Upon giving praise for the substitutes~

From the "other side" of the Continental Divide, a good Sunday morning to everyone out there.  Hey, it's warmer here this morning as I write this blog post to you by a whole 3 degrees my friends!  Lots of people rushed about last evening as the weather guys from the tv station up in Grand Junction advised us all to prepare for our first hard freeze of the season.  Glad to have the chance to maybe save these poor, scraggly geraniums from the elements and hope they can begin to thrive indoors along the ledge of the kitchen window for the rest of the season.  It didn't get below 37 degrees but it was time to get things ready for the cold weather anyway.

I have always loved growing geraniums~these have struggled all summer long to grow and prosper, but now all of a sudden, they are beginning to take off and do well.  In many ways, they have turned out to be just like their caretaker, me!

Today will be a busy Sunday around here but I would not be surprised to hear any of you dear friends and family say the same of your lives as well.  We all try to put way too much into the 48-hour span of time that we lovingly refer to as the "weekend".  In just a few hours, we'll head to Delta to go to church and after that, Mike will head on to his weekend job and I'll head to school to get things prepared for this week.  It will also be the start of getting plans ready for the substitute to follow for when I am away from school for a couple of days in the very near future.  Believe me when I tell you (and I have many teacher friends who will say the same thing), I'd rather take a beating than have to prepare for having another teacher to come into my classroom.  But if I want to go home to Kansas in just a few days now, it will be a very necessary thing, so prepare I must.

Just a word about substitute teachers~In the 36 years now that I've been a teacher, I've needed the services of a substitute many times in my career.  I am so very thankful, most appreciative of the men and women who are willing and able to step into another teacher's class and take over for a day or two.  As I think about it, there haven't been that many instances that I can remember when the substitute I had was one that I wouldn't have wanted in my room.  99.9% of the time, I have had nothing but positive experiences in this respect and I just want to go on the record right now and say this-Thank you to ANYONE out there who serves students in such a manner as this.  Teachers could not do their job without your invaluable assistance, sometimes with only a few hours of notice.  People get sick, emergencies arise, and sometimes homesick "Flatlanders" just want to return back to Kansas for a visit.  I do not personally know the gentleman who is taking over for me soon but I am surely thankful that he is willing so to do.

What kind of classroom will I leave for another to take over?  My answer to that question would be one that has grown exponentially in a very short period.  In six weeks' time, we've come a long way in our room~students and teacher alike.  It's taken some doing and hard work on everyone's part, but we are making it.  One of the things we will continue to work on is our system of classroom management and how we can get the most from our very limited time together each day.  Although 7 hours and 15 minutes seems like a lot of time to some, it goes by in the "blink of an eye" in the matter of a regular school day.  When you have to squeeze in math, reading, writing, PE, science and a half-dozen other little things into a day that sometimes doesn't go as planned, it can get a little challenging.  There are teachers all over the place who face the same thing every day, no matter whether they teach here in the West, back in Kansas or in the Northeast.  I have the greatest of admiration and respect for my teaching colleagues and if the opportunity arises and I see something they are doing that works well, I ask to use it in my own room.  I will always be open to new ideas, especially ones that work for my students.

As I ready my lesson plans for that Friday and Monday, I have a lot of things to consider.  One of them is to make sure that the kids stay busy, engaged in their work, learning and out of trouble.  If someone were to ask me what I think the hardest thing is to teach children these days, believe it or not (even as a charter member of the "I hate math club" from 1965), it is not mathematics.  It's not even reading or writing, although they present a few challenges on occasion.  The HARDEST thing that I find to get children to relate to and understand is the need to do things for the intrinsic value of it and not for the extrinsic reward that they are used to getting.  It's the "training them up in the ways they should go" idea.  Forget about $4,352.61 multiplied by 519 being hard for a fourth-grader to understand.  Imagine teaching and re-teaching them that coming in, sitting down and getting busy with the day's lessons is the most important thing that they should do and that they should do it without getting a piece of candy or extra recess time :)   We're still working on that one folks and my hope is to make good progress before I leave in a couple of weeks.  The substitute will be most appreciative, I am sure :)

The sun has come up here along the Uncompahgre Range and unless I want to start a new fashion statement of going to church in your pajamas, then I guess I'd better get changed and ready to go.  I don't know what you all will do this day but what ever it is, make it something you are glad you did at this day's end.  Be good to yourselves today and that bit of advice comes to you from someone who didn't always remember that in her 57-years of life.  Take care of each other and stick with one another, just like glue.  See many of you very soon and for those that I cannot, I will be thinking of you just the same.  If I haven't told you lately, then I am now~I am so glad that God saw fit to allow us to meet and become friends with one another.  Cannot imagine what it would have been like without you all.

From 2005-2006, third graders from my classroom at Avenue A Elementary.  They grew up but I will always remember them as these little people, just learning about life.  One of them, dear Adahir, has already passed away.  My heart always smiles when I see this photo.