Sunday, September 17, 2006

Bat Guano Adventure #2

What do you get when you combine a cave, a rock, and a head? 13 stitches!

So, last week's Bat Guano adventure was a bust because none of the students wanted to get up early enough to go visit a church a couple hours away and the barn apparently didn't have any bats. Reschedule for this week. One of the students' families owns some property on a hill side that has an old mine tunnel entrance in it. Take one teacher and four students and climb up a pile of mine tailings. One student knocks a rock loose. Another students yells, "rock" just in time for the teacher to look up and get beaned.
Good thing I was out shopping with a couple of my girlfriends because my parents left some pretty cryptic messages on the answering machine! Brian ended up in the ER and has what I call a zipper on the right side of his forehead going back up into his hair. He had a pretty good headache and came home with a piece of skull chipped off in a little container. Yuck!

I'm just glad I still have a husband!

Friday, September 08, 2006

Teaching and ... Bat Guano?

Yes, apparently you can make gunpowder if you have enough of the stuff and you filter it and then run it over some kind of ash. At least that's what Brian's planning to do after he takes his high school chemistry class tomorrow to collect a bunch of the stuff...
I suppose you could call it a kind of service project since they're helping clean out an abandoned church with a bat problem. But they get to keep what they clean up to experiment with... I did not volunteer to go along!

Yesterday I got a call from the Wenatchee sub coordinator asking if I wanted to do a long term sub job at Westside High School (the alternative school). My first reaction was: I'm not sure I want to work at that school because the impression I have is that the students are pierced and tattooed and have major attitude problems not to mention alcohol/drug issues. It's also a night school - at least this part of it is - that runs from 1 to 8pm. And they told me I'd have 4 students for math and science and I'm thinking "what in the world am I going to do with 4 students for 8 hours a day?!!!"
But after talking to the principal for half an hour I decided that maybe it wasn't such a bad idea. So today I went in to get oriented as the sessions don't actually start until Monday. And the "4 students" part is only for an hour and a half. The whole program is a contract and individual study set up so I won't really actually be teaching, as in lecturing. It's more of a tutoring session where the kids are trying to get credit quickly so they can graduate. And the night program is only for juniors and seniors who work during the day due to poverty or other reasons.
They are looking to hire a teacher for this position (I don't qualify due to it being high school) so this will mostly likely be a 4-6 week position. I will actually have 5 different groups of students - the Bridges program which is the 4 students for an hour and a half and then 2 night school groups of 2 1/2 hours each for 2 days a week. Fridays are a planning/grading day from 8-3 with no students. I work with one other teacher and a secretary. I met the other teacher today... he is a CHARACTER!!! He pretty much told me all about himself today and not a whole lot about what I actually need to do there! He is a Buddhist/Athiest married to a practicing Mormon. He was a musician and into the whole kind of rock and roll lifestyle until he decided that life was not going to get him anywhere so he became a teacher (and got clean) and has been at this school for 12 years. He has just started a new band and is also a pretty decent potter on the side... How's that for intersting? :)
But the day science teacher showed me all his materials and I will be in his classroom with a bit of an overlap so he can help me out. He seems a little more mellow then the other guy... and hopefully on Monday I can connect with the day math teacher and get some materials from her so I will actually have something for the students to start on when they show up that afternoon!

Here's to an alternative teaching experience...

Monday, September 04, 2006

Reread the subtitle

Did you do it? If not, go back and check again...

That's right, we're having a baby! Right about the end of March or beginning of April. Yes, it's still too early to tell what it is, and we haven't even decided yet if we want to know. We did get pictures a couple weeks back and you can see the head and some little arms waving!

I'm feeling fine other than being uber tired. Oh, and apparently my new friend is getting car sick... which made for a real fun trip to Crater Lake on those windy park roads. But more on that later.

Brian started school last week and he really likes it. It's so much better than last year. I didn't get a job for the year so I'll just be subbing. Which means at the moment I'm rather bored at home by myself because subbing won't pick up for another week or two. Most of the public schools didn't start as early as his.

In other news: My parents have a foreign exchange student living with them this year. His name is Min-Ho and he's from Korea. He's 17 and his English isn't the greatest yet! Apparently he also didn't have to do much for himself at home because they've been having adventures with laundry and ironing and other things like that! He seems pretty nice, but says his most boring class is Bible so keep him in your prayers!

And... MY DAD GOT A JOB!!! This is very good news although he will have to find a place to live and commute on the weekends since it's down at company headquarters in Longview. He's gonna buy a diesel Jetta for the gas mileage. :) That should be cool!
The job is a support person in the timber department. Basically helping everyone get their stuff done. And because he's been with the company for 28 years he does have a pretty good idea what goes on around there so he should be able to do a lot of things. He wants to get into education too, maybe going to schools or leading field trips or something.
Good thing my parents both have cell phones because they're going to be spending a lot of minutes on them in the next couple years!