Much needed update!

Wow its been forever since I blogged last.. Life has been soo busy! Tonight was the last football game that I had to work! It was a bittersweet moment. I had a blast doing it, I meet a ton of people and feel I developed some great friendships with others.

My classes are going very well. I think I finally have things organized, sad to say 2 months into teaching! My classes are set so that one day we have a lecture and then the next day we do a lab. I love it because I don't have to make up a ton of lessons, the only down fall is that I have to go grocery shopping all the time.. Its getting better though. The kids love cooking all the time. If only I could get them to love hearing my voice while I am lecturing :).

My friend Adrienne who teaches science and then Brooke who also teaches science well the three of us have started the "spirit club" for our school. When I was in school these people were called the rowdy raiders, pretty much they go to all the games and cheer on all the different teams! So much fun! Well the kids in our group have decided to call us the Rowdy Rattlers, since our mascot is a diamondback! We are not currently designing a shirt so that we can all wear the same thing on game days!

My next adventure that I have gotten myself into would be a program called RSVP which means Raising Students Voice and Participation, pretty much you get amazing kids to lead discussions with all of the students in the school about things they want to see change in the schools, you have these discussions then you work with the administrators to make the changes take action. Its a cool thing, and the kids that are on the committee are AMAZING! I seriously have not seen kids so amazing!!


Then I saved the best for last! I have taken on the position of being the Student Council adviser. Now if you don't know what this means , it pretty much means I look over the 31 students who run the school. We plan everything from pep assemblies to prom! They are the school spirit of the whole school. Its an amazing Job! But is a very busy job, with things always coming up! Now this position was filled by someone else but the administrators weren't liking the way things were being run. So they took him out on Friday and put me in charge on Monday! I know its crazy, I was so unsure of the transition. But honestly things are running very smoothly. I sold my prep period and I also get paid for being an advisor, so that is a good $1000 dollars a month added to my pay, not too bad for a white girl from ny. haha.. I seriously love the kids and they are really taking a liking to me. I was unsure how they were going to handle the change but I don't think its going to be hard at all, the principal actually came and talked to them told them what had happened and just reassured them that I was a great teacher and that he had no fear that I was going to do an amazing job helping them run the school. He spoke so highly of me it made me feel really good about the whole thing. I got tons of hugs and high fives from them today. which is usually a good sign. We had our first pep rally during both lunches today and it was a huge success. The dean of activities told them that they had done a great job, they were so excited because they have never been congratulated on anything they have done in the past. you could tell they felt really good about getting such a great compliment. I think that it is a great beginning to a great start. I already love them all and I barely know a lot of them.

Ok so I know this is a very long post but I have been neglecting some of my faithful readers :) and I wanted to make sure I got everyone caught up. I am super excited for the month of November! My mom is coming the beginning of the month then my sister and grandparents and aunt are coming around thanksgiving. I have been looking for tickets for shows while they are out here. I am hoping to spoil them as much as I possibly can. Maybe the spoiling will make my other readers want to come visit. hehe

I love you all and miss you! I am working on getting a ticket for xmas! but make sure you know I will be shinning my sunny face in that cold weather around that time.

Fall has come!

Yes its made its way to Vegas. All weekend the weather has been beautiful! like 85 degrees! I even have my windows open and the balcony doors open tonight. Life has been so busy! This last week went really fast, Friday we had Staff Development day which means NO STUDENTS!! it was a great day, I feel like I got a ton done! But then it feels like they have loaded me up with a ton of extras. I will be starting a club called RSVP its for students raising their voices about problems in the school, as well as a break dancing club. I was surprised this week when the dean of activities told me she wanted me to be the Student Council adviser next year, she has really high hopes for me, and thinks very highly of me, it makes me feel good and gives me a little bit of job security. I am not sure if I blogged about the streakers at our forthcoming game, but they have been expelled as well as registered as sex offenders. Then the girl at the dance is going to be arrested on Monday for possession of drugs. Like I said its been a crazy week! Oh ya the other thing. the girl I wrote a deans referral for stealing water, well come to find out she never went to the deans office, so I had to write another referral for her and now she is going to be suspended, dumb girl. AND my gang kid has been doing sooo good.. He has been coming to my room after school to get help with homework and has even been going to practices for baseball, he really wants to play in the spring, I am so happy for him and am making sure I tell him that. Well thats all for now..

love and hate..

Is it possible to hate and love something at the same time. My job I love, still love but I hate it at the same time. I hate the discipline problems, I hate the fact that you can't trust your students. Never before in my life have not trusted someone. I have trusted my students 100% until this week. The security guy awhile ago told me to not trust a student and I was like what if he hasn't given me a reason to not trust him. Deandre then just said if you are in a job like this you just cant trust them. Its true, this week I had a girl steal water out of my fridge, I had to send her to the deans office, it was so hard for me to do. She kept saying please Ms. Tracy don't send me, all I could say as I nervously wrote the referral is I'm sorry, if you were to steal outside of this classroom you would get into trouble, and therefore there is no exception when you steal inside this classroom.

I had another student this week come out and tell me about the gang he belongs to and the things he has to do in this gang. The poor kid is 14 years old and is doing things I never thought of doing at 14, he kept saying that he has made so many mistakes, and I just kept asking him how he can make the things better. I said what can you do to get out of what your in, he said Ms. Tracy once your in a gang you don't get out unless you are leaving in a coffin. I started crying it broke my heart. I am not totally sure I am cut out for this kind of work.

