Ugh.... some people's children.

today i taught a fourth of my 6th hour class. the rest of them chose to talk incesantly while i was reading vocabulary words and explaining things. . . it was terrible. I was having them repeat vocab after me (so they'd know how the words sound) and eventually, they just kept talking after I asked them to stop at least 5 times. So I sat on the side of the room where no one was talking amongst themselves, and finished up with them. The rest of the kids kept talking, and I didn't really care anymore because they chose to so I didn't feel like wasting my time or everyone else's by not continuing with the lesson...
needless to say, they better not be disappointed with at least 5 points off the test. which they are most likely not going to be ready for on Monday....
pssshhh.

i haven't seen the sun in awhile. maybe i'll go outside.
or just do my ballet conditioning video again - i did it last night and it was in-tents. :)

what i love love love.

I first found these at Kmart:

but I found that they have a website - ! and they also have tea flavors and other great fun things. so if you like tea or coffee and want to try something amazing - go here:

http://fusiongourmet.com


oh i am taking donations of these, too... some of my kids try to sleep in class, so i tried bribing them with these and unfortunately, they liked them... oops... :)

i am LAME. with a capital L.

So yesterday I was extremely frustrated on the inside and slightly smilie-ish on the outside because of the not=getting-a-paycheck thing,
and then Christine and Gay kidnapped me and made me go to Gallup with them. I got to see a teacher store and buy two purple pens so I can grade papers; we spent an hour or so in Goodwill while Gay was waiting for her order at the pharmacy and I found the SWEETEST dishes set.s.
One was a teaset type of thing - robin's egg blue thick melamine dishes with multicolored fleckles all over it - about 7 or 8 small plates, some saucers, and 4 or 5 cups, and a creamer/sugar bowl set.
and I found some really cute cups - two are chiner teacups white with red/blue flowers(i found it on ebay's site...), and then two -with 4 matching snack plates(?) - are more like coffee mugs with orange and pink flowers. and adorable. and totally match my black towels. as weird as that sounds. because blue speckleware, pink/red/orange/white cups, and black towels for some reason look great together.


As to why I am lame?
I am at school. On a Saturday. Playing on the Internet because I have nothing to do. I spent the morning digging in the sand?dirt? dust? and planting birdseed (yes, birdseed.) and arranging rocks in my yard. And moping around feeling sorry for myself because I have yet to find someone my age who wants to do something with me. (maybe that's why I bought so many teacups, because I reallly, reallllly want people to come over. butI don't think that can happen if I can't even buy a kitchen table, let alone a shower curtain so I don't soak the floor every time I want to be clean.
and I want to go to church in Gllup tmorrow, butI don't think that will happen, because I can't even buy gas enough to do that and make it through the next few weeks. I am going to leave school now, because I haven't gotten anything done, and maybe I will just go home and crochet plastic bags into something useful. like maybe a purse. And come back tomorrow afternoon perhaps when I am less lonely and frustrated. Arrrr. (it's homecoming next week - go Pirates! :) )

snails can be hilarious, too. (and soft, apparently)

My last class of the day is a "Reading Builder" class. I have no idea what to do with them:
So, I found some old composition books in the closet and they write in them almost every day.
Sometimes I give them poems to read. I am thinking about making them read The Sound and the Fury....
or some other Faulkner.

I just found out that I am not getting my paycheck today. Which is awesome, because I have no money until the 10th now.
and no furniture, really...
and like no food. meh.
Trust in the Lord with ALL.... lean not on your own understanding...,
at least i'll get a big paycheck. I hope.



A few days ago I had them write about "snails." ("At least mention the word snail somewhere...")

here are a few excertps: (keep in mind that these are high school students...)

" Well I never seen a snail before so yeah. So I seen the picture of one before and it looks wicked. I also heard that they are very slow at moving to different places. And that's all I got to say about them."

"Snails are bugs or i think fishes maybe either. There like slower as slow. We used ot have one but it died so that's it. "

"...I wonder why they're small and slow even though I haven't actually seen one but that's how they are." ...

"I seen a lot of snails at my grandfather's ranch in tanner spring..."

