Summer Break

Summer break has begun. Last week was spent with my daughter and grandson. We were together nearly everyday. During the evening I had VBS. I got to help in the 3rd-4th grade boys classroom. They were all really great! The week before that was my actual first week off. I spent some time with family, enjoyed the holiday weekend and lounged around a lot in hopes I'd get rested up and be ready to jump in again this week. It worked! I have done some decluttering around the house. It's amazing how quickly the general clutter grows throughout the school year. I cleaned out my closet. It's not completely organized, but clothes I've been hanging on to for way too long are now gone. Today I worked on my craftroom. The leftovers of many projects were scattered here and there, many scraps of fabric and office supplies were just everywhere.

I am going back to my previous school this next year. The school where I began as a school counselor. That is where I was when I started this blog. The administration is very supportive, encouraging and kind as are most of the staff from maintenance, secretaries, cafeteria and teachers. I'm excited to be returning. Last September, we were at a flea market/trade days. I found an amazing deal on some coffee cups. I bought a whole big box! I thought for the price they'd make great Christmas gifts. I have a Silhouette and thought they would be perfect to put initials on in favorite or school colors along with some hot cocoa/coffee/tea or save for teacher appreciation week to do the same and fill with candy. However, the year came and went, teachers at the school weren't close, though there were no rifts between them. It's just how the atmosphere was. As hard as I tried I couldn't change anything. The way things went with my office and the school in general, I chose to just leave the cups at home and save them for another time and group of coworkers. I knew I was going to be leaving by December. I turned my resignation in the first part of January, after returning from Christmas break. Now that I'm going back to were I started as a counselor, I can't wait to decorate the cups and give them out! Now it's just a matter of when. My husband came home today, took one look at the newly cleaned craft room and the box of cups. His words were, "Maybe you'll get to actually give those out this year." I replied, "You can count on it!"

I've not only been working on things related to home, but also things related to work. I've been plugging things into my calendar so it's already there when I report (August 1st). I've been looking at ways to improve things such as my testing routine (organization, training of staff and volunteers, timelines, etc). I've been researching organizations for assemblies in an effort to promote a positive environment at school. There is always so much to do. Summer will pass by oh, so quickly, I'm sure. Enjoy everyone!

Spring Break Blues

In this area, we have been on Spring Break this week. Our school paired this week with a snow day so we were out Friday last week, too. It has been a good week, with lots of time to rest early on. As the week went by I realized more and more projects I wanted to finish before returning to school. I even realized there were some things I really wanted to tackle in the cleaning, organizing or tidying up department. I managed to get some of every category done. I'm ok with that. I spent time with my grand baby, which is a high priority these days. I hung around the house in my pjs some and went without hair and make up fixed and on at least two days. Many years I go on trips over spring break. Years like this I'm thankful to just stay home. This week I read blogs, researched programs and curriculums, and watched several videos, all in an effort to improve what I do. All in all, it was a great break from the routine. Tomorrow starts the beginning of the last quarter of the year. It, too, will pass very quickly.

Motivation

We are in a slump here. It's partly due to the long, cold winter we've had. We've missed so much school we now have two days to make up. We started school late this year so that means we're already going a little later than usual. The end of next week, March 14th, we start our Spring Break. After that we will be on a down hill slide sort to speak. We will be in the last quarter of the 2013-14 school year. It has been a long, trying year for me. I ran across the TEDtalks video by Diana Nyad last week. She is inspiring in so many ways. Her age, gender, strength, record and probably friends and family all said she couldn't accomplish her life long goal of swimming from Cuba to Florida. Yet, she made it, finally, after many years of trying. She didn't give up. She didn't lose her motivation. She didn't lose sight of her dream. I like what she says about following dreams, staying motivated and going against the odds. I hope it inspires you as much as it did me. I may have to watch it again!

http://www.ted.com/talks/diana_nyad_never_ever_give_up.html??utm_medium=social&source=email&utm_source=email&utm_campaign=ios-share

