Trying out something for my classroom

I am trying something out that I am thinking about incorporating into my classroom. A thought was presented to me on getting students to respond by either sending text messages or via the internet. With this idea I might have more student participation in my classroom. Let me know what you think.

Replace audience response hardware with Poll Everywhere

Furniture update...

Well, I finally got my sofa this past Wednesday which really surprised me because I thought I would be getting it today (Saturday). Also I don't remember mentioning this, but because of the confusion on the day that my sofa was coming in, Ashley's Furniture reimbursed the money that I had spent on having the furniture being delivered. So that's one major piece of furniture resolved. As for my new dining room table and chairs, I will be receiving the correct pieces on January 10th. Turns out that my order for the dining table had the wrong skew number for the pedestal and table top. Fortunately Rooms to Go is going to exchange the table top and pedestal for the correct ones that I had wanted. Along with getting the correct furniture, Rooms to Go is going to reimburse me with a $50 gift card to their store. I was hoping for a check, but I guess I will have to go back to rooms to go to use the gift card. As to what I will be using the gift card, I have no idea at the moment.

The apartment is really coming together now, it's amazing what adding a couple pieces of furniture and hanging up some pictures can do. Once I have all of my new furniture in, I'll encourage friends and family to come and see the apartment.

The next apartment item that I am waiting on is cable and Internet. Currently I am walking down to the club house of my apartment complex to access Internet, and using rabbit ears to watch some TV. I think that it is amazing that I am receiving HD channels of the local stations with the rabbit ears. Once January 24 comes around, I should have the essentials for my apartment settled.

New apartment!

It's been a while since I have made a post, but what can I say? I have been busy with school work primarily. Since my last post that was about 4 months ago, I have started my first year in teaching. All in all my first year has been a good year so far. There have been some problems along the way, mainly from trying to work with parents (primarily one parent). Those of ya'll that I have talked to, know what I am referring to. Anyways, the issue has been resovled and everyone is back to being hunky doory. Along with trying to work parents, another item that has thrown me in a loop is having my teaching schedule change twice within one semester. The reason for the first schedule change was because the school had more students than thought 6 weeks into the year, and so the school hired a new teacher to level the class sizes. This process took away 3 of my 6 classes (my Pre-Cal) and gave me 2 new classes (1 Advanced Geometry and 1 Honors Geometry). The schedule changed has worked out alright so far. As for the second schedule change, this will happen at the beginning of the spring semester. I will be losing my 7th period Honors Geometry, which is the new Honors Geometry that was created in the first schedule change, and will be acquiring a new Advanced Geometry class to ease the load of students that are in that level of Geometry. So out of all of these schedule chnages, I just feel really sorry for the students that are going through these schedule changes with me. I just hope that the students will be able to endure these changes.

Aside from the teaching world, the other new item is that I have moved into my first real aparment. Even though I stayed in an apartment for 2 years in college, those 2 years in college I wasn't paying for the living expenses. Since I am paying for the living expenses now with this new apartment, that's why I said that this is my first real aparmtent. The apartment is really nice, it is a one bedroom with study apartment that is about 850 sq. ft. I suppose the only downside is that I am living on the 3rd floor, however I will most likely be getting some excercise going up and down the stairs. Fortunately when I was moving in, I had some tremendous help from my parents, Kevin, Brad, Jill, Ethan, Aunt Robin, Uncle Harry, Cory and Kyle. With about 9 of us bringing my stuff up to the apartment while one kept an eye on Ethan, we were about to get everything moved within 3 hours. So thank ya'll very much for helping me out!

To go with the new apartment, I had bought some new furniture namely a sofa, endtables, coffee table, and a dinning table with 4 chairs. The delivery process started off great by having the end tables and coffee table at 10 am Saturday morning (I was in the process of signing my lease when I got the call about the furniture). When 2 pm rolled around, I had received no word about my new sofa. So I had called Ashley Furniture to inquire, and turns out that the dates that the sofa would be coming in had changed without being notified. Fortunately I was able to get some reimbursement for the mistake. Some more good news about the sofa is that this morning I received a phone call telling me that the sofa is in, and will be delivered on Wednesday. As for the dining table and chairs, they came in yesterday with some problems. The first problem is that one of the chairs was damaged when being delivered, and customer service told me that I will be receiving the replacement chair on Jan. 10th. The second problem is that the pedistule for the table is too tall for the chairs. The height of the pedistule currently is built more for bar stools than normal chairs. So if I sit down at the table with my chairs the table is chest high. The third problem is that the table top isn't what I had ordered. The table top was supposed to be able to expand with one table leaf. Well the table top that came in yesterday has no leaf and doesn't expand. So I will be needing to make a trip to Rooms to Go to try and get these problems corrected with my dining table. I'll fill ya'll in how things turn out.