"OMG!! Today I feel so weird, because i have alot of energy drinks and i should of only drank one but nope i drank 4 now i feel sick but it is alright...." (this one made me laugh, because nowhere in the whole entry was the word "snail" mentioned.)

"I'm tired I can't think I like to carry around snails there fragile and soft."

(After reading cummings' poem: "I carry your heart is the most gayest ***ing poem I ever herd in my life. It's so gay it makes Micheal Jackson wanna be a rock star Just kidding It's a ok story.")

(from the same feller):" Is a snail those thing with a shell on there back.and there all slimy and sh(scribbled out). I seen a snail before at my house. They crawl very slow. It would take them months to crawl a mile.

"Over the weekend we went to G-town (Gallup) and my parents bought my sisters two snails and now I have to feed them everyday when I get home from school. It's all retarded and stupid and dumb and like one of them died two days ago. "

"One day I saw a snail at a park in Salt Lake City that time I was about 10 years old..."

new colors of favoration:
grey and yellow.
i thought of it first, though. (see my Lukey baby blankey).

:)
hehe.

new colors of favoration:
grey and yellow.
i thought of it first, though. (see my Lukey baby blankey).

:)
hehe.

PLARN-ed!

i saw an advertisement for a craft bazaar and - even though i may be the only blonde - i think i am going to do it. at least, i am going to attempt to make enough plarn purses/bags, etc... :) we shall see. and if my laptop ever works again (:-/) I can post pictures? :) I have a little over a month. unless i do the one in December. :0D yey.

PLARN-ed!

i saw an advertisement for a craft bazaar and - even though i may be the only blonde - i think i am going to do it. at least, i am going to attempt to make enough plarn purses/bags, etc... :) we shall see. and if my laptop ever works again (:-/) I can post pictures? :) I have a little over a month. unless i do the one in December. :0D yey.

necesito ayuda. I need your assistance, please?! :)

Sooooo...
Our "fall break" is from the 13th to the 17th of October and I really want to maybe go visit my Michiganders, but... I might not have a paycheck yet to get a plane ticket. and I'd need at least $450 to get a ticket and gas to drive to an airport...
but I have a week off!!! So hmm... i've been scouring cheaptickets and all that, and anyone who feels like helping me find a good ticket so in case I DO have money then I can visit,....

I'm living in Sanders, AZ, so:
Flagstaff, AZ is 143 miles away,
Albuquerque, NM is 180 miles away,
Phoenix is like 4 hours away,...

Yeah.
and Farmington, NM is like $763 for their flight... sick.

I'd like to leave probably Saturday the 11th of Oak-tu-bray (october) and get back to AZ onthe 18th or 19th so I can be back in time for school again. (meh.)

ANY help would be .... well, ama-zing. !

pieces of my blog.... from WORDLE dot NET

semana dos. . .

Week two:

Well, this week was slightly productive. :)
I say slightly because that's how it feels right now, after grading almost everyone's quizzes on animal vocabulary... But more on that later.

My computer has decided that its internal fans need to stop working. I'm not sure if this is from the dust of the badlands that collected in my backpack on my several hikes, or just because it's in the mood to die, but I haven't been able to use it in the past few days at all - even the fan-pad thing I bought to put under it to alleviate the heat it produces wasn't working. :( so no FB or gmail for me, unless I go to the library. And I was rather hoping to do some lesson planning at home... Especially since we don't have books yet, and I have no no no no no nooo idea how to go about choosing a Spanish textbook.

So I got to have my first "parent teacher" conferences... About 20 people came to see me altogether over the two evenings that conferences were held. Most of them were mothers or grandmothers.... Many of these kids don't have fathers in the picture. :( But it was good to be able to put faces to names that belong to them. I am still trying to know everyone's names; seating charts help :) a LOt. As does those people who actually turn in their homework...

Homework. *Shudder*. So last week I assigned everyone the daunting task of
1) Making vocabulary cards of the Animal List that I handed out, and
2) Making a travel brochure of a Spanish=speaking country or a city in that country.

and then on the due dates for the notecards, a very sparse handful showed me that they were done.
and for the brochures? That I was hoping to have decorating the walls on my "clothesline" for P/T conferences? ??? Yeah,... I received 5. Out of 102 or so students, I received 5 brochures on the day taht they were due. MEH. So I've been trying to be lenient and let them work onthem a little bit in class, but the points are going down... and Monday they are only going to be 10 points (out of the 20) maximum, barring neatness, creativity, etc...

