Remembering Carl Axup

A former coach and teacher of mine passed away last week. It's really too bad. He was a very strict but damn good coach. I'll always remember the little things. Making us middle school kids do 360 pushups and sit ups in a day. Running with us over six miles in an afternoon. The Personal Records we would get were rewarded with a snikers bar that was frozen (before they started making the ice cream snickers bar or whatever). I just hope that Lenie (his wife) is doing well. She's also a teacher in our district working at one of the new elementary schools in town.

Walk the Line

I went to see the movie today. It was excellent. I'm supposed to go out to Dave and Busters tonight for a get together with friends. Turkey Day tomorrow will be at mom's. Dad may be changing jobs, I'm waiting for my last letter of rec (which I should get on Monday). I've salvaged some other old blog posts that I'm going to be putting up over the extended weekend.

Today we had an awards assembly for the kids. That was a bit of a disaster. Those who aren't being recognized shouldn't be at such events.

This month of December will be weird. Jerry (former teacher of mine/coworker/friend) is off track. He helps me keep my sanity. This will be an interesting time. All kinds of chaos at work, my decision on staying next year is still up in the air.

w00t!

I finished my CPR class today with Shelley & Jason from work. We had it with a former professor of mine. It went smoothly. Now I can apply for my CLEAR. I guess when I do I should apply for the CLAD too. Other than that, I have cleaning, fixing the IR transmitter on the MYTHTV box, and laundry today.....

Today I showed my students the portrait I'm working on with them. I made the mistake of trying to show them how "imperfect" it is. Everything except the sides of my face is in perfect proportion to reality. This is seriously a double edged sword. They now know that the proportions I am teaching them work and that contour drawing works VERY WELL.....

The problem is them striving for perfection. While many are doing well, I'm just afraid that they won't leave good enough alone.

At lunch today Steve O. (Science Teacher at work) and I were talking about the gang mentality at work and how some of our students are born into it and how sometimes it seems like no matter how hard you try to help them out of it, they don't want to.

It's not cool to do well in school, it's not cool to care about anything. While we were talking about it, it reminded me of a quote that we dealt with in Theology back in collge. I just for the life of me can't remember who said it......

God does not help those who do not help themself

I'm just hoping that this student understands that we can help him if it's something he wants.

I've found a way to post all my "Olde Shite" in Blogger. I used blogger for a short time, migrated to Nucleus and then finally to something wacky. I can't even remember what I used after that. All I do remember is the fact it was a security nightmare. Well, I'm in the process of converting my old Nucleus SQL Database for this site. I'm not bothering with the comments from the past because I don't know how to convert them.

Nikki

DSC00890.JPG
Originally uploaded by GildeMontes.

My favorite kitten has become a cat. Has it really been 4 years?!?!?

Between the total removal of cigarettes from my life, self-imposed isolation of sorts (I'll explain later), and a life devoted to my students I've become exhausted. Agenda for the rest of the week:
Wednesday - Art classes will be working on their portrait project; practicing skills that they need for their first self-portrait of the year. It's amazing how well the majority of the kids are doing with this. I wish I knew what the magic ingredient has been for how well they are doing this year.
Thursday - Help students start their self-portrait. After school some of the yearbook kids will be staying behind so that we can work on getting all the names corrected and removing students that no longer go to school at Palm. I would also like to get the page memorial to Roderick done with this group, & layout the 7th & 6th grade mug shot pages... Things have been going as smoothly as can be expected with 35 students in that class.
Friday - ASB yearbook photo shoot, pie eating contest, and the art classes will be working on a skill-o-gram. There is a chance I may be feeling under the weather.

Now for the self-imposed isolation. It's more of a lockdown. I'm not going out of my way to meet new people or gain new friends here since there is a very real chance that I could be leaving for Indiana in half of a year.

I think the SFTP issues are now resolved on roastbeef (Dave's new server). I have pictures up of Science Camp. It was a blast. Check the pictures out as one of my photo sets on FLICKR.

Catalina Island

Originally uploaded by GildeMontes.

So pretty.... Too bad I couldn't stay longer.

Work Today, etc...

Work today went well. The kids are really getting the hang of drawing parts of the face. The one challenge they are having is still with value. I'm going to keep working with them on it. At this point they can draw eyes and the nose. Tomorrow we will be working on the mouth.

A parent of two of my students send a message with the 6th grader today. She said that if I'm not there next year their next kid won't be going to that school. I guess it's my fault that I added the kids on MYSPACE and let my friends back in Chicago know of the possibility and the kids read it. I have to do what is best for me.

I'm really looking forward to Catalina next week. I have some of my students in my group. I also know quite a bit of the group I'm in charge of. They are NOT whiners and we will get a lot out of the kayaking, snorkeling, etc. I also know that quite a few of them will be up for the night snorkel.

I got my PowerBook back today, but the ethernet clip is still busted. I was hoping that would be fixed, but I had a feeling that they wouldn't (since it's a part of the motherboard).

GildeMontes.com is now hosted on a BSD server.... A really sweet 1U system that Dice gave Dave.

Keeping Options Open

With the insanity at work, I'm glad that our track of teachers are sticking together. It's just too bad that Corrie is gone. I'm saddened that things with her and her husband (who was the former art teacher at our school) went sour.

I talked with Doug Kocher today, the head of the Communication Department at Valparaiso University (my alma mater) and he tells me that the job there is mine if I want it. It might just be 2 or 3 classes to start, but that will go up once I'm there; if I'm there.

My sister Tracy is picking up some applications for me and I'm going to get my resumé up to date.

As for other stuff:
Mark isn't going on the Science Camp trip and I'll be the only "SCIENCE CAMP VETERAN". I saw what kids are in my group. Some of them are my students which will be really awesome! The big question is still stay here or move... I love my job, I have some excellent coworkers that are wonderful people to spend time talking to, but I need to look out for number 1.

I had to input this from the blogger site instead of my dashboard widget..... Hmm. I wonder what's wrong with it.

Testing..... Last few posts never stuck so I'm troubleshooting.