Let's Dance!!

So today was a very active day for Kevin and myself. We ended up seeing two of the most popular sites in New York. First was the Empire State Building, while there we did their NY Skyride because both tickets were free with the NYC Pass (which by the way is awsome). Unfortunately the Skyride was really lame and really glad we didn't have to "spend" money for it. We did get alot of pictures up on the 86th and 102nd floor of the Empire State Building, but due to the heavy air (that's what the weather report said) it was kinda hard to see some places in the distance like Central Park.

Speaking of Central Park, that was our second stop of the day. We decided to take advantage of the Central Park Bike Tour by one of many bike tours. By the time we showed up, we had about 45 minutes to kill so we decided to try and grab something to snack on till the tour. So what did we end up getting? We got a vendor hotdog, which wasn't too bad. Now back to the bike tour, we discovered that the bike tour would be about 2 hours. I thought that hey, this couldn't be too bad and could be pretty relaxed. Well, I was sorta wrong on that we the guide started talking about Central Park and said that our ride would be 6 miles! Now, the sites were great, got some pretty good pictures and saw alot of sites that several (oh about over 490) movies were filmed. The downside was that about a third to half-way my butt was really sore from riding the bike, and my thighs were feeling the work from the hills that they have in Central Park. Hopefully here within a couple of days I'll be able to post up some pictures from the trip.

After the work-out and site seeing, Kevin and I decided to skip on seeing museums for the day and head back to the hotel room to relax and re-coop. Once back to the room, Kevin said that he really wanted to try and go swing dancing. So Kevin looked up info for Swing 46, and checked it out. While there, Kevin was tearing up the floor with his moves of course, and as for me I think I made him proud by dancing to a few songs (since the last time I went swing dancing with Kevin I only danced to one song). However, we had so much fun that we might try and go back to Swing 46 on Monday night when they will have a 12 piece band playing. If we do go back, I will try and get Kevin to teach me a couple more moves so that I'm not doing just the basics.

Well, our plan for Sunday for right now is for sure to see The Dark Knight in the morning and then see a couple of the many museums. There is a chance we might decide to go to Coney Island instead and see some of the museums later, but we'll see...

The English are coming!!

Well, Kevin and I are now in New York. We had a three and a half hour flight from Houston to La Guardia Airport. From there we took a taxi to the hotel, which I'm sooo glad that we did because it would have been to much of a hassle to try and take the subway from the airport with the suitcases.

After we got situated in the hotel, we walked around to see what is close to the hotel. Turns out that we are walking distance to Grand Central Station, the Chrystler Building, and we can easily see the United Nations and Empire State Building. We decided to eat dinner at the Juniors Restuarant in Grand Central Station, and Kevin ended up getting a massive turkey sandwich while I had a massive cheeseburger. Now dinner in New York on the first night is not dinner in New York unless you have some cheesecake. Well, from some research, Junior's cheesecake has been voted as one of the best. So Kevin and I ended up sharing a Strawberry Shortcake Cheesecake, and it was VERY good. After dinner we made our way back to the hotel and picked up some milk and sodas to have around the room since we'll be here for a week.

Once back to the hotel, we figured out our plans for Saturday which I'll try to post after the day's events.

So all in all, we got to New York safe and sound, as well as getting situated in our room. Kevin and I are really pumped about being in New York City and have alot planned in the week ahead.

I HAVE A JOB FOR THE FALL!!!

So this morning at about 9 am as I was preparing for my 10 o'clock class to start I received a voice mail from the principle of Clements High School. I called him back and turns out that he had put my name into the school district's HR as a recommendation for a math teaching position. As soon as I heard this I started my rounds of calling people letting them know that I have a job for this fall teaching at Clements High School. Now if I didn't call you personally, I'm very sorry and don't feel that you were left out. I just called the first people that came to my mind. Anyways, as far as I know of my schedule will be teaching 6 classes consisting of 3 sections of Honors Geometry and 3 sections of regular Pre-Calculus.

All in all, it feels wonderful to have a job lined up for the fall. However, I need to make sure I finish strong with my summer classes that I'm taking. I have only 11 more days of classes left of my summer classes so it's going to be a very exciting 11 days with a job lined up now.

Finally, some good news...

today I finally received some inclination from Clements High School as to whether or not they are interested in hiring me. When I was talking to mom on my way home from classes, she told me that the department head is considering me for a teaching position if she can't find any one else that would fit the job better. The position that I'm aware of is that it will be teaching 6 classes consisting of 3 Honors Geometry and 3 Advance Pre-Calculus. I know that the job isn't mine at the moment, but it's really nice to hear from the high school that I really want to teach at considering me. So please continue to pray for me and cross your fingers over the next month or two so that my classes will be done and I might have a definitive answer then.