Next year

It has been made official, I will not have a contract to teach at St. Al's for 2012-2013. (At least I don't as of now, that could change if enrollment changes.) Of course I am bummed about it, but I kinda saw it coming all along. The public schools will be going back to half day 4K, so we would get less students from that. It is a last hired, first fired situation. I will be the first one to get a call should enrollment change over the summer. However, I am not going to wait until August to find out if I have a teaching job for next year!
I have slowly been looking and applying to a few that accept online applications. I haven't been able to make myself sit down and fill out applications that need to be mailed. I know that I should start now because I have a feeling that summer will be busier. I will once again be doing summer school for the 4 year olds and Sylvan at night. I also have a student that I am tutoring and am pretty sure that will be continuing during the summer.
Nothing extremely interesting has been happening, just thought I would share my news for next school year. I am staying positive and am really not going to stress about anything until September.
City wide rummage in a few weeks, so that might bring an interesting post :) We will have to wait and see!

Drama

That seems to be a good title for all aspects in the few months since my last post.

School Drama, among a few of the teachers with different standards being applied to different teachers-or so it seems in our eyes. Wouldn't it be so much easier if we all had the same rules and were supposed to follow them. Unfortunately, as with everything, not everyone feels the need to follow all of the rules and may even make some of their own as they go along.

Family Drama with the in-laws, but that is really nothing new. The SIL's think everyone is out to get them and against them, therefore making more issues for themselves and their parents. The in-laws constantly have strange cars showing up and their house and are now convinced that someone is taping their phone, so it is always off making it difficult if not impossible for us to ever get ahold of them. And that house is not somewhere you want to just show up unannounced because you never know what you will walk into.

Sylvan Drama with hiring new teachers and old teachers not getting all the hours they would like. Stress on directors because there are a lot of tests coming in and not knowing where to fit all the kids into the schedule.

Busy is another good word. I have been busy working, privately tutoring, taking a Bible class for my religion certification, and trying to get everything done around the house.

Where does the time go?

Here it is already 2012 and the last time I made a blog post was in July!!! Well, I have been busy. I ended up quitting OfficeMax in mid-August because it wasn't going to fit with Sylvan and the new part time teaching job I got!! That's right, I got a teaching job for the 2011-2012 school year. I am teaching the second section of PreKindergarten for Kaukauna Catholic School System, where I subbed quite a bit the last few years. I only teach in the mornings, which I will take for now, so I have my afternoons free for errands and cleaning before going to Sylvan in the evenings. It has been working out very nicely and am glad to be getting a steady paycheck!

As I look at the goals I made for 2011, I think I only accomplished a few of them. Here is my review:(Goals in black, reviews in purple)

1. Stay organized. I want to be able to see the top of my kitchen table, end tables, computer desk, and printer at all times. (At the moment I cannot see them all) This was a off and on thing. Things could usually stay clean for a while and then something would come up where I would get busy and not have time to put things where they belonged.

2. Drink more water. Can't say that I have been drinking more. I drink some at school and then forget when I get home.

3. Read at least 24 books this year-which works out to 2 a month. I would like to try Rae Ann's A to Z reading list, so that would give me 26 this year. Big fail, and with the jobs going on once September hit, I slowed way down. I am going to try again. If anyone has suggestions for a good book that starts with Q or X, let me know.

4. Make at least 2 blog entries a month (guess my 2 for January are covered!! JK) I can do more, but unless my life gets more interesting, 2 a month could be boring for you readers! Started strong, fell short in the summer when I started getting busier or less interesting!

5 Do 2 things out of my comfort zone. (Rae Ann, this is where you come in again :)) Perhaps add more students to tutor. Well, I think I accomplished this one. I applied for a job dealing with people all day, and tried it for a month. I have also added 2 new students to my tutoring schedule.

6. Do dishes daily/nightly. I usually wait 2-3 days in between doing dishes and then spend so much time on them. (I currently have a sink (kitchen) full of dishes at the moment.) Also, this way the food may be easier to get off! Also off and on. Some weeks I am on top of it, especially with my afternoons off. But when I have other things get done and work at Sylvan late, they get pushed off to the next day.

7. Keep a positive attitude. This one will be a tricky one, but I know it will make me a better person in the end. I will find a job and/or win Publishers Clearing House!!! Probably not always, but I tried.

8. Build my relationship with God. I have recently started trying to have daily conversations with him (sometimes forget). Perhaps I could add a scripture reading a few times of week and reflect on that. This fell way short.

9. Put all my craft ideas into action. Possibly get into a craft fair by the end of the year. Nope, didn't get any crafts done this year.

10. Don't sweat the small stuff, especially at home. Ongoing goal.

11. Make more meaningful Facebook or blog comments. Something more than just "liking" a post or saying sent when I gift an item. I would hope that my Facebook friends would say that I have :)

Thanks for checking on my progress. Stay tuned for my 2012 goals, and I can tell you that there will NOT be 12 of them, that is too lofty!!!

