Saturday, December 17, 2011

Dealing with the Technology Generation

I've gotten pretty used to explaining "older" technology to my second graders, with each year getting worse.


I've explained those square things that we used to put into our computers...

I've explained what that curly thing coming off that old phone did...



But I was not ready for this one. My students were completing a Christmas crossword puzzle and I thought I had gone over all the "tricky" clues.


The clue for 15 Across (six letters) reads: "You might mail Santa one of these."



More than half of my students wrote:


e-mail

Thursday, December 1, 2011

Nightmare



You can ask most teachers and they can tell you about "back-to-school" nightmares. Mine usually involve scary parents, destroyed classrooms, or huge 15-year-old students in my second grade class.


But all my dreams had one thing in common: I didn't actually know any of the people in them. When I have my class dreams, the kids have always just been random dream-children. Well...not anymore. I had the craziest dream about my class that I am teaching right now and it was unbelievably vivid. If you haven't heard, I only have 17 students in my class this year and they ROCK! They are smart, well-behaved kids and I love them.


Not so in my dream!


They were EVIL!!! They just seemed to hate me and were trying to make me made. I was yelling and screaming at them and they just ignored me. The part that I can not get out of my head is that I was yelling at one of my little girls, right in her face. She turned to face me and bit my cheek, hard enough to rip the skin!


This is when I woke up with my heart pounding. And I know perfectly well that it was just a dream, but when that little girl walked into class to day, my heart skipped a beat. :)

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

Love your teachers

This has been floating around Facebook:

Teachers' hefty salaries are driving up taxes, and they only work 9 or 10 months a year! It's time we put things in perspective and pay them for what they do - babysit! We can get that for less than minimum wage. That's right. Let's give them $3.00 an hour and only the hours they worked; not any of that silly planning time, or any time they spend before or after school. That ...would be $19.50 a d...ay (7:45 to 3:00 PM with 45 min. off for lunch and plan-- that equals 6 1/2 hours). Each parent should pay $19.50 a day for these teachers to baby-sit their children. Now how many students do they teach in a day...maybe 30? So that's $19.50 x 30 = $585.00 a day. However, remember they only work 180 days a year!!! I am not going to pay them for any vacations. LET'S SEE.... That's $585 X 180= $105,300 per year. (Hold on! My calculator needs new batteries).What about those special education teachers and the ones with Master's degrees? Well, we could pay them minimum wage ($7.75), and just to be fair, round it off to $8.00 an hour. That would be $8 X 6 1/2 hours X 30 children X 180 days = $280,800 per year. Wait a minute -- there's something wrong here! There sure is! The average teacher's salary (nationwide) is $50,000. $50,000/180 days = $277.77/per day/30 students=$9.25/6.5 hours = $1.42 per hour per student--a very inexpensive baby-sitter and they even EDUCATE your kids!) WHAT A DEAL!!!! Heaven forbid we take into account highly qualified teachers or NCLB... Make a teacher smile :)

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

How to Have a Truly Crap-tacular Day

1. Run late getting ready in the morning.



2. Have car frozen shut, to the point of pulling on the door 3 times to get it to open.


3. While scraping the frozen windows, have the windshield wiper smack you.


4. Drive a mile and a half before realizing that the headlights are off.


5. Have two granny-slow driver on the road, doing 15 under the limit side-by-side.


6. Work computer being slower than a turtle running uphill in molasses.


7. Just when you feel like you can handle the rest of the day, kill the power to the entire school/ town.


8. Try teaching in the dark, but then the power coming back on 50 minutes before you would have been sent home early.


9. Then find out that the other schools went home early and you didn't.


10. Don't get to eat lunch because you have recess duty.


11. Deal with people in Walmart after school.


12. Stupid boy has to work late tonight.





Should have just stayed in bed this morning.

Friday, October 28, 2011

BEST BIRTHDAY EVER!!! (long, but detailed)

I love surprises, but have never been completely surprised by anything or anyone...until now. Cory found out that I like surprises and went from there. He started out on this a few weeks ago and told me that he was going to have to work on my birthday. I was disappointed, but didn't want to be whinny about it, so I just figured we do something another time. There was a really small part of me that hoped that this was all a trick or something, but then I dismissed it, thinking that Cory wasn't that smooth/awesome.



