Halloween!

Man to day was CRAZY!! I barely had any teaching time at all! I was a pink crayon for Halloween. Here is a picture of me and my student "Kirby."

 

I REALLY want to put up pictures of my kids adorable costumes, but I can't... sad... :( Privacy issues and such... lame! Anyways, for our class party my room mom found this cute idea http://www.bhg.com/recipe/appetizers-snacks/hootie-twinkie-owl/ How cute are these?

It was such a fun day! Now on to the more insane day tomorrow- the day after trick-or-treating... wish me luck!

My day today

"Mrs. Bindrup you look exactly like my 3rd Grade teacher" PS

"Oh ya? I bet she was awesome!" me

"Ya she was my second best teacher I've ever had. You are my first best teacher." PS

You know what's weird? I deal with a lot of crummy things during the day. I have some tough kids with some disabilities/ tough family lives/ in foster care/ have ADD/ have frustration problems/ I have one with a sensory problem and doesn't like the feel of paper (it sounds weird but it is real. This student's test scores are HUGELY different when he/she takes them on the computer) /I have 3 with dyslexia/ 1 reading on a Kindergarten level/ one the principal specifically asked me to watch if he brings weapons/ boys who are pretty violent during recess and I have to deal with things I wasn't around to see /and normal 10 year olds are still crazy. I am ALWAYS having to deal with something or someone. There is never really a perfect moment where my teaching life is easy breezy and all I have to worry about is teaching a good lesson, but strangely I really like it. I have moments like this previous one all the time and they make the other moments a little easier. Maybe that is how it is when you're a mom?

James has a ....

pinterest! Can you believe it? Come follow us and be our friends! Click on our links!

Nikki


James

super glue

I grew up with all sisters, and all of the joys that come with that. If there was something interesting going on it was someone ruined someone shirt or stole someone's favorite headband or a plethora of other things all having do to with clothes or hair. I never had to deal with "boy" interesting things like dirt, blood, or super glue. Then I married James...

Sorry these are crummy phone photos!! But do you see something hanging from the ceiling? Lets take a closer look....

James super glued a pencil to the ceiling. Can you believe that? I can of course haha. Boy events are so much funnier than girl events.

FALL BREAK!!!

So this week I have Thursday AND Friday off of school! Trust me, I needed it more than my students! Weekends are just too short. I only have time to get ready for school the next week and relax just enough to make it through one more week! This weekend is going to be AWESOME!!!

Although I am quite upset my internal alarm clock is perfect (I was up at 6:30 on the dot). It is kinda nice to be wide awake and get a lot done before the day even starts for some people.

Later today I am taking someone to the airport....

EMILEE!!! She has been student teaching 2 doors down from me the last few weeks and it has been so fun to have her so nearby! I'm sad we are going to be living in different states again! But luckily she moved 15 minutes away from my parents house, so I will still see her often. We are going to go to an authentic Italian pizza restaurant before the airport. So excited!

I feel like all I blog about is school (if I blog at all). But that really is all I have going on! haha. So let's talk about James. James is so incredibly busy this semester. He is taking Chemistry 106 and 107, Microbiology 240 and 241, Physics 105 and 107, and Doctrine and Covenants. Crazy right? I would so rather be with my 10 year olds all day. We NEVER see each other and our apartment is ALWAYS in shambles. But I really feel like I am starting to get into the routine of school and it is going to be smoother and easier from here on out. So hopefully our apartment will start being cleaner and we will eat out less :)

Speaking of James here are some cool soccer shots...

Have I mentioned on this blog yet that James was chosen as a captain this year? They have 4 captains every year and James is one of them this year. Pretty cool right?

Okay... I'm outta here going to enjoy my Thursday and I am not going to think of a single 5th Grade thing for the rest of the day. That might be impossible, but I am sure going to try!

Let me tell you about my LEAST favorite thing about Utah....

This thing surpasses the horrendous driving, pedestrians taking over the streets, awkward Mormon culture, and the snow.... are you intrigued now?

James and I talk about this particular aspect almost every day because unfortunately we have experiences almost every day.

Let me tell you about my day thus far....

It had an AWESOME start. First of all, it is a Saturday so I was able to sleep in!! I woke up at about 8:30 and I went out to get the mail and my mom sent me a $20 Cafe Rio gift card!!! Cafe Rio is my favorite, if you didn't already know. Then I talked James into going to Jamba Juice :) We had a coupon. We got 2 smoothies and an oatmeal for less than $5. Best morning ever? Maybe! I drove to BYU to drop James's smoothie off. I was surprisingly loving it. It was so nostalgic to be on campus. I was walking through the Wilk loving the environment, loving the memories, and actually missing BYU. Weird right? I was there for over 4 years and now I miss it? I never thought that day would come. Anyways moving right along, I walk into the library and think "Dang it! I can't bring a smoothie in the library without hiding it in my backpack." So I tried to walk in without the rent-a-cop guards noticing me.... that didn't work....

"Excuse me Miss you can't bring Jamba into the library."

"Can I just give this to my husband? He is a writing fellow in the middle of a conference. He is like 15 steps away."

"Sorry. You can't bring food into the library." I think that is totally okay. They do not want their books to be damaged. That is completely fine.

"Okay can I leave it right here and he can come pick it up in 5 minutes when his conference is done?"

