September 2025 Dump featuring Work

September was not super exciting. I went to work. Before and after work, I did a lot of things related to work (soccer games, clubs, tutoring, conferences, professional development, took pictures of fungi, etc.).

Around my regular work schedule, I worked a lot at my side hustle of tutoring. Got to make that travel money.

I did my best to work out, but that didn't always happen (for example, the 5k I meant to go to this past Saturday that I slept through; don't worry, I took a walk later). The most exciting workout I did was a yoga class at the zoo. I got to see lots of animal friends. 

The other exciting things that happened were my growing collection of BTS toys from McDonalds (thanks to my students!) and celebrating the impending marriage of one of our lovely seventh grade teachers.

October will probably be much more exciting. I'm traveling to Sweden and Denmark for Fall Break, and there will be spooky times shenanigans. 

I apologize that this was not super exciting, but work has been overwhelming. There has been a lot going on at school, and I've been focused on tutoring to make some travel money.

I hope everyone has an excellent week and a spooky October!

August 2025 Dump featuring School

Yeah, school started back. That's all I could really think about in August. Technically, we went back at the end of July, but that's semantics. Let's discuss the beginning of the school year. 

We started in-service on July 28 with two days of learning about a program called Capturing Kids' Hearts. It's an interesting program focused on creating social contracts with your students. These social contracts establish expectations and norms, and they completely changed how we do classroom management. So far, I like the social contracts and I think they, along with the new laws outlawing phones in school, have had a positive effect on our classroom and school environments. It was just a big change to kick off the year.

Then, we got another big change by switching online grading systems. I like the new system, but it took a while to get everything switched over and it affected our logins for other sites we use daily. Basically, we still don't have access to all of our usual online resources.

And, of course, we got an entirely new science curriculum and standards. 

Basically, I felt more unprepared for the first day of school than I really ever have, and I did not feel very supported either. It's been a bit of a rough start. 

Also, my dad spent a week in the hospital because he needed to have his gallbladder removed.  He's fine now, but it was just another layer of things to think about in an already busy time.

On the bright side, we did get to visit family in South Carolina, which was nice. I didn't realize how much Greenville has going on, but it was quite busy. We also had beautiful weather. 

The most positive news from August, for me, was, of course, the announcement of Taylor Swift new album coming out in October and her engagement. That has nothing to do with me personally, but it makes me very happy.

And that's all I remember from the whirlwind that was August. Good luck in September and go Vols.