thank God for jobs

well the last time i posted i was stressed and depressed about the job situation with andrew, and then the answer to my prayers came when he called me at school to tell me he had been offered the job at meld. it made me so happy to know that i wasn't going to have to wait any longer to feel stable and secure. we decided to go out and celebrate since we'd been living so frugally. we had the congratulatory dinner at humble pie downtown. andrew had wanted to go for a while before he went with lora and marc, and we finally got a chance to go together. the food was great, as was the wine, and it was such a lovely thing to be celebrating that now BOTH of us have good jobs, and that's the whole reason we moved back to raleigh.

since my meeting with my mentor teacher, i've been trying to switch things up in class and do more partner/group work. it's been somewhat hit or miss, but i'm feeling like we're moving in the right direction. also, the sixth grade team has put together academic electives to take the place of our "eog prep class", and i'm excited that next quarter, rather than doing stupid eog prep, i'll be teaching a storytelling elective 7th period to kids who actually want to be in the class. in addition to that, we're trying to take our tracked classes to actual inclusion classes for next semester, and we've gotten the ok from the curriculum specialist as well as a meeting set up with the assistant headmaster. we even put together classes for next semester in an effort to get them well integrated and split up behavior issues. i'm excited at the possibilities.

last night, we went to jess and norm's house for dinner. we had good wine and good cheese before enjoying the roast and potatoes, with brownies for dessert. we tried this claret wine (pictured), and i really enjoyed it! we had a great time hanging out and catching up, and we came home and went to bed very late. i had a horrible time waking up this morning and was running late to school, but since i'd stayed late and set up yesterday, it wasn't a big deal.

today was a half-day, so the kids left at 11:30 and i only had 35 min class periods - it reminded me of what class was like when i taught at smith because there the classes were only 46 mins. something about the shortened period gives me a better feeling because the pace has to be faster. hopefully, this positive trend will continue and we're hitting our stride. we shall see. after the half-day we had staff development, and i left work at 3. now i gotta get on the road - we've got dinner with andrew's mom at firebird's, then kim's christmas tune karaoke party - woohoo! :-)