Story A Day

…work…fun at work…Menards….driving….showing for potential renters…fixing a dryer….wiring electrical outlets…application from potential renters…driving…evening snack…bedtime…

I will never again paint trim using a bristle or foam brush, I’ve discovered a MUCH better tool! I spent much of the weekend at the new duplex painting the side that we are still working on (tenants moved into the other side today!). We are painting pretty much every inch of the place and it gets pretty tedious, but this weekend I discovered the “mini roller”. This tool is amazing for painting trim! It is about 2 inches wide and allows me to paint door, window and baseboard trim about five times as fast as a brush. Ahhhhhhh….sweet luxury Check out the progress:

At BSP we spend the second half of every Friday doing a special event. Today’s event was college bowl! All of the students are members of a college (aka: homeroom). They choose a school to represent their college, make a banner, create a cheer, and wear the appropriate colors. The afternoon began with “lock off”, a competition to see which college can open their lockers the fastest. After that we took a group photo and each college shared their cheer! This photo is from last year’s college bowl, since I don’t yet have the photos from today:

After showing off their cheers each group competed in a series of challenges, attempting to score the most points. We ended the day with a rousing game of capture the flag, and the announcement of the winner! A fun afternoon…

too…sleepy…to….blog…but it was a great day!  Off to catch some zzzz’s…

A great day at BSP. It’s 8:45 and I can’t keep my eyes open anymore. I can’t believe I am going to bed and it is still light out!! Time to catch up on sleep…

Much of my day at Breakthrough is spent “putting out fires” as we say   With 100 kids, 26 aspiring teachers, and 4 mentor teachers, there are bound to be many little things that come up throughout the day.  Today my most exciting “fire” involved copy machines.  More specifically, peeling a melted transparency from the innards of the beast.  Ahhhhhhh….  Fun…….  This tale involves two copy machines because while I was fixing this one the other one also remained broken from yesterday.  That copy machine has always had a little attitude, I think it’s demanding retirement.  The good news is that the pros came later in the day and got everything fully up and running again!  My day had many more enjoyable moments, in fact, the day went VERY smoothly for only being the second day with kids!  And no fire alarms went off today.  Woo-hoo!  More great stories to come tomorrow…

It was an exciting, crazy, busy, fast, heartwarming, funny, amazing day.  Today the college and high school students whom I’ve come to know over many months stepped into the classroom and started teaching, many for the first time in their lives.  At the same time, motivated middle school kids got on buses before 7 am to get there, knowing that they will end the day with two hours of homework.  Amazing.  The day was a mix of fun, learning and surprises.  Fire alarm aside, the day went fairly smoothly.  Fire alarm??  There is a lot of construction in the building right near where we meet and the workers set off the alarms, filling the building with lots of dust and a strong burning rubber odor – yipee!  However, our staff and students exited and convened at our meeting place perfectly!  Yay.  That incident threw the schedule off a bit, but that’s always a given on the first day.  If it wasn’t a fire alarm it would have been late buses or slower transitions than expected.  The kids seemed to be having a great time, and the teachers were doing a great job in all their variety of roles!  My favorite memory of the day was the look in one of the student’s faces when I congratulated her for being selected from many for a special trip this summer.  She’s amazing.  We challenge them, they rise to the challenge, and they are incredible kids.  Tomorrow, I get to do it again

I just returned from a lovely evening spent on the Liffey patio celebrating Sandy’s birthday. The weather was nice, the sunset was enjoyable, the food was slow but good, and the people were fabulous.  It was good to catch up!  Happy Birthday Sandy!  And Nate, I expect a blog entry soon

We spent the evening at my 10-year high school reunion.  It was fun to see all the faces and check in with a few of the people I’d known well but hadn’t talked with in a LONG time.  We split our time between the noisy bar area and an adjacent bowling alley.  All in all a fun evening! 

…make all the hours worth it.  It was our final day of faculty training at BSP before the big arrival of students next Monday!  I am so pleased with how the faculty (young aspiring teachers) are doing, and I think it will be an awesome day on Monday!  One of the things they pulled together today was the new BSP cheer for Summer 2008.  The overall theme this year is “Toys” (think toy story style).  This theme will be woven through all of the skits, cheers, and materials this summer.  Check out the awesome cheer that these rock stars came up with in less than an hour…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46rYMJiP3Jk 

So cool.