January Goals + One Little Word for 2013

Here we go, January! Rather than make sweeping declarations for the entire year that I know I'll fall short on, we're going to take it one month at a time this year. I like being able to adapt as needed. ;)

One Little Word 2013: Overcome. 

Last year my word was real, and while I promised to expound on it I never did. I don't really remember my exact reasons for it anymore (that's why you should always expound on things...), but I do feel I was real this year. I was myself. My crazy, kooky, weirdo, musical loving, nostalgic, picture taking, scrapbook nutso self.

This year, overcome has a variety of meanings for me.

I want to overcome my feelings of anxiety toward creating wonderful lesson plans and reaching every student perfectly. I'm finding life isn't perfect. Some kids don't want to be taught and some kids do need to be reached in different ways. But I can decide what to do in each situation without stressing out about it beforehand.

I want to overcome my caffeine addiction, specifically in the form of soda.

I want to overcome my intense desire to come home from school and immediately fall into a good nap, thus wasting away the precious hours of my evening.

I want to overcome my selfishness in doing what I want to do and do the things that Chris needs/wants me to do as soon as possible. He puts in a lot of work for our business while I'm napping after work!

I want to overcome sensitivity. I've been told a gazillion times this year that teachers need to grow thick skins. I have translucent skin. Small words bother me a lot. I agonize over harsh conversations. I need to learn to see every confrontation as a challenge to either be better or give grace to myself.

I want to overcome my hatred of running. I'm not good at it. I've never been good at it. It baffles me that people can run more than a couple minutes without stopping, let alone run 26 point something miles in a marathon. But right now it is free exercise, and I need me some exercise.

I want to overcome anxiety in general. I've lived much of my life with an anxiety disorder and I hate that it has severely affected some aspects of life, and in some cases entire years. I'm glad that these disorders have become less taboo over the years and that I've discovered others that are close to me who share the same struggles, but I am so over it.

2013 will be a year of growing and stretching. This year I'll finish my first full year of teaching and start my second. This year will be the year that our photography business becomes bigger and we have to somehow find even more time to devote to it while maintaining our other full times jobs. This year, instead of chipping at my college debt, we'll smash off chunks every month and hopefully be done with it once and for all. This year Chris will turn 30 and I'll turn very close to 30. This year we will take on challenges and walk by faith, and hopefully we'll come out in December thinking, "wow, that was an intense ride, but we did it!"

Hello, 2013.

New Year's Eve: A Low Key Affair

New Year's Eve was certainly quiet at our house. We tried to scrape some plans together sort of last minute, but it the end, all our peeps were also having low key celebrations at their own house. Much as I love a reason to party with our people, it really was a great relaxing time at home with just Chris and the munchkin kitties. I don't know if it's just the first year of teaching mayhem or what, but I've enjoyed this Christmas break so much more than past years. Maybe it's because I truly feel I've earned that quiet and solitude this year... whatever it is, I've been loving being at home, getting to practice my sewing skills (still working on them), playing around, and just doing things slowly. Sigh. It's going to be so sad to go back to craziness on Monday.

Our New Year's Eve day looked something like sleeping in to an unholy hour I won't even write here, and then it was off to lunch at Subway and to Ikea to pick up a new bookcase for my classroom. I'd decided it was no longer a matter of choice, I needed something with which to organize everyone's homework, all the daily handouts, and piles of stuff that grew every day, and my projector cart just wasn't cutting it anymore. Chris put the bookcase together in my classroom for me and I seriously love it already. There's nothing even on it yet, but I love it. It will organize so much of the kids' stuff on a daily basis, which means I can focus on the teaching and not so much on the keeping track of everything.

After our Ikea adventure, we decided in exchange for Chris putting my bookcase together, I would vacuum the house with the serious shopvac and overall clean up the place so we could ring in the new year with a newly organized house. So the house looked amazing for 2013.

We phoned in a huge sushi order (so we could eat all evening) and popped in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One...

... while keeping Jack from stealing our red dragon rolls.

For some reason, this was the Harry Potter movie Chris decided he wanted to know what was going on. So we paused a lot while I explained the intricately woven details of Harry Potter's journey... maybe with more details than he wanted. I mean, who can say? Harry's got a lot going on.

Jack and Sawyer slept between us for most of the evening, except in the beginning when all Jack wanted was for Chris to hold him. Jack loves Chris. Way more than he loves me. And he loves me a lot, so that's saying something.

We finished up both movies with a few minutes to spare, so we snapped one last "Chris and Jordan 2012 picture" while people started throwing fireworks off outside our house. 

Then we crawled into our warm bed, cranked the bedside heater up and talked about how we could be better to each other in the new year. It was a delightful little conversation, perfect for the opening hours of the new year. I decided I would be better at doing things right when Chris asked me to do them. (I am horrible at putting things away for "later." He's going to work on wanting to help me do things like put bookcases together more. I lobbied for him rinsing all the food off his plate when he puts it in the sink, but that just started an argument on rinsing vs. washing, and I gave up. 

Happy 2013!

It's Friday, Friday, gettin' down on Fri-iday

Friday nights are my absolute favorite time of the week these days.

As soon as I get home from school on Friday, I feel like the world is limitless. It's such a nice relief to come home and not stress about making sure I have everything ready for tomorrow, revamping my planned lesson based on the feedback I got from the kids that day, creating videos to supplement for the kids that need an extra boost, answering emails from parents and students about the next day, and all those other wonderful mid-week things that come along with teaching 8th grade.

But Friday. Oh, how I love Friday.

