July Recap

Well, we’re approaching the last weekend in July and I have to ask myself, where is the time going. I was off for the first 2 weeks of the month and I have to say I needed that time off. It gave me time to get some rest, get my garden growing (more on that later) and get my running routine back on track. There were many days that I know I did absolutely nothing productive, but then there were other days that I took on the world and tried to conquer it. As you can tell, I didn’t conquer the world and I’ve been relegated to taking a French as a Second Language course.

When we got back from our travelling roadshow of a vacation, I noticed my garden had really started to sprout, but I was disappointed in a few vegetables. To my dismay, I had a little critter that was dining on my garden sprouts day and night, thus not giving me the production that I was expecting. I set into rabbit chasing mode for a whole week. I researched online what was going to keep this pesky dude out of my garden…I started with planning 3 dozen marigolds around the perimeter of the garden…that didn’t work…I then read online that they don’t like cayenne spice and that is in hot sauce so I poured Marc’s two bottles of hot sauce in and around my garden only to have it rain that night and wash a majority of it away & inviting the rabbit back. My last resort was to install a chicken wire fence all around the perimeter and that is exactly what I tackled in the blazing heat of a Saturday morning. Mission accomplished…rabbit has moved onto more accessible gardens and I finally have vegetables producing food!!! J My zucchinis and cucumbers are taking over the whole plot but my peas, beans, carrots and tomatoes are trying to hold their ground. If everything produces vegetables like their blossoms indicate, I think I can challenge Farm Boy for the quantity of food produced!!! Hahahaha

The last two weeks of the month I have spent in a French as a Second Language qualification course that will hopefully project me for a teaching position in the fall. The first week I found very tiresome as I was trying to translate all the words in my head to try and understand as much as possible; however, the second week is moving along quite fast and we’re well into learning styles and literacy strategies. I have had a great reason to stop at Chapters on a couple of nights on my way home to scout out some French storybooks that I can use in the course and then hopefully in a job in the near future. I love getting new books, putting them to the test within an assignment or sharing them with my colleagues in the course. It’s like Show & Tell for adults!!!

As July 2011 comes to a close in a few days, I only hope that August will be as exciting and productive as July has been. What has your month in review consisted of?!

New Year’s Resolution- Broken as soon as I posted it!

Ok…I’d like to think that I have everything under control and organized most of the time, but I just can’t get myself to keep up with this blogging bit! It must be that I’ve been busy living life and finishing school for the millionth time!!! School is officially done and summer has settled in well…I’ve been enjoying my time at home getting things back in order, clean out and re-organized before the fall comes around the corner and mayhem starts all over again. I’ve been busy these past couple of days jamming up some strawberry & strawberry-banana jam to put in the freezer for the winter. I don’t like to buy jam in the store because I find it tastes stale and processed and I love being in the kitchen so making my own jam isn’t so bad.

Since my last post (ekkk, in January!) I’ve successfully completed 2 student teaching placements in two very different teaching environments. I started with a great split grade class that was in a portable that felt like miles from the school and we existed in our own little world at times. The kids were absolutely fantastic to work with and I really felt like I connected to them in the 8 short weeks I was there. My second placement was right here in my own neighbourhood in two different classrooms, teaching math & English exclusively. These classes were students in the French immersion stream so their academic abilities were higher than my first placement, but they required different needs filled. I certainly had to be on my toes with both these classes and no “winging it” was possible. I had three fabulous mentor teachers that all help form me as a new teacher and I took away so many different ideas, approaches and skills that I will certainly be using in my future.

As I sit back and look at the last year and all that has gone on, a lot has changed and a lot of optimism has returned. I would have never thought that I would quit my job, return to school to earn my BA, and then head south of the border to earn my teaching degree. It has been a whorl wind time and I’ve met some of my closest friends in the past few years. Here’s to many many more years of overcoming challenges, long nights working on assignments and long lasting friendships!