We also went -albeit briefly - over a list of clothing vocabulary words. And a very, very basic run-through of the verb "llevar," to wear. I assigned a few of the classes 5 sentences stating what they wear... It's so hard for me to be patient with them right now, especially when they don't turn things in as a vast majority, and hard for me to be patient with myself, because I want to teach them everything at once, ..... and I need to find a better few websites than the (slightly) British ones to supply my vocabulary words. And I have no money to buy books... So I am using the few Spanish books I found at Goodwill (YEY!!) and a few that I found in the classroom, and trying to piece together something semi-understandable for my Spanish 1 kids, and my one spanish2 class (that is basically Spanish 1 level, unfortunately).

So right now it's kinda a day-to-day lesson plan experience. Maybe I can actually set up a whole week in advance this weekend, since I haven't gotten a paycheck yet,...
We are going to work on pronouns and maybe even get to start on conjugating -AR verbs...
and then practicing the verb llevar (to wear) and maybe a few more.... And maybe have them go shopping... for clothes. And practice their numbers at the same time.
Hmmm ideas. :)

Right now we are watching a movie on the Corazon de España. Madrid, Sevilla, etc... I want to go back now. wahhhh. lol. I want to take these kids to another country, but I'm not sure if that would even be possible monetary-wise, because they're in high school, and so many of them don't actually have a lot of money.
So if I can find a reallly inexpensive group trip type things I want to look into that for maybe this summer or maybe spring break... I want these kids to have so much more than they do already, and how much more cool would it be to visit a place like Mexico, which is just south of us.... ???

Pray for me that I can have wisdom with what to do. :)
and that I will be patient with myself. :) and consistent with the chillerns here.
and for my walk to be consistent.

I have one more class' worth of quizzes to put into the computer, and then a few to finish grading, and then I am going to look for things relating to clothing stores online... :)

If any of you have school supplies - notecards/3x5 cards, colored pencils, glue, markers, scissor(!), or any old magazines/catalogues that you don't want, I would LOVE LOVE LOVE to take them off your hands.

PO Box 1114
Sanders, AZ 86512

;)

Muchas gracias!!

~Amanda

i'm in! and Extreme pickles pringles are good!

I got to teach this week!

On Tuesday I went into the classroom and did some fast thinking and lots of internal pep-talking with myself at the lack of materials, books, wall decorations...

The walls were covered in white posterboards with vocabulary words on them... which is great if you are a man teacher, I guess, but I wanted to barf. I know decorations shouldn't be my first priority, but if I can't think properly because there are blank white walls, I'm perty sure some of the students won't be able to, either.
so my mission tomorrow is to go thrift-store/dollar store shopping and get some supplies... such as crafty stuff (scissors, markers, glue), some type of fabric for the prison-like windows that are set 6 or so feet off the ground and are only 2x2ft. square,... some posters possibly, or at least some paint, and maybe a bookshelf for my bedroom (which is totally unrelated). and maybe a desk slash dresser.

On the first day I had (whoever was in class) write down why they were in spanish / what they wanted to learn / study this year. Some kids didn't write anything, others wrote "nothing," "learn to play the guitar real good," (?!?!?) some wrote "talk to girls, sweet talking," still others actually gave me helpful suggestions, like learning to speak more fluently, learning "more" color words, How to say (this or that,...) .
And then I had them "write 4 sentences in spanish - about whatever you want. this is for me, to see how much you guys have learned so far..." (so for the month before I came, there was a doctorate student kinda teaching the class, and then it was a bunch of substitutes, so these kids seem like they're really behind...) I got some good sentences. Like "Yo estoy enfermedad." (I am sickness.... ) and "my friend is ___. She is drunk."
"I need 120 beef tacos. and a Coke. Please."

