So I took a few pictures today. Pictures of my room. I stayed a bit after school trying to work a system of classroom management for my Advisory class. I had to leave eventually and just because I always like to leave on a good note and not upset, I took some pictures to show to my readers. Enjoy!

Speaking of pictures, I got my first school picture as a teacher picture back today. The one that goes in the yearbook. The one that hangs on my key lanyard as my ID badge. I suppose it's not so bad (I'll see if I can't scan it in and post it, too), and if I do say so myself, it's one of the better pictures I've taken at a school setting.

Remember how I was in charge of picture day? Well, today a box arrived with every students picture inside. Apparently I'm also in charge of distribution of the pictures. I had some of my capable journalism students (yes, some aren't capable) carry the box back to office to put pictures (arranged in 7th period classes) into the appropriate teacher. Affectionatly, these same capable students went out of their way to find my picture, bring it back to class, and parade it around the room as if it were a medal or something. I quickly snatched the envelope containting my pictures and hid them deep inside my desk (but, shhhh, don't tell, I'm not ashamed of the picture).

In other news....I got the goahead on spending the $310 of legislative money for my classroom. I found out the each year teachers get a bit of money from the legistlator to use to purchase anything for their room, no questions asked. You simply take a Tax Waiver sheet to the store where you purchase, give the receipt back to the school, and school cuts you a check to reimburse you. Since I'm a new teacher, my money alloted is $310. In three years, it will only be $110. I plan on buying a nice little bookshelf to put next to my desk (as you'll notice in the picture of my desk, I need some more space) and a gigantic stock of pencils. (I suppose to my students, I'm only good for one thing...pencils) I've already gone through approximately 100 pencils. I'm starting a new thing on Monday that requires students to give me something in collatoral in exchange for a pencil. I tried it out today on a semi-irresponsible student-I took his cell phone-and I was happily surprised when he returned the chewed up pencil at the end of class.

We're finishing up our two week biography project. I really only planned for it to take one week, but I ran into quite a few snags along the way, one being lack of motivation to actually finish. I assigned them a 5 paragraph biography of any person of their choosing (I think I have about 20 biographies to read on TuPac Shakur--or as I accidentally called him "Two Pack"). I gave them about 3 days to find information on their person. I only required them to use three websites, just three, so you'd think it'd average to be about one website per day of researching...not too hard, right? Today, nearly a week later, I still had students giving me the excuse, "but I didn't get enough information." I wanted them to have a rough draft today at the beginning of class and then we'd go to the library to type it up, but even that task was just too complicated for my little young ones to grasp. "Mrs. Hubert, it's hard! We need at least three weeks!!!!" I think I only had about 15 or so complete the project on time (I said it was due today) and tomorrowI'll probably get just 15 more (lots of under acheivers) and maybe on Friday the rest will realize and beg to have an extension over the weekend. I finally told them today that tomorrow was the last day we'd work on it in class and to come after or before school to work. We'll see how well that goes over. Wish me luck in reading 140 biographies over the weekend!!

My observation of the week that I can't get out of my mind: Spikey Hair. I have several students (male) who must go through at least one bottle of hair gel every two weeks. They spike that hair up to Kingdom Come so it almost touches the door frame when they walk into class. Then, as if the sight of the spikes weren't enough, the put their hand every so gently on the spikes and I swear, one of these days they will poke a hole right through their hands. In my mind, I refer to them as the spikes of death. I can only imagine the white flakes they must see on their pillows in the morning!!!!

We're almost to the weekend, which means we're almost to UEA break (next Thursday and Friday), which means I'M GOING TO MOAB!!