Waiting for something positive

Well, I can no longer complain that good things are not happening to me. On July 15, I was offered a job teaching PreKindergarten for the mornings only at the Catholic school where I was a frequent substitute. I am still waiting to find out about that one as they were waiting to do reference checks. Also on the 15, I was offered a job at OfficeMax and I accepted that one because at the time I had no other options.

On July 18, I had an interview for a full time 4K position. They were supposed to know late this week or next week about that position, so I am still waiting to hear on that one. (I may have to contact them and see where I stand.)

On July 21 I started orientation at Office Max.

On July 27 I had an interview for a part time 4K teacher in Seymour, with the option of staying in the afternoons to provide child care. They are hoping to do orientation on Aug 9, so they hope to have a decision by then.

On July 28 I was called by a Catholic school in Middleton for a K/1st split class. They are interested in setting up an interview next week. The principal is just trying to coordinate with the pastors schedule, as he wants to be in on the interviews as well.

So, now I just have to hope that one of these teaching jobs comes through-hopefully a full time one-and then I can tell OfficeMax that while it was fun, I have to say good-bye!

Thanks for all the positive thoughts sent by all of you readers! :)

OfficeMax

As of now, I am an OfficeMax employee. I had orientation last week and went in for 3 hours today to start my online training. There is a lot of information to absorb, and I am not sure how I am going to be able to remember all the computer stuff and protection plan information. Hopefully it will become second nature the more I do it :) I don't have to go back in until Friday for more training, so we will see how that goes, and in the meantime I will be studying up on my protection plan information.

I certainly think this meets my "out of my comfort zone" goal for the year, as I am not one who would normally just go up to someone and ask if they need help with anything. So, I am sure this will help me open up more and we will see what it leads to.

Of course I am still hoping for a full time teaching job-fingers crossed.

More on OfficeMax as it happens. At least I should have some more interesting posts every once in a while!

Updates

As July is quickly passing us by, I am realizing that I may not reach my goal of 2 blog posts a month. I really need a more interesting life.

The 4th of July left us in the Appleton area to watch the local fireworks with friends. We skipped Rhythm and Booms in Madison this year to save on gas since we would be driving to Baraboo the following weekend for our bi-annual family get together. I have an uncle that lives in California, who comes out with his family every other year and we do something as a large group. This year it was camping in Baraboo. We had a new tent that we were excited to try out, and was thankful that the rain held off until after we took the tent down on Sunday morning-even if it was just barely!

After camping, it was one more week of summer school. I have to say that week was harder then the first week, behavior wise. We had the week of the 4th off, so the kids had to come back for one more week after a week vacation. I think that was to long of a break from routine for them, but we all survived.

I have some positive news on the job front. I was offered a part time PreKindergarten position at the Catholic school here in Kaukauna, where I subbed quite a bit last year. I just have to wait and see how reference checks go-not thinking there should be any issues there. So, while that is not official yet I have to decide what to do about this other job offer I received. I accepted a part time position at OfficeMax and go for orientation tomorrow. I am not sure yet that I really want to keep it. Here is the dilemma: It pays $1.50 LESS then I make at Sylvan (both part time jobs) So I have to see if I will be getting more hours at OfficeMax and what Sylvan thinks I could get for hours once school starts. I will go for orientation and see what he has to tell me about hours. I really don't want to give up Sylvan, but if this school year goes like last school year I am going to need something with more hours. I will keep you posted.

I also had an interview on Monday for a 4K teacher at a day care in Green Bay. This would be a full time position (which would make the OfficeMax decision for me). They had a few more interviews this week and then would be calling back for 2nd interviews next week. Keeping my fingers crossed for full time, that would help a lot!!

Thanks for reading my rambling and keep sending positive thoughts my way :)

Summer school and such

I was reminded recently that it has been a while since I blogged. While my life is not that interesting and I do not want to bore my few readers, I guess something is better then nothing, right.

Well, we are in week 3 of a 4 week summer school. My teaching is officially over as my co teacher is in charge these last 2 weeks. So my job is crowd control and helping where needed. Our class is a pretty good class, active but good. We have a parent that we are not to sure about, but we don't have to like the parents right?!

Next week we have off and will be on a family camping trip next weekend. We are not doing anything exciting for the 4th, probably just hanging out here and trying to catch some local fireworks displays.

I am on the job hunt, as always. I had 2 interviews this month, both produced a thank you for your time, but we went with another candidate letter. I have sent out 27 resumes this month, so far and have 3 more waiting to get completed. I am in the process of revamping my resume, based on a friends suggestions in hopes to get it looked at more often, so we will see what happens. I will keep all of you (the 2 of you readers) posted on any successes.

Off to work on that resume!!