SPREADING LOVE

I almost forgot to post this! I found these cute notes online and thought the students would enjoy them as much as I did. I cut them out and put one on every locker in our HS/MS the morning of Valentine's Day. I'm sharing a link where the actual notes can be found. They're free, which is even better. http://assets.skiptomylou.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/kindness-notes.pdf

She has several other free downloadable notes, too. Our tables were filled with lots of candy, stuffed animals, pop and flowers on this day as I'm sure your offices, hallways, and/or classrooms were as well. However, there were some students who received nothing. To them, I believe, this little locker note meant a lot. I received quite a bit of feedback from the students. There are three hallways in our building. One hallway decided that one or two students needed more love than the rest and they collected their notes and placed them all together on one locker. I didn't get a picture of it, but I thought it was really cute when I walked down that hallway and saw it for the first time. It is now a week since I did this and two hallways still have their notes on the lockers. By the way, I signed every single one of them myself, too. Enjoy!

Today was great. Not only was it Friday AND Valentine's Day, but I was able to do something that will impact our students in a huge way. I got our pantry set up for our MS/HS students! I worked with our Regional Food Bank, filled out many forms, asked lots of questions, sent many emails and phone calls went back and forth. I surveyed nearly every student, teacher and cafeteria

worker in the school to find out who might be going hungry or who might be going without food at various times each month (between parents' pay days, etc.). I went to an amazing training, submitted my order and stood outside, unsheltered on the coldest day of the year (wind chill -4) for over an hour to unload and load our food last week. Today, I had time to break open boxes and get the food to students! It may not look like much, but our school, MS/HS, serves less than 250 students. This is our first shipment. I'm thrilled to be able to serve the students in our school this way!

NBC process

I don't know if this came through on my Facebook feed or my Twitter feed. But, I read a post from another blog about future changes in the NBC process. I thought about becoming a NBC special education teacher while I was still teaching in that field and then I became a counselor. I've thought about going through the process as a school counselor. I've printed out some information from the official website and some blogs that I follow, but I've not been serious enough about it to take even another step in this direction. After reading the information contained in the blog that came across my social media page today though, I thought others might find it interesting, beneficial and even motivational to start the process. For that reason I'm choosing to post a link to the blog. Changes in the process are on the horizon. The process will go from taking one year to taking three. That is significant when you think about various portions having to be approved or passed and reworked if they're not. That takes time in and of itself. Then taking the final test and potentially retaking it if it isn't passed. So, something that originally took 1-1 1/2 years might now take 4-5! Here is the link: http://happyschoolcounselor.blogspot.com/. The blog is a great one to follow as well!

Door Decorating

I'm a little late in getting this post together. At the beginning of December the STUCO (which I am in charge of) sponsored a Christmas Door Decorating Contest. I mentioned it earlier. The school I was previously at did this every year and they really got in to it with some elaborate and creative doors. It was the first year to do such a th

ing with this staff and students. I think they did a job!

The doors were so cute and it was fun to walk down the hallways for the remainder of the month and see them! The winning door (Grinch), with lights on every point of the star at the top and an actual recording of the song, "You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch." It had a Christmas tree made from students' hands. The Grinch was "inside" the tree with only his legs poking out (lime green tights). A leg lamp door, of course, from the movie "A Christmas Story." It was all three dimensional with real fishnets! A brown box top on the bottom said, "Fragile." There was a snowman door which was made of cups and was created by a freshman class. There was a santa door, just the mid-section including belt, white fur and buttons. the door said, "It's a Claus-on Christmas." the teacher's name in that room is Clawson, so she made a play on that with the Santa Clause theme. I didn't show a door decorated with Rudolph. It was made with a light up nose, nor the Griswold door with a ton of lights. There was also a redneck door with an actual deer mount w/rope on it and shot gun shell lights on a tree with muddy boots sitting next to it. The winning class received a pizza/pop lunch.