Rest

This morning I'm laying in bed feeling guilty for sleeping through two calls from the school. When I finally called back, I was already going to be late so I told her I wasn't available. Now as I lie here I can't help but think of all the things I should be doing on my morning off. I'm so busy lately that I actually feel guilty for resting. Do you ever feel this way? In a little while I will get up and I'm sure I will do something productive before going to work.

Hoping you all have a good Wednesday!
-JoAnne

Working World

So I'm sure all 9 of you have been going out of your mind wondering what happened to me.

Shortly a few weeks after school started back I still hadn't received any calls to sub. I was beginning to worry since my student loans were due. One afternoon I got a call from my aunt who is a guidance counselor at one of the schools in my district. Their after school daycare was looking for subs and she wanted to know if she could give them my name. After talking to the director I was booked for the following week. After that first week I was able to move to my school of choice for a permanent position. Then the calls started coming in for subbing. Even though I can only sub at the one school now I have been subbing several days a week. Last week I subbed 4.5 days and worked 15 hours at the daycare. It makes for some long weeks considering there are days I am at the school with kids in my care for 11 hours. But I am grateful to have a job and a way to pay my bills.

I've also been staying busy with Girl Scouts and we will be having our first sleepover in 1.5 weeks:-)

Well I've got to get ready to sub half a day, but I wanted to let you all know I'm still alive.

-JoAnne

I got a JOB

About two weeks ago I got a call from my aunt. She works at one of the schools I sub for and she had gotten an email from the director of their afterschool program. They were looking for subs and my aunt wanted to know if I was interested. I told her I wouldn't mind subbing in the after school program but Subbing in the classroom would have to come first. In other words, If I was subbing in a classroom at one school I wouldn't be available to sub in the afterschool program of another school. She relayed this information in an email to the director and the next day I got a call.

The director over the Extended day program for the whole district called to follow up on the email. I explained my situation and she asked if I had scheduled any sub jobs for the next week. I told her know and she asked if I could sub every day at the after school program (at the school where my aunt works).

Last Monday I walked into the school a little nervous about how the program would be run. I worked for an after school program in the past but it was for at risk students and was focused on education (we taught lessons and everything was very structured.) I knew this school would be different the question was, how different. I liked the set up of this program though it was much more relaxed than the program I worked for before and I liked the kids. Unfortunately the school wasn't in a convenient location for me. When the director for the school told me they were going to be looking for someone for the following week. I told her I didn't think I could do it.

I called the director for the district and told her my situation. I asked her if there were any openings ant the school I subbed for the most last year and she said no. Then she told me there was a possiblilty she could switch someone.

The next day she told me she was able to switch someone from the school I wanted so I accepted a job working every day in the extended day program! And I'll still be able to sub for that school.

Where it all goes down Wednesday

Hi again, It's teacher week at Blog Hoppin and today is "Where it all goes down Wednesday" I don't have a classroom this year so i will share my Girl Scout room with you all.

Last year I had 7 girls, this year I have 15 and a waiting list. I would actually like to cap it at twelve so we will see how our first meeting goes on Saturday. (my plan is: If the don't come to the parents meeting, they are on a waiting list)

We meet in a church's youth house that used to be a parsonage, I have what would have been a bedroom. I love that I have my own bathroom and my girls don't have to leave the room.

As you can tell, it's a small room. This picture was taken from the bathroom door. Right now, I only have table space for 8 girls. I am trying to decide if I want to try and add another table, take away the table and get clipboards, or split the group in two. The couch it too heavy and big for us to get out the door, so it will be staying. I also have a dry erase board.



This picture was taken from the table, you can see we have two closets that we share with the other troops, our bathroom, and the door to the rest of the house. It's hard to put much on this side of the room because we will block a door. I have a small bulletin board over my chair and a larger one to the right. The small one will have a copy of our news letter and the larger one will have my girls work displayed and some other things throughout the year. The rug is where we will sit to read from our journey book.

