All About Kimberly

Sailing Along the Life of Single Parenthood

Tag Archives: debate

An Online Break

Do you ever take 100% online breaks?  I took an unexpected one this week. It wasn’t meant to happen, but somehow it did, and I think it might have been just what the doctor ordered. I’ll pay now as I’ve made no progress on my to do list for Spring Break, but I really feel so much more energized and focused.

I left Sunday for Austin for the CX State Debate Meet with my students.  We ate at Red Lobster, and I was happy to get lobster.  I’d been craving it. And better yet I paid for it with a gift card I received from MyPoints.  We also spent a couple hours at the mall and it was fun to just unwind and relax with a fellow teacher for adult time.  :)  I checked in online briefly Sunday night, but I knew we had a long day ahead so I turned in early.

Monday the debate tournament at UT took from 8 that morning until 9 that night. We were exhausted!  We finished the night off at Chili’s where I had the worst Chili’s experience I’ve ever had (one of my top awful restaurant experiences ever).  When we got back to the hotel, the kids piled up in our room, and we played Uno. By the time we quit and sent them to their rooms, I couldn’t hold my eyes open – so no online time.

Tuesday we slept in a little and then went and played tourist.  I took the kids to the capital and such, and then they wanted to hit another mall.  This was Spring Break so we headed across Austin (thank you Garmin) and hit another mall.  It was much better than the one Sunday night so we spent more time there than we should.  It was after 4 when we left so I hit rush hour.  Ugh!  

I finally got home at 10 last night.  After visiting with Cameron a little because I missed her SOOOOO much, I went to bed again without checking in online.

This morning we met a new friend of mine and her mom at Ihop for breakfast. It was nice. Then Becka and I both had eye appointments.  It’s been a busy few days, and I’ve missed my online world, but I feel so much better than I have in weeks.  Hoping now to get lots of new content out and get some other blogs officially going.

I’m Creating A New Blog

For my students to follow our path of a new team to the majorly successful team we will be. I wish I had been more into blogging last school year to actual blog our very beginnings, but I’m looking forward to doing it now!  If you are interested, check it out at www.chsacademics.com!  I’m excited.  I’ve only found one owl template (well one free one) but it will do for now.

What brought this on? Well it started with a invitation to try out Qlubb.  I was anxious to see how this worked as it sounded really useful for our school. What is Qlubb? It’s a free easy to use calendar for groups.  I thought it would work great for all of us that sponsor extra events at our school to post competitions, practices, meetings, etc to decrease the double booking where students are having to miss something. I hate when they are put in thsoe situations.

I was immediately impressed with how user-friendly it was. I was able to use it instinctivly without any problem. I shared it with a few students to test it out, and they too were able to navigate and use it immediately.

If you are looking for a way to organize a group – a sports group, a neighborhood, a mom’s group – anything you can think of, check out Qlubb. Did I mention it’s free?

They advertise:

In just 1 click, get
Secure, Private Site
Public Webpage
Group Event Calendar with Reminders
Shared To-Do Lists with Reminders
Group Invites/RSVP’s
File Sharing
No user registrations required
And Much more!

And I have to say that I think they fulfill on all claims!

Easy Hours & Summer Vacations

If I’ve heard it once, I’ve heard it a million times – those are just two of the great “advantages” to being a teacher you’ll hear non teachers say that don’t have an understanding or appreciation of the job of a good teacher.  Don’t get me wrong.  I know some 7:30 to 3:30 teachers that do not work at home or give up any of their non required hours.   But as I conclude my Saturday (where I’m working for free because debate coach does NOT have a stiped or pay of any kind), I reflect on the hard work of a teacher.

We’ll just look at the last week for an example:

Sunday: Spent 3 hours grading papers and another 1 working on lesson plans.  Then spent another hour on some activities for my extracurricular students (debate and computer apps).

Monday: Arrived at school at 7:10 am, taught all day, after school tutorials until 5:45 pm

Tuesday: Left house at 6:30 so I could vote on the way to work, taught all day, tutorials until 4, debate practice until 6:15

Wednesday: Arrive at school at 7:00, taught all day, tutorials until 4, computer application practice until 5:00

Thursday: Arrive at school at 6:50, teach until 9:30 when the nurse comes to tell me Cameron is sick.  Bring Cameron home and doctor her, go BACK to school for debate practice after school until 5:15.

Friday: Arrive at school at 7:30 (yes, we slept in a little), teach all day, tutorials after school (can you beleive these kids are here on a Friday?) until 4:30 when I insist on going home.

Saturday: Arrive at school at 6:30, travel to debate meet where I spend the day, arrive back to school at 4:00.  This is a very short day for a debate meet as it’s the only meet that doesn’t require us to leave by 6 and not get home until after 6.

And remember, this is only my SCHOOL schedule….I’m also a single mom to two girls…..so also mixed in all of that is the grading of papers in the evenings, cooking supper, doing laundry, helping with Cameron’s homework, and all the other fun responsibilities of life…..

Yes…..I do have June, July and part of August that are “vacations,” but even during that time, I am making plans for the upcoming year and going to teacher training inservices…….Oh, and though many don’t realize it, yes…I’m off for those 2 1/2 months….WITHOUT PAY!  I am only paid for the days I do work each year.  Not the others.  I’m not complaining….I knew it was part of the deal (and by the way I LOVE teaching), but I think it’s a common misconception that those are paid vacation days.

School Is Not All That’s Started

Today I spent the day at a debate camp with 5 of my veteran debaters and 3 students who have agreed to join our team. Showing our true dedication to debate, we left the school at 5:45 this morning and did not arrive home until 7 tonight.  This means not only has the school year/English class started successfully, our forensics program is now up and going. We will work for a couple weeks before attending another workshop sponsored by our state academic extracurricular program – University Interscholastic League (UIL). So after doing that, I’m trying to catch up with my online blogging, reward programs, surveys, etc tonight as I would really like to start working on the next few weeks of work (for me and the students) for English class and debate.