One busy week down, one to go

So this last week has been very busy. Last Saturday was our big outreach event through church. It was called "Share the Scoop." We rented the Grand Theater downtown and invited women from all churches to invite women who don't go to church. We've been planning for this for many, many months. I was in charge of "hospitality." All of the people who helped were great because during the event I was on stage playing both the piano and clarinet. Check out the pictures at http://tracypress.com/content/view/15592/2242/. There were many speakers from our church speaking about how through adversity, their faith and God helped then persevere. The event was attended by about 300 people. Hopefully it will be an annual event.

Once that was finished, I had to start thinking about the next project--Bunco. Tuesday night I hosted bunco at our house. So there were 12 of us who played, ate, drank, and had a lot of fun. It just happened that I had so many meetings this week, it was insane. I had to be at a meeting from 4-5:30 Tues. night and people were showing up at 7:00!! I snuck out of school during my last period prep and got a lot of stuff ready and then went to my meeting and came home and finished the rest of the food.

This weekend my quartet is playing for 2 events--a surprise birthday party on Sat. night and a wedding on Monday night. Should be fun!

Back to the Grind

Well, it's official, my summer is over! Oh, well, in 10 months I'll get another one. So here's what's been going on the last 2 weeks.

First I worked with 2 new 6th grade teachers for a couple of days. Every year our new teachers go through a district run program called TTIP-Tracy Teacher Induction Program. For a day and a half content specialists (that's me, ha!) help them look at the curriculum and make their first lesson plans and year-long plans.

This past week was all about WEB--Where Everybody Belongs. This is a program that we started using about 5 years ago at our middle school. We spend 2 mornings from 8-12:00 training 8th graders to work with and mentor 6th graders. This year we had 44 8th graders at the WEB training. On Friday all 6th graders were invited to come to school from 8-1:00. We do a huge assembly until about 9:30 that's full of fun games and songs. Then 2 8th graders take 8-12 6th graders to do the activities with them that they learned earlier in the week. They get to know the kids and tell them about our school and give them a tour. We finish the day with another short assembly and then a BBQ outdoors. It takes a lot of planning for this and I'm so grateful that I have my co-leaders Lisa and Holly helping me. The first year we did this I was the only one trained so I had to do everything!!!! Getting up in front of 300 kids and being silly and goofy is way out of my comfort zone, but I do it! Lisa is much better at it than I am!!! Thankfully she loves to do it.

Monday this week is our "district day" where we have district meetings. Lisa, George, and I are in charge of the meeting at our site on Monday morning. Then I'm done with leadership things and I can concentrate on my room and lesson plans!

Tuesday we have a staff meeting and then we get time in our rooms. Wednesday the kids come! Way too early for me, but we do get a week off for Thanksgiving, 2 weeks for Christmas, a week at Easter and every national holiday except Columbus Day, so it all works out in the end.