spoiled spoiled spoiled

February is a good month for me. My birthday falls just 4 days after Valentines Day, which means that I pretty much get uber attention for the entire week. February 14-21 is all about ME. But Wes went above and beyond this year.

For Valentines Day Wes bought me a white rose that marked the beginning of a fun (and difficult) scavenger hunt around our apartment. I loved it. He also gave me these TOMS, two Down East tees, two cookbooks (gluten free) and the orange jacket. Like I said. Spoiled.

On my birthday Wes sent me flowers to my classroom at Spanish Fork High. They were such a surprise! My students sang to me (with a little assistance from Mrs. Scott, ah hem, thanks) and gave me a hard time about my "boyfriend." We left that evening for a little get-a-way to St. George where there were no lesson plans or coding homework. Wes and I were lazy, lazy, lazy. Let's just say we barely made it to 1:00pm church.

Wes also gave me this heavenly shampoo. Like I said. Spoiled.

I am spoiled, but lately there have been several things to celebrate. I passed the dreaded Praxis exam and got a real, full time job. Monday I start as a Medical Assistant at Utah Valley's OB/GYN clinic. I'm excited and this is such a giant step in the right direction for us.

please reinstall the filter

I ran into funniest roommate ever Jessica today on the RB stairs. She said, "I enjoy your monthly blog posts." I immediately went into denial. "I know, I'm just so busy, blah blah blah, at least I post more than Marie, blah blah blah."

And yet here I am with the monthly report.

Student teaching is a thumbs up experience thus far. My work load is decent but not overbearing. We just finished the most boring unit, Healthy Self (mental health). I guess I shouldn't say its boring, it includes topics like suicide, personality, grief, defense mechanisms etc. However, sometimes the lessons are kind of downers. It is difficult to get the kids excited about discussing emotions. But I guess that is what a good teacher does. They take unappealing topics and make them interesting.

The next unit is Nutrition/Fitness and I'm totally pumped to teach it! There are so many neat learning activities to use with this content.

Classroom management has been better than expected. There are always a few kids in each class that seriously struggle with listening, focusing and executing. I find myself occasionally doing the stand and wait thing. I'm also trying to figure out how to handle the completely inappropriate comments from the peanut gallery. I have one specifically challenging student who claims to be homosexual. His comments are rather colorful. I'm not blaming his interrupting behavior on his sexual orientation, I'm blaming it on his inability to filter his comments. In fact, I'm pretty sure he has completely removed the filter.

Wes continues on with work and school. Today he received his first real credit card which we are quite excited about. Time to start establishing credit, we better get swiping that AmEx huh Wes?