When I told this to my roommate Carlee, she took it upon herself to plan something fun and awesome for my birthday. Unbeknownst to me, Carlee and Cory had been secretly planning behind my back for almost a month. Carlee said she would get a group together and we would go to dinner or something. I figured I would just let her do her thing. The pessimist in me just kept reminding me that plans had fallen threw for my last several birthdays, so I didn't want to get my hopes up.


So on Wednesday, I hung out with Cory after he was done with school, but nothing was ever said about my birthday. I figured we were just avoiding the topic so that I won't feel bad. I went home that night feeling a little sad, but figured that my birthday could be as happy as I made it. At midnight, my phone rings and Cory is singing "Happy Birthday" to me (I had to ask him about it later because I was so tired and out of it). Then the fun really started.


Birthday morning started great; when my alarm went off, the radio had on one of my favorite songs and I thought, "This is going to be a good day." We had been doing Red Ribbon week at school and each day had a fun dress theme. Thursday was Red Day, so I had gone to DI and bought red sweatpants, because who doesn't want to wear sweatpants to work on their birthday? So I get all ready to leave for school and head out to my car. I open my garage and Cory is parked in front of my driveway...with flowers. I almost started crying I was so shocked! He didn't have to get up early that morning and he would have had to get up really early to be there. So then I figure this is my birthday surprise since I won't get to see him later in the day.

I went off to school and one of those great days at work. The kids treated my birthday like a national holiday, I got TONS of chocolate/candy, I got cake, balloons, and cards. It was just a fun day at school. Around lunch time, I get a text from Carlee, saying that she's got a group of 8 people going out for my birthday, and just for fun, we are all going to dress up super fancy. And she had ever put out some of her really nice jewelry for me to borrow (she's a former beauty queen). I was supposed to be dressed and ready to go by 6 PM for dinner and then a dinner at a friend's house after. I thought this just sounded so fun; if I couldn't be with my boyfriend, at least I can have an awesome time, dressed up, with my friends.

Cory made sure I was still falling for the lies by texting my "from work", complaining about some rude customers. (He is very thorough). Around the same time, Carlee texts me that she's a little behind at work, but will be home in time to go to dinner. So I came home to an empty house and started getting ready. I pulled out by fanciest dress (too fancy even for church), did my make-up, fixed up my hair, and "frosted" myself with Carlee's fabulous jewelry. As I was getting ready, I kept thinking that I should take a picture and send it to Cory so he could see what he was missing out on. At 5:55 PM, I get another text from Carlee: the day has gone horribly, everybody is running late, she has to cover some work thing at 7 PM, so we're have to cancel the whole dinner.

I think "crushed" and/or "devastated" would best describe my mood at that moment. My first thought was to go put on PJs and be done with the day. But then I decided that I had spent all that time getting all pretty, that I just want to sit and be pretty for a minute, also hoping that maybe one person from this whole group might show up. Just as I was about to give up, the doorbell rang. Thinking that I'll have to tell whoever it is that dinner was canceled.

When I opened the door, there was Cory, in a suit, with a bouquet of roses! This time, I really did start to cry a little. And he says, "Did Carlee just flake out on you?" I think I was in shock for the next 20 or 30 minutes. All I could keep saying is "I can't believe you did this!" When we get out to his car, I see that he had spent a lot of time completely cleaning his car. He gave me my first present, a book he thought I might like. Then we went out to dinner at a nice restaurant and everyone was asking why we were all dressed up. He even joked during dinner, "No, I'm not going to propose to you tonight."


After dinner, we went to a show at the Hale Center Theater, "The Marvelous Wonderettes." Going to a show, all dressed up, on the arm of a guy, AWESOME. The show was really cute and we both really enjoyed it. After the show, it was time to head on home. When Cory dropped me off at home, Carlee was home, so we all had a good laugh about everything and she took our picture, because we looked too good not to do pictures.


And then Cory said the a book was not a birthday present, and neither was dinner or the show. He gave me a gift certificate to get an hour long massage. I think he was trying to kill me with happiness. This was two days ago and I have yet to stop smiling. :)


Monday, October 10, 2011

Friday, September 9, 2011

Oh yeah, and that time I got punched!

Got punched yesterday...



...by a first grader...



...it really hurt...



...still not sure why...



...and oh yeah...



...it was in the boob!