Friday means Saturday comes next. And though Chris and I have had shoots every Saturday and Sunday for as long as I can think back right now, at least I don't have to plan anything. Friday means I can come home and organize all the stuff that I've let fall into disarray during the week. Tonight I came home and did the dishes, and gosh did it feel good. When Chris came home we laid down and talked about our days while the cats sat on our backs. For the last hour I've been looking up crafty things I want to do so I have stuff to add to my Christmas list, because Chris' mom just called him and told him I didn't have enough stuff on my list. (#firstworldproblems)

I'm catching up on NCIS. I did our finances for the beginning of December. I paid a huge chunk off my student loans (woot!). I did laundry and took out the trash. I bought our first real Christmas stockings off of Etsy and then surfed for things Chris would like (sneakily, since he's right here next to me).

Tomorrow I can lesson plan, and grade, and make videos. Right now, it's still Friday night, and I'm going to eat pumpkin pie and buy Christmas presents.

Photo courtesy of indoor lighting and the not-so-great camera flip feature of my iphone.

Christmas pictures

We got an email today from Chris' mom about doing family Christmas pictures while we're up in Redlands for Thanksgiving. That of course led to me reminding Chris we need to do our own Christmas pics. Which led to the following conversation:

C: "Everybody wants Christmas pictures from me!"

J: "Well, I don't want it to be like last year where I looked like crap just because we ran out of time and happened to find a wild field at sunset after a family shoot."

C: "That's not my fault. You should be prepared at all times for Christmas photos."

Touche. From here until December 25, I'll be glamming it up on a daily basis.

Flashback to last year's "just-finished-a-shoot-and-hey!-look-there's-a-cool-field" last minute photo shoot.

And for those of you who are noticing that it's been almost two months since my last post, yes, I am still alive. Teaching 8th grade Algebra is literally taking up all of my time. Between lesson planning, and making instructional videos, and grading, and inputting grades, and creating tests and bellwarmers and interesting activities, I think I'm just lucky to be able to sleep. First years at a new school are the worst. Fortunately, my co-workers are all great and encouraging.

FYI, faithful readers!

So it seems my illustrious 8th graders have started googling me. And sadly, it's very easy to find me thanks to a certain Mr. Shall-remain-nameless-because-saying-the-name-will-just-give-another-google-hit-to-my-blog. Let's just say his name is long and Italian and I'm married to him, putting me at the forefront of all Google searches. Oh, the good old days of being Jordan Peck and nothing at all ever coming up about me in a Google search, mostly thanks to some midwestern basketball player with my name who hogged enough Google search pages that people (well, me) just got tired of looking.

Anyway, just an FYI, that I will probably either password protect this blog soon or move the blog entirely to a new address. Those pesky 8th graders are just getting too smart. If you want to stay in the loop, please email me or leave me a comment with your email so I can make sure to get you the password/new link, whichever may happen. :)

And if you're an 8th grader in Mrs. T.'s room, go do your homework!

I wish I had time for...

... making my bed in the morning
... organizing my house
... creating awesome, technologically amazing lesson plans
... just lounging around with my husband
... taking longer naps (because I have to fit a nap into my schedule now. There's no option when I get home after dealing with kids all day. Sometimes I'm afraid I'll fall asleep in my car on my ten minute drive home.)
... scrapbooking
... making dinner
... more than five minutes to eat my lunch Monday through Friday
... creating
... photo editing regularly
... watching movies
... playing
... etc.

As my new principal put it, it takes awhile to find your "teacher legs." Week three has come and gone, and we're on the brink of week four. There's so much to learn and do and be. Credential programs are pretty much a waste; you don't learn how to be a teacher until you teach.

Here we go!

Sooooo... I haven't really announced this on the blog yet, but I suppose I should get around to it before school actually starts. I got a job teaching 8th grade math at a local charter school, hurray! It has been an exciting, nerve-wracking, sad, learning-filled, freak out of a few weeks. I had my last few weeks at the Woodman classroom. I had to say good-bye to amazing co-workers who I've grown to love so much. I carried a heavy heart knowing that the job I wanted so badly, and had worked so hard for, was not meant to be, and that maybe, just maybe, I was fighting too hard for it. I spent a week with brand new co-workers. I've read packets and handouts and PDFs and about procedures and curriculum and expectations. My head is full. I finally let my classroom today around 6:30, knowing I was missing some things for the first day, but realizing that I needed to get out of there and just review my notes and lists someplace else if I wanted to keep going. Chris is asleep now (we have a really early morning shoot), and I'm still going full speed. Making new lists of things forgotten, entering in all my modules, sorting my 130 8th graders into teams, reading the student handbook so I know what the rules are. 

Life's a bit crazy right now. I keep thinking once school starts and we get into a routine, things will get much saner, but then I remember that I'll be dealing with even more stuff: lesson planning and tutoring in my spare time and keeping track of grades and all that teacher stuff. A list of 130 kids makes me wish I'd gotten my credential to teach the little kids- you get maybe 30 there, and that's it. 30 kids to focus on sounds so much more manageable than 130. Big sigh. 

Here's some fun pictures I've taken throughout this process. Can you tell I like things to be pretty? :)

Things I've learned about bulletin boards:

1. Draw sketches first.

2. Measure the board before you go to Joann's (on two different occasions) and purchase material just a little too short. 

3. Borders are invincible. You just tug a little and the staples go flying and the border is still in pristine condition.

4. Most borders suck. Go for solid colors. 

5. Fabric is much easier to cover boards with than I would have thought. Burlap was a great suggestion I found online, and it looks awesome. It also makes a giant dusty mess all over the floor, desk, and laptop case. 

All righty, I'm going to try to lesson plan myself to sleep now. Fingers crossed!