first time, you should probably realize that this is bound to happen. No matter who you are and who you are living with, chances are someone's going to get annoyed at some point. So do not start looking for a new place to live. Buck up and deal with it.
5. Just because the food in the refrigerator is from an asian restaurant does not mean that it belongs to your asian roommate. Sometimes non-asians eat asian food too. So please do not eat it. Those leftovers were so good and that's all I really wanted to eat when I came home.
6. If we are hosting FHE at our apartment and you don't want to come, just tell us. Do not tell us you're taking the trash out and then never come back. And if you do choose to sneak out with the excuse that you're taking out the trash, do not get mad when we laugh at you for sneaking out.

wednesday afternoon ritual

I have this student named James. he has some anxiety issues. Major anxiety issues.

So every wednesday, he comes into my classroom during his study hall so that I can "help" him with his homework.

And every wednesday, I ask him what he needs help with. Just to stick with tradition.

And every wednesday, he tells me he needs me to show him how to do everything.

And again, for purposes of tradition, I patiently (or not so patiently, depending on the week) let him know that I cannot do his homework for him. So he breathes heavily so that I will know just how frustrating I am being.

Then we work through his homework. And every week, it turns out he knows how to do all of the problems without my help.

But every week, his pen runs out of ink. So he yells at it for ruining his life. And scribbles all over his homework in an attempt to get hie pen to work again.

And then we continue working, during which he narrates every. single. step. And somewhere about halfway through he gets mad again, because he forgot to convert units or multiplied wrong or something, and again he starts yelling at anything in general, when he really wants to yell at me. Lucky fo rhim, he would know that heads would roll if he tried yelling at me, so he takes his anger out on the general space around him. During this time, I usually walk out of the room. Because, seriously. It's homework. Get a grip.

But this is our tradition.

robotics

So after finding out that I will be teaching this summer's robotics class, our school's technology coordinator asked me if I'd be interested in adding a robotics class to our regular curriculum. Of course I do. Now I have exactly one week to write a proposal for my class to present to the board to determine whether or not it will fit into our school's budget and vision for the future.

I'm very excited about this. If anybody has ideas for teaching a HS robotics class, please let me know!

whoa

apparently they're desperate in georgia to improve standardized test scores. i wonder how many of them will cheat to get a bonus.