Spreading the Christmas Joy!

Christmas Break has been anything but a break at this point! ha-ha My break has consisted of laundry, lesson plans, and Alternate Assessment! I managed to catch some sort of stomach bug and completely slept through Saturday and half of Sunday. I am so blessed that I caught a bug instead of the flu! Count your blessings where you can get them! 

As a first year teacher I was quite excited to take my class on their FIRST FIELD TRIP OF THE YEAR!!!! We took our class to the local mall to meet Santa, shop, and catch some non-cafeteria food lunch! I think I was more excited than they were. Let me just explain the mount eruption that took over while we at the mall. Now don't get me wrong, I completely prepared myself for the stares of the rude and ignorant. (Ignorant is such an ugly word, but as I've said before I mean it strictly as someone who is completely uneducated on the subject of my angels). I knew there would be those who would stare and maybe those who would whisper as our class walked by, what I did not prepare myself for were the obnoxious comments people made IN FRONT OF THE CHILD I WAS PUSHING!!!!  While I won't get into the comments I heard because I will completely lose my mind and get angry all over again, what I will say is that these children are precious angels and the one "sad" thing about them is the fact that THEY CAN HEAR THE OBNOXIOUS COMMENT YOU ARE SAYING! The end my rant is over, but on a lighter note during our shopping I managed to find Santa Clause. This is the cream of the crop when it comes to Santa Clause guys. In my opinion, I'm pretty sure we had the real deal this year. He not only skipped part of his lunch break, took time to speak to, interact, and personally give love to each of our students, AND did not charge me a penny for taking the pictures! Please look carefully at these pictures and if you see this specific Santa, please tell him how was a true blessing to me and my class!

Please notice her finger! I died laughing! bahaha

Please notice this child pulling Santa's beard to make sure it's real bahahaha

LOOK AT THAT SMILE!!!!!

Here are some other pictures from our field trip!

Also! I got my five year license in the mail! SO long alternate route program! 

And believe it or not, I tried my hand at cooking this year! Well baking but here are a few pictures from our Christmas eve. From our family to yours have a VERY Blessed and Merry CHRISTmas!

 Me and the Hubbs!

Best wife award please and thank you :)

Jingle Bells, Batman Smells, Alternate assements trying to kill me!

     I have spent months looking and searching for teachers who have students like ours. I don't mean the people who work at group homes because while I'm sure they do an amazing job, they have no idea about the dreaded ALTERNATE ASSESSMENT!   If you have never had to deal with it, please count your stars and thank the God, Buddha, or tree hugging higher power in which you claim yourself too. I'm pretty sure it is the governments way to weeding out the weak teachers much like boot camp is for the military, only for teachers it lasts all year long instead of eight weeks.

    While I understand the government has to have a way to be able to "prove" that these sweet angels are as cognitively disabled as we say they are, testing them constantly on their grade level ability or inability just gets silly after a while. There are only so many ways to ask what the main idea of a paragraph on the continent of Antarctica is, and getting a response of pop tarts, a girl can take. (Yes, true story) I would love to know how other teachers "handle" the dreaded A squared testing. (a testing so evil I'd rather not say it more than once. It's kind of like the movie beetle juice.)

  On a lighter note our Halloween parade was a smashing success. Please see the pictures below :)

No our students do not have white block and blurry faces like in the movie the ring, I have a media release form but I'm still not real comfortable putting their faces out there. Thank you to a great friend (Ms. B. Liles) for covering my legal tail and blurring them for me.  I white outed the pictures I forgot to send her haha.

Our Fireman! He got to be pushed by two very friendly (and very handsome) firemen.

Our very fabulous DJ

Our WWE wrestling Diva

Cinderella

ARGGGGGG. Our Pirate

The Queen Bee!

Army Man! He was pushed by a wonderful man in the National Guard!

Following our Halloween parade around the school, a few weeks later we had our wonderful Thanksgiving dinner! We invited friends, family (my daddy even showed up), even past students to come and celebrate this wonderful holiday. And by celebrate I mean bring and eat a whole lot of food!

I couldn't get a chance to get the before picture but minus the Mandarin salad and the drinks, this was our meal after we were all done.

Given the majority of our students can't chew their food, we made a beef stew instead for the main course. I personally cooked the two pumpkin pies in the back. You can tell it was amazing since there is more pumpkin pie missing than the sweet potato to the left...minus the fact that I, myself ate 3 pieces. lol Anyone who knows me, knows I can NOT cook. Sooooooo the fact that I made 2 pumpkin pies FROM SCRATCH, I mean like I cut the pumpkin, boiled, and strained the stuff type of "made from scratch," should impress anyone. It was fabulous.

Now it is Christmas time and YAY for presents for the students! I , well I'll just admit it, I Catherine Hardy, am addicted to swiping my debit card at whatever merchandise vendor I can find with adorable and cutesy things I can buy for my students, classroom, and occasionally my animals.   So far my students have an amazing blanket I got on sale, and a book entitled "The Gingerbread Kid Goes to School." I am trying to resist getting much more, but geez Louise at all the good deals via Scholastic this year! My classroom library has literally tripled since I started the school year.

Now I must return to my desk and slave away before the baseline assessment of A squared testing is due and make sure all the I's are dotted and T's are crossed.  I like to view it as a video game. Complete round one by swimming underwater and collecting all of the magical materials you can find to fight off the baseline monster, head to the mystical dungeon of secondary land where you fight your way through obstacles by proving your strengths and strengthening your weaknesses, and finally heading to the magical castle of finals where you save the princess and get rewarded with a small vacation we like to call summer break before beginning all over again.

Until next time, please enjoy this marvelous picture of my husband and I eating at Dicks restaurant in Gatlinburg, TN celebrating my birthday :) Aren't we cute! He was very excited if you can't tell.