"There's a teacher in the classroom. She is cute."

My goodness it's been an eventful two weeks! When I last left you, we were about go to Opening Day. Well, it was a beautiful day! (I even got a little sunburned!) We spent some time exploring all the ballpark renovations they did over the winter and I'm excited to go to another game to try out some of the new bars and restaurants. The only downside of that day was that it seems the Tribe has, well, forgotten how to play baseball. It could be a long season if they keep playing the way they have been for the past two weeks.. 

We spent the following weekend in the Hocking Hills with some friends. We went on a couple of beautiful hikes and were both feeling very inspired to go hiking again. Hoping we can make good on that little promise to ourselves.  Here are some pictures from the hikes we went on!

The week after that was unfortunately pretty rough. We came home to discover my car had a flat tire and spent two days trying to resolve that issue. We ended up only needing to get one new tire, thank goodness. Then on Thursday that week I got sick with some kind of sinus thing and I'm only now starting to feel better. Ugh. 

My classes are going well. We are heading into the final stretch! Progress testing starts next week.  My students were especially awesome last week - they must have sensed I was having a rough time. One of them brought me some decorated eggs for Orthodox Easter.

Another day, one of my classes told me that I looked beautiful that day - so much so that two of my students started taking pictures while I was teaching!  I had them send me the photos so you could enjoy some "action shots" ;) The last one was taken during our break in the middle of class - I don't carry my cell phone while teaching! 

 

In my two multi-level classes, we did some work with "there + to be" (a chapter from the book Grammar in Context, which I really love!) I was having my students come up with "real life" examples to practice the construction "there is a.... it is.."  I had my students give examples and they said things like "There are dictionaries in the classroom. They are black." and "There are chairs in the room. They are uncomfortable."  One said "There is a teacher in the classroom" and the two things they wanted me to write to describe the teacher (me!) were "She is cute" and "She is a good teacher."  Have I mentioned lately that my students are the best? ;)

A few other notable items in brief from these past two weeks:

-Conway got a new squeaky toy. And he loves it :) 

-We went to see the folk duo Dala and they were just lovely. 

-I've been on a bit of a cleaning-out-my-closets binge. I bought a huge rubbermaid container and packed away a lot of my clothes. Not going to get rid of them just yet. But I want to put it somewhere out of sight and if I don't miss the things in there - then I'll do something with them. I hope to spend some time this summer really working on going through some of my other areas of life/the house where I just have too much stuff I don't need!

-I spent some more time with my sewing machine last weekend and got this skirt finished. I'm in love. Now I just need warm weather again  so I can wear it (it snowed this week!) 

And that's it from me for now! I could write more, but then I'd never get this actually posted :) Have a great weekend everyone!

Snow Day!

Actually, if we're being honest - it's really more of a cold weather day. I think we finally hit 1* sometime today! Tomorrow is going to be slightly warmer, but still pretty brutal.  I'm thankful for the time off, especially since I'm pretty sure none of my students would've come today (most in that class take public transportation and/or have children in public schools, which were also closed today).  I've spent most of my day trying to be productive. Including reorganizing the shelves on my bookcase where I keep my ESOL teaching materials. They actually look pretty neat AND are in some kind order so I can easily find things! I almost wish I'd taken a "before" picture :)  We're slowly making progress on getting the place organized!

We won't talk about what the rest of the bookshelf looks like... 

The picture of Conway above was actually taken on Valentine's Day, which was snowy, cold and blustery! J and I had a pretty low key day. We went to brunch, spent the afternoon shopping for home organizing supplies, had dinner (and a margarita) at our go-to Mexican place down the street, and rented Frozen from RedBox :) I also spent some time working on the sweater I'm knitting. It's my first one and is going slow, but steady, so far. I know it won't be perfect, but I do hope it's at least wearable! 

Things in the classroom are going relatively well, though classes have been smaller than usual with all of this nasty weather. My self-directed activity time experiment has been going well so far. It seems my students of all levels particularly enjoy doing word finds. I think that different levels get different benefits from them.  For example, the vast majority of my level 0 students are native speakers of languages that use very different alphabets (Cyrillic, Nepali, Arabic), and a few aren't even literate in their native language, For them, the letter recognition aspect of word finds is great practice. I like to use word finds that have themes. This week's theme was "baking" and my more advanced students enjoyed learning new words like "bundt" and "butterscotch" :) 

From a chapter on clothing I was working with a student on this week. I'm pretty sure the answer here is "A".

 I also wanted to thank everyone who donated to my fundraiser! We raised enough for 127 kits of a nail file and tube of chapstick for Hanna House! You guys rock! I'll be sure to post pictures when everything arrives :)  In other Thirty-One news, I'm doing my next bridal show this weekend! Hopefully the weather will cooperate and there will be lots of people there. I'm also hosting an open house at my place on March 6. If you're in the area and want details, let me know! There will be desserts, drinks, and the chance to check out some of the new items from the catalog, including my new favorite - the limited edition Mini Diamond District :)

And that's all I've got for tonight :) Stay warm, everyone!

Musings on community (and some things for ourselves!)

As you can tell from how long it's been since I last posted, the first few weeks back at work have been very, very busy! And a little stressful with all of the snow/ice/winter weather. (check out that picture of my classroom last week five minutes after class was scheduled to start!) But I'm getting back into the groove.

Before I get into what I've been up to, I wanted to let my readers know about a fundraiser I'm doing! (My apologies to those who have seen this before!) In honor of the anniversary of the Thirty-One Gives campaign, I'm currently doing a fundraiser that benefits both University Hospital's Hanna House and Girl Talk (Through Thirty-One's charity, Thirty-One Gives).  The goal of this fundraiser is to show how every little bit helps and that, by working together, we can make a big difference!