"No. I can't hold anything for you." Absurd, but I'm still okay with it.

"Okay can I leave the smoothie here and tell him it is right here and he can come get it?" He is literally 15 steps away, but around the corner so he can't see me.

"No. You can't keep anything on the desk."

"Okay. Where can I put it, so I can go tell him?"

"Anywhere. Just not on the desk." At this point I thought he was kidding. In California if someone said that it would be a joke. Although in California a job is not an end all be all. It is a way to make money to do better stuff with your time. Californians know that you might as well enjoy your job, so we don't get caught up into this nitty gritty, stupid rules because everyone knows if you make the people around you miserable you'll be miserable. Or maybe they just don't make ridiculous rules because they know California people will not follow them.

"Are you joking?" I said this in all seriousness. I really thought he was joking. I forgot people are crazy at BYU.

"No."

"Okay I will put it on the ground right next to the desk and go tell him." At this point I just walked away and didn't listen to his answer, and just so you know the smoothie was touching the desk :)

So here it is ladies and gentlemen... my least favorite thing about Utah is the authoritarian jobs with stupid, nitty gritty rules. BYU is the worst, but it is all over Utah.

The BYU gym is awful. Ever since the new design of the gym you have to wear these wristbands. Well they bug both me and James so we take them off and put them on our shoes. The guard lady ALWAYS notices and literally runs over to tell us to put them on our wrists. I'm sorry lady, you just checked me in the gym 3 minutes ago. You know I didn't sneak in. You can see my wrist band on my shoe. Why is it so important I wear it on my wrist?

And... everyone that knows me KNOWS I'm a rule follower. I prefer to follow rules. I don't park in 15 minute parking spots if I am going to be there more than 15 minutes. It makes me feel uncomfortable to ever think about parking in the handicap spot even if James is running in and out. I am all about rules, but not ridiculous power-hungry people pushing dumb rules on me. If I see a reason I will follow the rule in a heart-beat.

5th Graders are my life

For parent/teacher conference I had my students fill out a questionnaire type thing to show their parents. It was mainly their strengths, weaknesses, and goals with a few questions on the back. Below are some of my favorite answers :)

 Fifth Graders are hilarious. It is so weird to be teaching in Utah because being Mormon is really a culture. There are churchy things said all the time! Like be reverent in the hall and little quirky things like that. My ALL TIME favorite 5th Grade story as of yet is....

I gave the kids a trick following directions test. It was one of those that at the end they feel dumb because they didn't properly follow directions. I asked one girl how it made her feel that she didn't follow directions. She said, "Mrs. Bindrup I feel okay about it because I'm not perfect, only Jesus and Heavenly Father are perfect." hahahaha. HILARIOUS. I looked around like wow that was super awkward/inappropriate to share at school. Then another kid said "It's okay Mrs. Bindrup, we are all LDS here." hahaha (it was a small group of 6ish kids).

 Parent Teacher Conferences ENDED today. Yay! They were fun, but awfully long. I loved meeting the parents and talking about how awesome my kids are!! They're the best!

I watched/

am watching Conference on my Smartboard

....in my classroom.

Awesome right?



2 posts in one day! Wow. I'm done blogging for the month now haha.

Dear Blogworld,

I stink at blogging. It is quite pathetic. I do have a good excuse though- 24 ten-year-olds. I just got a new one this week! I am up to:
Boys: 14
Girls: 10
Being a teacher is CrAzY!!! Especially being an intern! For those of you that don't know I completely skipped my student teaching. I only spent 1 month in second grade and 1 month in fourth grade watching and sometimes teaching. Now I am the real deal, 5th grade teacher.
There is SOOO much that goes into it. I know the stereotypical norm of a teacher is if you passed the Fifth Grade, you can teach the Fifth Grade and what I have to say to those people is- I'd like to see you try! Not only do you have to teach, you have to figure out what you are going to teach, when you are going to teach it, how you are going to teach it, how you are going to meet individual childrens' needs, how the students are going to stay engaged, the method you are going to teach and will that method work with these individual children, how you manage the class, how you manage the students with particular behavior problems, how you manage the children with learning disabilities, and that is just planning. On top of that you need to squeeze in all of the info you need to teach in a short amount of time. Then there is still organization, routines, grading, grading, grading, meetings- all the while trying to figure out how you can do it better.
I think the hardest thing about teaching is that it is all in my hands. It is all up to me if my day, lesson, moment is successful. There are so many ups and downs, trials and errors, reflecting and changes, but those good moments are completely worth it! Like when one of my boys struggling in math asks for extra help, or my boy who reads on a Kindergarten level sounded out Antarctic all by himself today! Or when one of my boys that struggles with focusing wrote a whole paragraph in 15 minutes (trust me the last paragraph took 3 hours). Or when one of my girls who just does not get math, unlike anyone I have ever taught before, aced her math test. Or when one of my boys who is in resource most of the day wrote an amazing personal narrative. Or when one of my boys who struggles with getting really frustrated, had a stressful situation and handled it perfectly! This all happened yesterday! It's important to celebrate the little things because the hard things come!

p.s. I know no one will read this. I NEVER read people's long blog posts, especially without pictures!

p.p.s. my favorite subject to teach is probably science! I am teaching genetics. It is so fun!