Five for Friday on 4/19

I hope everyone had a good week. I look forward to hearing what everyone was up to. This is what was up with me (in no particular order):

1. I'm ready to upload my National Board portfolio! For those of you who've done it in the past, they changed it all around this year and we have to digitally upload it. Anyway, everything is written and edited so now I just have some hours of uploading left!

2. This week I mourned the loss of a dear friend who was killed at Virginia Tech 6 years ago. I always spend a day remembering him peacefully by hiking or cooking or something else he loved to do. This year felt so different because I was also worrying for my many friends in the Boston area. Although I'm a California girl now, I spent 4 years as a kid living inside Boston and 9 years as a teenager/college student living less than an hour away from Boston. I have so many friends still out there and they were in my thoughts too. It was an emotional week for sure.

3. State testing!! Boo!  I understand and appreciate the idea of accountability for teaching all students - I'm all behind that part of No Child Left Behind (which is actually a very strong piece of special education legislation for that reason).  I am glad to see that someone thought about the kids who usually get left out of standards based programming.  BUT...this is a big but...the tests we have available to offer our students with disabilities miss the mark in allowing them to show their knowledge.  I couldn't be prouder of the kids for their hard work this week.  They are all rockstars!

4. Laughter!  I know I described some pretty tough stuff this week, it's been a very trying week, but......if you cannot learn to have a good laugh, you cannot survive the bad days.  Some of my favorites this week: Little Miss J was sharing her experiences with police officers during our community unit when she announced to the class that when the officer pulled her dad over, he told her and her siblings to quick buckle up before the officer saw they were unbuckled - I doubt Dad wanted that shared!! Little Miss S raised her hand and when she got called on, she looked at her hand with confusion wondering how in the world it ended up in the air to begin with.  It seems like we were laughing through the tough moments and then laughing some more.  I wonder what my little ones will say next week!

5. I met with my executive director this week and he told me that I'll be in the same position next year! Yay! Again, I will have two first grade rooms and two kindergarten rooms to coteach. My coteachers were so happy to find out the news and that made me feel even more excited to spend another year together.

P.S. Do you like my use of Symbolstix in this post?  They are such great pictures!  Read all about my love of Symbolstix here.

Adie