it's not getting easier...but it's getting better!

Students at booker t have the most ridiculous nicknames. i have 3 girls who want to be called le le, a nunapoo, a ne ne, a mamasita, and a shew. on the boy side i have a pig, chonchito, baby drake, papi, etc etc. coming into teaching i expected to get called a couple nicknames like hocus pocus or something silly like that. but ms. AK!? students are so creative.

3 weeks have flown by and i'm falling in love with teaching and my students. As one of my fellow TFA corps members put it,

"each day doesn't get easier, but it gets better." 

So in my last blog post i said that i needed to get better at behavior management and discipline. In these past two weeks, i threw 4 students out of my classroom and sent them down to the office. it's so addictive. I was absolutely horrified the first time i did it;  i felt so guilty like it was my fault that they were misbehaving. And then the second time i threw a student out it felt SO GOOD. i hope this doesn't make me a bad teacher, but after the student left, the rest of the class acted like angels and we got through everything we needed to learn! each little success feels like christmas over and over again. 

last monday was my birthday and i wasn't really in the mood to celebrate. I have never been that huge into birthdays, but i was excited that i at least got the day off because of labor day. i decided that instead of having a big night out i wanted to spend all the money that i would have spent at bars to go straight to my PLANE TICKET HOME TO

JMU FOR HOMECOMING!!!! 

i am so excited. i have been so JMUsick that i KNEW that i needed to go back to visit all of my friends and sisters <3 

(shout out to SAO during their recruitment week this week at JMU!)

Since i spent all my money on a plane ticket, i needed to do something free for my birthday haha. i ended up going to key biscayne with some people from a church that i have been to a couple times, rhythm, and it was SO fun and SOOO beautiful. 

here are some pictures from the beach, but they really do not do it any justice!

the beach was pretty empty which was wonderful. we got lawn chairs and towels  upon arrival and ordered some pizzas and had the most relaxing night ever. 

after we were all beached out we set up a slack line..which i am gosh awful at. 

my wonderful roommate got me flowers, a happy birthday banner, and a whole package of birthday cake oreos which i will be digging into tonight! :] 

This week was a huge BOOKER T WASHINGTON pride week at our school. we had our pep rally on friday which consisted of the dance team shaking their butts in minimal clothing again, the football team creating a mash pit in the middle of the gym, and the girls volleyball team getting kind of forgotten about :[ what i was really excited for was to see my little clarinets try their very best to look the part. they didn't, but it was still cute haha.

leiva and i at the pep rally! and a random student photo bombing in the background haha

 And the pep rally could not have come at a better time! Saturday (yesterday) was our biggest game of the season! we played another nationally ranked team (CENTRAL) at the SUN LIFE STADIUM. it is not normal for high school teams to play in NFL stadiums, but our schools are both nationally ranked and we ended up having nearly 6,000 people in the stands..not bad for high school if you ask me. unfortuantely, we lost. butttttt it's really okay because they weren't in our conference anyway. haha

MY BABIES!

all in all, it has been a crazy, wild, fantastic, and stressful first 3 weeks. i'm excited for it to continue to get better...and easier :]