These kids are really confining in me and I am not sure I can take all that they are sharing with me. I know I can not help every kid that is out there but I pray that I can at least help them make better decisions.

horrible day

Today was the worst day so far in my career. I seriously wondered if i even chose the right career. I love what I am doing but I hate it at the same time. Today was the first day that I actually was hating that i decided to take this job to open up this freaking new school. I had this vision that my classroom would be so large, I would have everything brand new and life would just be grand. Thats a joke, I have nothing and they haven't even ordered anything yet. AND its already been THREE weeks from when school started. It makes me cry just thinking about it. I have parents donating things and people asking how they can help and I just want to scream, I didn't want to have to beg for things that should be supplied for a brand new school. I seriously wouldn't recommend opening up a brand new school if it was the last thing in the world to do. It isn't worth it. Especially when you are teaching an elective course and are seriously the last person on the toledom pole. I today HATE my job. Hopefully it will change tomorrow. Maybe I don't hate my job as much as i hate the lady who wont order anything for me. Its been a sad day..

Loving my life..

This week really seemed to drag on. I am glad it is finally Saturday, although I have been so tired to do almost anything. Lets see, I got my first pay check and paid all my bills.. thats been fun, now theres like no money left. But I guess that is just part of growing up. I got a lot done at school, figured out how to put grades in the computer and joined the staff spirit team. haha its so much fun a young lady named Adrienne who teaches sciences and an older man Shane who teaches computers make up the staff spirit team at Desert Oasis High School. Adrienne helped me sooo much this week almost being my voice to some of the concerns I have been having. Then on Friday I got to school at 6am and did some stuff for the spirit club, ( we made little bags of hershey kisses with a little poem saying they had been kissed by the staff spirit team and we hope to see them at the football game!) They were pretty cute, during 7th period we had a huge pep rally assembly sort of thing. It was kind of different but really cool. It felt so weird standing on the floor instead of sitting in the bleachers. I am a teacher now, not a high school student anymore. Although I graduated from high school 5 years ago I feel like I am still a student, I love it. After the assembly another super nice teacher Anna who teaches Science came down and helped me upload my grades, and then just answer any questions I may have. After that I ran to the ATM took some money out and changed my clothes for the football game. I meet at the football field at 3:15 to take tickets. This was soo much fun, stressful but a lot of fun. I worked the home gate with the 2 school security people Patricia and De'andre. I took tickets while they looked through purses and used the metal detector wand to search every person who came in. Wow people can be soo rude, they were all complaining about having to go through security, I was like this is for your safety and for the others who are out there. Lots of drama for the first home football game. But its all good because we won! I love Desert Oasis! I really feel apart of the school, and I believe the students and the staff have soo much school spirit! I loved working the football game, I meet a ton of people! I had many of my own students there who were happy to see me, they even gave me hugs.. aww. I love my chosen career. I honestly don't think I could be any happier. Friday was a long day I was gone from 5:40 am till 10:30 pm.. Crazy I know. But I love it so it dosent really bother me, just makes me sleepy..

Gangs

I have seriously been a sheltered child. I am working in Las Vegas and am learning more and more about gangs. I am not positive but I am pretty sure I have students who are involved in this stuff. It is so sad to me that these young kids are getting involved with this stuff at such a young age. Growing up in the state of NY you would think I knew about all this, but I have no clue. I love all my students to do death and would be absolutely heart broken if anything was to happen to any of them. Yes its only been two weeks but these kids are amazing. yes they are noisy and aren't always willing to participate but they are my first students ever and they couldn't be any better if they were hand picked. I am so blessed with everything in my life right now, I hope that as a teacher I can touch students lives, and maybe make them a little bit better, or at least help them make better decisions for their future. I miss you all but just know that I am having the time of my life..

Finished with Week 2

Another successful week of teaching. I am sorry if this blog becomes my journal for teaching. But honestly its the only thing that I have going on in my life to talk about. This was a short 4 day week I am starting to love the shorter weeks. Things went good I actually started to teach in our content. I noticed this week that my favorite students are the ones that are always getting into trouble with other teachers. They are so fun to me, I feel like they are really respecting me and doing what they are suppose to be doing in my class. Maybe its because I am younger and I relate to them better. My one student is in a gang, he said that he had the most dean referrals in his school last year, but I think he is the best. He actually changed his schedule around so that he has me for 2 periods. His in my Food and Nutrition class and then is my student Aide during my food production class. Hopefully I can keep him out of trouble! Another exciting thing that happened this week, On Friday teachers dress down and wear the official desert oasis apparel to support all the games for the weekend, and the football players pick teachers every week to wear their jersey, this week I was picked so I was sporting a #53 jersey all day, it really made my day, the student came in that morning and said "Ms. Tracy, I would like you to wear my jersey today!" I was so happy, I had been looking forward to the day one of them asked me. The jerseys are way small! The coach had told us before hand that we didn't have to wear they jersey, that we could hang it up or pin it to ourselves. My jersey fit but it was tight!! the teacher next door to me was like you shouldn't wear that its too tight, and I was like I don't care I am wearing it he asked me to wear it. I knew it was tight but i didn't think it looked ridiculously too tight. Later that day I had two men that work for the school, the graphic arts guy and the security guy tell me how good i looked in the jersey. That made my day! So another week has gone by and I still love what I am doing! This week I get my first official pay check! You have no idea how happy I am! Oh ya I also signed up to work the home football games, I am getting paid $10 an hour to take tickets at the football games! I love my life..
P.S. We did win the football game! 27-0 I guess you could say I am good Luck!