Tuesday, September 6, 2011

Monday, August 29, 2011

Out of the Mouth of Babes

It starts again:


Student 1: "Do you have kids?"
Me: "Nope."
Student 2: "Do you have a husband?"
Me: "Nope, no husband either."


Student 3: "How can you have a job without a husband?!?"

Saturday, August 27, 2011

SWEET!

If you cook for nice boys and send them home with some, they might return it with interest.



Sweet!

Saturday, August 6, 2011

Waiting

A few of my friends had this as their Facebook status and it makes me laugh everytime I read it:

For all you single women who are in such a hurry to get married, here's a quick piece of Biblical advice: Ruth patiently waited for her mate Boaz...While waiting for YOUR Boaz, don't settle for ANY of his relatives: Brokeaz, Po-az, Lyinaz, Cheatinaz, Dumbaz, Cheapaz, Goodfornothingaz, Lazyaz, and especially his third cousin Beat-yo-az.

Thursday, July 21, 2011

If anyone asks, my name is Brandy


I consider myself an all-American girl: I love the 4th of July, fireworks, hamburgers, and of course baseball. Some of my earliest memories are of my dad taking me to Phillies games. I'm good at watching baseball. Playing... not so much.

Evidence: when I tried to play on my ward softball team, I tripped over my own feet while trying to catch a ball and fell on my butt, dropping the ball.

So last night my home-teacher Jeff called me up. His intramural team needed another girl or they would have to forfeit, and this was in tournament play. For those of you who don't live in Provo, BYU intramural sports is kind of a big deal. If you win, you get a shirt that says you won! Amazing, I know.

Anyway, I was a little surprised that Jeff asked me, knowing that there are some really good players in our ward. I even tried to warn him, "You know I suck, right?" Then the truth came out. Jeff asked me if I felt okay about a little identity theft.

To play on intramural teams, you have to register your team in advance and it can't really change after that. For the game that night, they had the student ID of one of their girl players who couldn't make it. I was given her card (I look nothing like her) and if anyone asked, my name was Brandy. But luckily for us, they don't look at the pictures or you when you check in, so Brandy was there to play.

To be honest, I didn't completely suck. I got a bunch of hits when I was up, got a couple people out, and actually caught the ball a couple times.

However, my true colors did eventually show, and I caught a ball with my thigh instead of my glove. The bruise is showing it's true colors now too. :)

Wednesday, April 27, 2011

I Need to Get on This

My class does Show & Tell every Friday and I decided to do one myself. After the students' standard questions (where did you get it? when did you get it?), their favorite question came up again:


How old are you?


When I answered (for the 20th time this year) that I'm 27, the same evil child as before calls out:


And you're STILL not married?


When I said no, I hear:


Are you even trying to find a husband?


I decided to be the adult and just ignore it, and tried to move on. As I crossed the room, one of my little girls (who must have an aunt in this situation) "whispered" to the evil child:


You're not supposed to ask them about stuff like that! That don't like to talk about it!


I have 2nd graders pitying me...kill me now.


Tuesday, March 22, 2011

Interpreter

I think I can officially add "interpreter" to my resume. Anyone who teaches young children probably knows what I'm talking about.


One of my students came in this morning, came straight to me and said (with excitement), "Miss Bramhall, did you hear about the big salami?!?"

Me: "The what?"

Student: "The big salami...did you hear about it?"

After about 5 more attempts, I figured it out:

salami= tsunami

The news has finally trickled down to second graders in Santaquin, Utah.

Saturday, February 12, 2011

Hercules

This is Hercules.
Abby and I rescued him a couple years ago from the toy dog pound.
(AKA- the DI Yard Area)

He is large enough for an adult to ride.
And he is very friendly.



The other morning, he just couldn't wait for Abby to wake up.
I'm told the scream could wake the dead.


He was so excited for me to get home, he was waiting in my bed.


Then he wanted to play with Carlee.
So he got in her laundry basket.



The best part was she was on the phone when she screamed.


Sunday, January 16, 2011

I am (officially) AWESOME

I was choosen as the Teacher of the Month...

and received the Orb of Awesome!
Yes, I am AWESOME!

Meet Carlee

We got a new roommate in December, an awesome girl named Carlee.

But this is what happens when she finds my camera sitting on the counter.


Again?!?!?!


Even the smart ones try it!