Oh boy. :)
Day two - I gave them three front-and-back sheets of paper with ABCs, Numbers 1 to a million, a few key "greeting" phrases, and a list of 69 animals in spanish (with the English equivalents). Basically we spent the hour repeating the words/phrases so they could hear what they sounded like, and then my one spanish two class (I am kinda giving them the same material for now, ...) I had make skits with the vocab from the day... There were a bunch of composition books in the closet, so i took those out and gave one to each group in Spn.2 and they put their skits in there. One group decided to make a dialogue between a hippo and a few other animals. Bua ha ha. Yes! I was really hoping for some creativity.

Day three (yesterday): Probably a really dry and boring day for the students, but I think maybe it was important. I had them take notes on the rules for dividing (Spanish) words into syllables, and then (tried to) explained the rules, and gave a few examples. And made them attempt to divide the animal vocabulary into syllables...

Day four: (today!) I tried to make it more fun.... Yesterday after the staff meeting (my first one! yikes! I had to talk about myself. ewww) I checked out some books from Candi, the librarian, who is blonde (! - there are not very many here.... ;) ) on Spanish speaking countries for a project I have planned. So in class, I told them about it - (Since there are P/T conferences next week (it's going to be interesting, since I have very little idea of what's gone on before I arrived).
I am having them make travel brochures so I can have something to decorate the room with besides family trees that they made sometime in the beginning of the year... Little do they know that's pretty much the only reason they are doing this. Haha, just kidding. Kind of.

I am also making them make flashcards of all (yes, all 69) animals from the animal list and dividing them into syllables. I don't really care that much about the syllable, but it really will help them with pronunciation at least. They sound like Americans, lol... if you're a foreign language student you so know what I mean. A lot of my professors/teachers made fun of the students that spoke Xlanguage with an American accent. I don't think anyone's ever told me my Spanish sounded American; Zarema, my Russian prof, told me I have an ear for languages,... so when i hear an american spanish accent, hahaha... run away!

So with the chillens making flashcards and brochures, I had a little bit of time to finish up putting grades in the computer (i finally found the program that lets me do that last night - I had to install Firefox to be able to use it, I guess...) and I handed back (well, made them hand back) a ton of paperage....

I have no idea how many points I am supposed to be giving these people.... so right now there are just "homework, projects, quizzes, and tests. and i haven't found any "tests" yet, so i think they're safe there. I don't know what to do about grades for people that maybe weren't in class that day, though.... meh.



I should go to bed. I kinda signed up for Netflix and spent half an hour on there looking at the movies they offer. It should give me something to do, and maybe I can find some good spanishy movies...
write me a letter! I'll write back!!

PO Bx 1114
Sanders, AZ 86512

another week; church! and coffee. and almost there? maybe?

Well.

Today I went to Grace Bible Church (also in Gallup, so it was a "bit" of a drive, but nothing big compared to the rest of the drives I've been doing this summer). A little less than 40 minutes away. I got there maybe 15 minutes after Sunday School had started, so I snuck in with another lady after she showed me the coffee (yey!) that they served in real coffee cups (how fun!).
The pastor was teaching the sunday school, and they are (just starting) The Pursuit of Holiness by Jerry Bridges. :) hurrah!
Everyone was really nice, and it wasn't just a congregation of one color/ethnicity. So that was cool. :) I wasn't the only blonde, and I wasn't lost in a crowd of white people, either. It was neat. Also, it was so so so wonderful to hear from the Word of God! :)

it was encouraging. :)

I am going to go to the after-high-school group that meets at 6 soon, and then to Walmart because well, I goto Walmart when I can, and I need um, milk. and a car sunshade. So my car doesn't implode from the heat. :)

and then tomorrow I am going to go to Flagstaff, if Rose is in her office and has my paperwork, and if I have the right "receipt" from my fingerprinting, and if I can get to Flagstaff (~2 hours of driving there from Sanders) and back by 4ish, and if the school board actually meets tomorrow night, I can start working as a substitute teacher in the spanish classroom on Tuesday. or soon thereafter. and if not, well, I am going to be sad. I've been trying to push these people to get me in the classroom somehow, but it's not very encouraging to be sitting around day after day because people are never in their offices when they are "supposed to be" or when I need to see them about something, or yeah.

So pray that I will be brave.
:)

and that maybe I can trust God with His timing. :)

write to me!
:)

~Amanda