University Hospital’s Hanna House Skilled Nursing Center, a local subacute care facility, lists nail files and chapstick as two items they are always in need of. With the purchase of each URU nail file from Thirty-One, the company makes a donation of 31 cents to Girl Talk, an international non-profit peer-to-peer mentoring program for middle school girls. 

For your donation of $2.50, you can sponsor a kit of 1 nail file and 1 tube of chapstick for Hanna House AND contribute 31 cents to Girl Talk. My goal is to raise enough for 100 kits by February 14th.You are welcome to sponsor as many kits as you’d like and donations can be made in honor of a loved one! (Makes a great Valentine’s Day gift!) Are you in? Even if all you can give is $2.50, it would still be a big help! Just let me know (you can comment here!) and I'll send you payment details. You can either send a check or send money though PayPal. 

I've bee thinking a lot about community lately. Not only this fundraiser, but on a larger scale. Last week, J and I (and my mother-in-law) went to the meeting of Greater Cleveland Congregations, which is an interfaith group that works together to take action on social justice issues. At this particular meeting, there were over 1000 people of all faiths gathered to present a list of recommendations for the Cleveland Police's Consent Decree to the Mayor and US Attorney Steve Dettelbach, and Department of Justice Civil Rights Section Chief Jonathan Smith.  It was such an amazing and moving experience and I'm so glad we were a part of it.  You can read more about it at Cleveland.com. 

I am also always amazed by the community I find in my classrooms. Today in my lowest level class, we all made valentines for each other. A little silly perhaps, but for some in this group of students, even just writing the names of their classmates is a big struggle. And it was really sweet to see them all giving each other cards, especially those who are from very different cultures.  I also made some pretty darn good red velvet cookies for them as part of our Valentine's Day celebration :)

I've been feeling very thankful for my friends recently, too. Things have been so busy lately and I tend to get tunnel vision and forget about everything other than work. Huge thanks to our friends who invited us to a basketball game this past weekend. It was so nice to catch up with them (and the seats were pretty amazing, too!) I've also had several friends really step up to help me with some things in my Thirty-One business and I am so, so grateful for their support. 

And, finally, on a more selfish note - J and I had our first meeting with a home organizer this past weekend! It's a bit of a leap of faith (especially as she does things like rearrange our furniture - neither one of us is that good with change ;)  ), but we're hoping for good results. We've got some homework from our first meeting and when we finish that, she'll come back to help us organize our storage room. That will be a difficult task for sure, but I'm really excited about the possibilities.  Now I just need to work on my own issues with letting go of stuff! Anyone have any good advice?

and I'll leave you with this image in honor of Valentine's Day (and because we used conversation hearts as bingo chips in my classes today!)

Starting the new year off right

So far, 2015 has been off to a good start. We've been working hard on getting organized and I've been making good progress getting some new projects off the ground. We've got two huge Ikea bags of old clothes ready to go to Goodwill, two grocery-sized bags of books to take to Half Price Books, and even found a place where we can recycle our old printers (yes, plural!). I've started a new eating plan and so far (*knock on wood*) my stomach's been feeling better than it has in months. Cross your fingers for me!

Yes, folks, that's the t-shirt folding thing that Sheldon on Big Bang Theory uses. J loves it!

Things are starting to move forward at my various jobs/projects.  I just finished my first couple of headbands for my etsy store! I will open that (and start looking for craft fairs) once I feel like I have enough of a stock to really start advertising and selling.  I've also booked two vendor shows as an exhibitor for Thirty-One Gifts. One bridal show and one pet expo! Should be fun. If you're in the area, let me know and I'll give you the details to stop by. I may also have one more bridal show in July. Additionally, I've been putting out some feelers for possible January parties. If you're interested in hosting one, just let me know! (Double hostess credit in January! I do online and catalog parties, too :) )

My online class started this week and I'm trying not to be too overwhelmed by the fact that the number of students I have has nearly doubled. Yikes. But I got my teaching evaluations back from last semester (I'm teaching the same course again) and they were very good. 100% of my students who submitted evaluations said they'd recommend me as a professor (90% said they'd "strongly recommend" me) and 100% said they were satisfied with the online course experience. This is good to hear as I gear up for the spring semester.

I also started teaching ESOL classes again today, though only a three week session for an organization my regular employer works with. This organization helps refugees and they (the refugees) have required hours of English lessons. Since my real job doesn't start back for another 3 weeks, I offered to teach for their clients a few times a week until then. Today I had mostly planned to do introductions and had planned for a very low level class, but it turned out the students mostly all knew each other and were at a higher level than I anticipated. We finished what I had planned for the class 15 minutes into a 2.5 hour session! But one of the things about being an adult ESOL teacher in mixed-level community-based classes is that you have to be flexible and learn to go with the flow. I pulled a couple of picture dictionaries out of the supply closet (I use both Oxford Picture Dictionary and English for Everyday Activities: A Picture Process Dictionary) and we went over a few pages of those books. Then we played a game where I divided the students into two groups by level and gave each group a stack of cards. Each card had two words written on them that were either the same word (for example: "cares cares") or two similar words ("cares scare"). The students worked together to determine if the words on each card were the same or different. With the more advanced students, we also discussed the definitions of the words on the cards.  It actually worked out really well!  I think I'm going to look for some more games to play with this group as a "fun" way to learn English before the official classes start up again in a few weeks. Any suggestions?

And, finally, I thought after 2.5 weeks off - I'd be bored out of my mind and ready to go back. But, alas, I wasn't. It's not that I don't love my job. It's just that I had so much I was going to do to be productive over my break and I didn't even come close to finishing it all! The good news is that I'm only working part time for the next 3 weeks so I still have time to make a little more progress on that to do list. Wish me luck! :)

Stay safe and warm, everyone!