I'm worried about how this will work with 15 girls. Hopefully I will find a way to make everything run smoothly.

Thanks for stopping by!
-JoAnne

Meet the Teacher Monday

Hi everyone, if you're visiting my site from http://imbloghoppin.blogspot.com welcome! Today is Meet the Teacher Monday.

A little something about me

I'm a 24 year old Early Childhood Major. I just graduated in December and wasn't fortunate enough to get my own classroom this year so I will be subbing. I have 4 nieces and 2 nephews. I'm also a Daisy Girl Scout leader.

How long have you been teaching?

I have not had my own classroom but while I was in collage I taught at risk students in an after school program. I have subbed for almost a year. I Student taught in 2nd grade, and I am a Daisy Girl Scout leader.

You might not know...

I don't have a drivers licence. Yes, I'm 24 and I can't drive. I was in a wreck in High School and I didn't want to drive. Now, I know I need work on getting it but I honestly don't know where I would get the money for gas, insurance, and car payments.

What are you looking forward to this year?

This year I really hope I will get my own classroom. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that something will open up. If not, I'm hoping to get some long term sub positions.

What do you need to improve?

I am a big procrastinator. I need to work on being more prepared. Of course right now I have no idea what to prepare for.

What teaching supplies can you not live without?

I LOVE having a smartboard, of course I could probably learn to live without one if I had to. I also love Bold tip pens.

Of course my biggest addiction would be children's books. I don't even have a classroom yet and already my house is full :)


If you are visiting, I hope you come back soon! I'll be planning some kind of giveaway soon maybe when I reach 10 or 15 followers.

-JoAnne

Before and After

I told y'all I would be re-organizing my Daisy room. I am planning on significantly growing my Daisy troop this year and we don't have much room. Somehow my room has become storage for several of the other troops. This is what I saw when I walked in to clean it the other day.

To add to the already cluttered room, someone had had a party at the youth house and moved all of the random items onto my table. As you can tell, I had a lot of work to do. My plan was to move the couch and table out and put two new tables in. To the right of the picture you can see a cabinet. This is ours but the stacks on top and around belong to the brownies, most of this has been in my room for a year. Here's a closer view.

I also have the gifts in a jar that the older girls made and couldn't sell, these have also been in my room for a year. I had to get all of that out if I wanted to fit more 5 year olds in :)

I had this cute little helper (my nephew) and my mom and my other assistant leader.

After about 4 long hours of work in which we discovered the couch would not fit through the door. We had taken the table apart and put it in another room, vacuumed, steam cleaned, Clorox wiped. We ended up with this!

I still don't have enough table and chair space but I am planning on adding a small table that will get folded when we are not using it. I LOVE the large floor space for group activities. And my carpet area with my new bulletin board (that I had to hot glue).

While I was doing all of this the other leaders were working on their room and the youth house looks GREAT! I can't wait for my parents meeting and our first meeting to see how it works out.


I hope your classrooms turned out just the way you wanted them :) and that you all have a great weekend!

- Ms. JoAnne

Filling in the gaps

As if I didn't already have enough on my plate, I was recently ask to take on an additional responsibility with Girl Scouts. This year the individual service units(in our case it's any troops within two school districts) will be inputting their own registration forms. This responsibility will be given to two members of the Service team. My sister in law and I were asked to take on these jobs. This should make the process go much faster than previous years. I'll give you an idea of how slow it's been in the past: My first year as a leader, I started in August and got an email in February that I needed to do more paperwork, They had just gotten to putting my info into the computer!

By accepting this position, I became part of the service team and was able to go to a service team kick off yesterday. Over all I found out a LOT of new information and I'm excited to take the info back to other leaders.

This week I will be "filling in a gap" Since I don't have my own classroom to be moving into, I will be rearranging my Daisy Scout room. I plan to add 1/3 more girls this year and we were packed in last year. Look for a post soon because I plan to take before and after pictures. :)

I hope you are enjoying the last part of summer!

-Ms. JoAnne