High Five for Friday

High five for Friday you guys! We made it through FCAT week, which is glorious! I wanted to try an idea I saw on this blog here. Here are 5 of my favorite pictures from this week. It pretty much captures what went down:

1) Sabre woke me up every morning last weekend because I was home alone and he was being a good guard dog. What a sweet boy =]

2) I started quilting my mom's Mother's Day quilt. No spoiler here- she picked out the fabric and has been watching me waiting for it to be finished! 

3) My mom ordered Toms that were too small so I get them! Granted, I had to buy her new ones online, but still, aren't they cute?!

4) I found out I'm going to teach the last FIVE weeks of my internship instead of the last FOUR. Cue frantic lesson planning!!! Ahhhhhh!!!

5) I made Slutty Brownies for the bachelorette party I'm headed to this weekend. That would be a layer of cookie dough, a layer of oreos, and then a layer of brownie. OH MY GOSH. Can you handle it?

So I'm taking my slutty brownies and my giant bottle of wine and headed to Tampa for mani/pedis, laying out by the pool, girl talk, and the Taylor Swift concert! Perfect cap to FCAT week =]

Playing Catch-Up

Hey everybody, I'm sorry I've been MIA the last 3 weeks! We had spring break and I went to Tampa for Roxanne's wedding (check out her blog here) and then to New Orleans to visit Casey, my bestie from high school. It was such a great spring break and EXACTLY what the doctor ordered.

Beautiful wedding!

Teacher friends =]

Casey and I in New Orleans

Being tourists

We ate our way through the city- naturally.

Then we had Monday, April 1st as an inservice day and I was only at school Tuesday and Wednesday before I got hit with a stomach bug and had to stay home two more days. I really wanted to be careful though, because I did NOT want to give my kids any germs right before FCAT. 

This week we just reviewed everything we needed to, covered up all of our bulletin boards, signs, and books (basically everything but the brick wall) with giant sheets of paper (no cheating here!), and rearranged the room for our big test next week. 

We are so looking forward to getting past this test! I feel confident in my kids and I know they'll do great! We also have a respectable pile of snack food piling up that families have brought in for the afternoons of the FCAT. I think with all this hard work, our kiddos definitely deserve some Cheez-its and Disney movies ;)

In internship news, I had my FINAL observation on Wednesday! That makes 11, in case you were wondering. To give you a comparison, the other interns at my school (from UNF) do 4. Let that sink in. The only thing I have left is an informal observation by my supervisor and a principal observation. I'm going to do both of these during the month of May when I'm teaching full-time. At least I'll be prepared for the 6 observations I need per year in Tennessee! Bring it on.

And Now For Some Good News

You made it through Wednesday! Congratulations, just 2 days left until the weekend. How am I doing, you ask? Y'all are so sweet. I'm doing GREAT actually. Let me show you in pictures how everything's been lining up juuuuuuuust right.

Yay!

Got an email for a phone interview with Gestalt Community Schools (a charter school in Memphis). I actually had that interview today and I think it went well! I was cool, calm and collected. This would be for elementary, so K or 1st. The tiny ones scare me, but they make up for it in precious things they say. On to the next picture:

Yay!

Got an email for a phone interview with KIPP (another charter school in Memphis!) This interview is Friday afternoon. Again, their elementary is just K and 1st, but there's also their middle school, which has 5th and 6th. Maybe? Who knows. Next picture!

Yay!

I passed all of my Florida Certification exams. Now I just have to finish these pesky classes UF wants me to take. Two more classes and three more months of an internship before I can apply for certification (which will promptly be transferred to Tennessee, thank you very much).

And finally, though I don't have a picture to go with it, my mentor teacher said I could take over the classroom for the month of May- basically the last 4 weeks I'm there! It'll be after FCAT so pressure is off and we can experiment with some new lesson ideas. I'm just excited to completely take over! It was one part of the old style of interning I regretted not having.

Sigh. So yes, it's all coming together. Remind me of this when it inevitably all feels like it's falling apart ;)

Florida Writes 2013

Oh. Baby. Today was the day we were all anxiously awaiting! Florida Writes 2013!! After warming up to the Cupid Shuffle, our fourth graders kicked butt today and wrote their little hearts out for a full hour. After we wrote, we celebrated with some homemade treats (Paula Deen's gooey butter cake, anyone?) and got to relax with some indoor recess while it continued to rain outside. We were SO happy we avoided a tornado warning during the test. Wouldn't that just be a nightmare?

In honor of being finished with FCAT Writes, I thought I'd share some of my favorite snippets from the kids' journals they've been keeping. Enjoy!

Selena Gomez is my standard of beauty, too.

It's easy to mix up "hands-on" and "hands-down". What a great new saying!
Writing is HANDS-ON my favorite subject!

"Ugh! This is not my style" Princess in the making. I feel the same way, girl.

Alluding to Jackson Pollock. These are 9 and 10 year old children.
Are you as impressed as I am??

My favorite: "...they look so beautiful it makes me feel like I'm a dirty street rat."
Where did this come from??

I just love reading everything these kids write. They have so much personality in their writing! I'm so proud of them and happy that we. are. done.


In TFA news, I received two books in the mail today: Teaching as Leadership and A Chance to Make History. These are for "onboarding" which is prep between now and Institute in June. It basically looks a whole lot like my online classes- read sections and then respond in a group of 6-8 people online. I'm also applying to more schools and preparing for some phone interviews. Very exciting stuff!

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