Stuart Falls & Friends

Patrick & I and Heidi & Andy on the Stuart Falls trail.

Heidi and Andy and Patrick and I went on a double date this past weekend up to Stuart Falls / Sundance area. The leaves were so perfect! It has been a beautiful fall, where rarely the yellow and red are both fairly vibrant at the same time.

Stuart Falls - beautiful in the fall, especially.

I love this picture of Heidi & Andy! So cute!

The Stuart Falls trail takes you right through the gorgeous red leaves.

I was just being silly taking pictures over my shoulder and got my eye too! :)

Sundance

You cannot even see Timp behind up because of the lighting, but there it is!

We had a really good time. I love the mountains and appreciate life-long friendships! It was fun to spend time with Heidi and Andy and enjoy a date. I can't believe Heidi and I have known each other for so many years! I was happy to introduce them to Patrick as well.

Big Cottonwood Half-Marathon

Cami & I at the finish line - thanks Cami for running this with me!

Me with my finishing medal and race number.

I ran my first half-marathon on Saturday up Big Cottonwood Canyon. I finished in 2 hours and 24 minutes, which surprised even me. I was sure I would walk half of it and die, stumbling through the finish line after 4 hours, but no. I actually ran the whole thing!

I am pretty proud of myself. I just wanted to prove to myself that I could do it if I really wanted to. It has been a goal of mine for a few years and I finally pushed myself to do it. When I signed up roommate kind of laughed at me because she wasn't sure I'd follow through which made me want to do it even more. It helped that a lot of it was downhill, not to mention how gorgeous the fall leaves are right now - I told myself to just take it at a good pace and focus on how beautiful it was to run down the canyon.

Squeezing Blood from Stone

We recently got served stats of test results in our classrooms over the last x-number of years of teaching.

Guess what? My students tests scores went down last year. It made me pretty sad, and a little mad. Now, they didn't go down very much a all, but no one likes to see their name next to a downward trending line.

Do you want to know why my stats went down? Your guess is as good as mine, but here is mine:

I'm working hard to finish my masters degree in education. I am still working full-time teaching 200 + students including the English Language Learners at my school. I chaperon events, run the school newspaper, mentor little teens who have real needs, and had a student teacher teaching my class for three and a half months last year. Aside from that I've been dating a lot of over the last year. I kinda want to have a spouse instead of lose one like all those heroic teachers seems to do in teaching movies like Freedom Writers and Mr. Holland's Opus.

I guess what I am saying is I am a real person, with a real life. You can't squeeze blood from stone, and you can't kill off your hard-working teachers in the name of the numbers game. Because you know what? If you have never been a teacher you have no idea how difficult and time consuming and even emotionally taxing it can be. We love your children, but we also have to love ourselves.

You can't reduce good teaching to numbers.

Football & Me

BYU vs. WSU

My cute boyfriend in trying to help me understand the wonderful world of football. I watch football games on occasion, but really have no idea what is going on. I know guys pounce on each other and try to get the ball through the goal posts and that is about it. Well, now I know a little more, and it is actually a whole lot more enjoyable to watch football games when you know what is going on! Imagine that. He is a very patient teacher and I am learning actually quite quickly.

Said boyfriend is teaching me the positions and plays in football with  some interactive video games, which actually is really helpful, and not something you would ever imagine me participating in. Haha

BYU vs. WSU - was a white-out game. It was kind of cool to see the whole stadium  decked out in white. 

I thought this was hilarious. The kid in front of us is obviously just learning how to spell correctly, because WC  stands for Washington State, and I guess he thinks they "suk."