Well if you read my blogs on a regular basis then you know that on Saturday I worked from about 11:00 am to 10:30 pm at the school doing a variety of activities. These activities included painting, organizing, moving and finishing up the schedule for Summer School. So on Sunday, it was play time - literally. Jessica and I left at 8:00 am to go to Disneyland without the kids. Hee Hee Hee! We dropped my car off at a restaurant in Corona for later and proceeded onto Anaheim. The really cool thing included us having adult conversations without discipline any children. I know, I know….I love the kids but it was nice for some adult time.
Next, Jessica and I made our way to Asgard to visit Thor. Ummmm……the Disneyland cast member was correct, Thor was worth the wait….Very attractive and he was truly in character pretending he did not know what a cell phone was. He asked, "What is this thing called a selfie," which of course resulted in Jessica shouting, "Thor wants a self," and of course we had to take more than one!!!!
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We then moved onto Captain American, who was built but definitely not like Captain America in the movie or Thor. He was nice and we got a selfie with him as well before we went to meet Alison at the front gate!!
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| Ali on the Tire Bumper cars |
Monday - Wednesday
Well it is the start of the end of the first school year for me at John W. North High School. I am getting ready to finish my first year as an assistant principal in California. The next three days are exam days with Freshman, Sophomores and Juniors as the seniors get ready for graduation rehearsal for formal ceremonies on Wednesday. It is going to be a crazy next three days as teachers try to get things finished to get out of here as quick as possible and students are on edge waiting for their grades to find out if they will be attending summer school. I started off the day dealing with pot brownies from Friday. We had two individuals who had to go home because they ate a brownie laced with marijuana. Of course on Friday they said they did not know what was in it, who gave it to them or what was in it. However, on Monday they were signing a different tune, they were blaming a particular person and stating they knew what was in the brownie when they took it. Of course in the class of 36 people, no one else saw anyone else with a brownie, and the person they say gave it to them denies it. I mean really…… So we had to suspend the girls for two days and they came back to take their exams on Thursday.
It is Tuesday and there are two more days to go and today is the day that we have the senior breakfast and more graduation practice. I am telling you. There are more celebrations, parties and practices in the last three weeks than I have ever seen a SC high school do. I know many of the schools out this way do this because Michael was doing this a lot last year and the other schools are doing it but I find it funny that so many of the schools do so many celebrations for high school. Wow!!
Today is graduation day!!! Another practice this morning and this afternoon is the day the students walk across the stage. We have 12 students who did not pass and will not be walking across the stage but other than this we have close to 550 graduates. At 3:00 pm we went into graduation mode and started having people on campus. At 4:00 pm we had people in line waiting to get in, graduates on campus and t he K-12 teacher reception in the multi-purpose room (MPR). This give all the staff and faculty from the schools students attended to come and eat some appetizers and join us at the graduation to celebrate the completing of these students K-12 schooling. My job for graduation was visitor side supervision. Basically, I hang out on the visitors side of the stadium and welcome people, deal with issues and make sure everyone is okay. I only had one parent get mad at me, which is pretty good since most of the time when I work graduation in the past I have anywhere from 20-30 parents mad because they don't have seats, have to stay seated or climb stairs. I also had a diabetic man start to get woozy but we got him into the shade, got some water and some sugar for him and all was well. I also had a young man end up with a bloody nose of which we got to the bathroom and got cleaned up. Graduation went off without any issues. The speeches were great, the kids were wonderful and did what was asked and while the crowd was not the solemn crowd that I usually have while I am working graduations in South Carolina it was most likely because this was outside in a stadium. However, high school graduations are just that, high school graduations. In the end, the graduates are excited at the end, they want to say bye to everyone and the they are super excited to be with their families celebrating.
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| Graduates coming in. |
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| Getting their Diplomas |
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| Megan and Leann Selfie! |
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| After Graduation |
Thursday
Thursday was a little nutty at school. The teachers are all excited to leave and there is so much to do to close up the school as we also start Summer School and plan for a new year. This has been the busiest week so far with things that had to be done on other people's time table and support them as far as students, faculty and staff. While testing was busy, this has been exhausting at this point and I have been having a hard time sleeping. LOL!!!! I did not have to go to the Grad Night at Magic Mountain because I am working summer school, so rather Megan went to the event. This allowed me time to get things organized and move into my new office. For those of you that know me well, you know that for me to be able to get started with work, I really do have to be organized and have everything in place. I will stay up for periods on end and continue to work for hours on end to get organized so I can be successful at whatever I am working on. Thursday was one of those days. For me to move forward, I had to spend time getting organized - no lie - it took pretty much all of Thursday. We had teachers checking out all day long and therefore the day was fragmented for me because I would start something and then stop to move onto another task and then begin again. It was a good thing I was just organizing, which was easy to start and stop. I did leave work at 6:15 pm to make it to the gym in order to have time to workout.
Friday
Today was a quiet day in the morning. I was able to get lots of things done. I got the stored science equipment moved to another room. I got the tech cables picked up. I was able to get the last of my notebooks set up in the new office. We discussed some re-arranging of office materials to make a larger conference room for parent teacher conferences On top of that we had summer school teachers coming in to get their classrooms ready for Monday morning. That took a lot of time because we have a lot of teachers from other schools joining us and they are not familiar with the items on campus so I had to spend time today making sure all rooms had computers, materials were out for teachers and things are ready to go on Monday. I spent the rest of the day moving equipment from one place to another for teachers.
Now, at 1:00 pm we had our summer school meeting. I cannot say that I have ever heard of doing Summer School the way that RUSD does, but then again, there has not been a lot of summer school since budgets got tight in 2007. So, in SC, we did summer school for math and ELA so students could advance to the next grade level. Then when budgets got tight, we only did summer school on the computer as Credit Recovery. Students always had to take a class and fail it and then they could register for credit recovery and when they passed the class with an 80, they were able to get credit and exit the class. RUSD is doing credit recovery where we are having classes with real teachers. I know, real teachers. Students signed up for the class they desired to take and then we determined how many teachers we needed and set up classes that way. We have forty different classes that will be going on over 24 days with 40 different teachers. Now, these teachers are not all from John W. North. There are some from different high schools and middle schools so we have new people on the campus and hence, had to do the 1:00 pm meeting. The crazy thing is that it slipped my mind that all the teachers have packed everything away and I do mean everything. There is not a dry erase marker, an eraser, stapler or staple anywhere on the desks. It is crazy…..I remember cleaning up for summer but I never locked this much up. I had emailed teachers and let them know we were having summer school in their room and asked them to leave out their items like their computer and low and behold, they still they put everything away, tried to lock up or take home their computer and on top of that many tried to get me to not use their rooms. I hate it for them, I get that our rooms are our second home and we spend more time at work many times than we do at our homes so I get teaches feel their "space" is invaded. However, our goal is to educate our students and do what is best for them and it is best for our students at John W. North to have Summer School on campus. We will have over 1800 students on campus over the 24 days earning credits to be able to graduate! Should be interesting to see what happens to the Master Schedule once they are done earning credits.
I also found out today one of my friends lost his dog. Not everyone has such strong feelings for their pets as others. I am completely attached to mine and they are my children. I love my kitties and see each of their individual personalities. My friend who lost his dog is the same, he loves and trusts his pets unconditionally. He took in two beautiful dogs awhile ago and has lived with these dogs for a long time on their own. I have spent time with this fabulous puppy doing different things and am so sad she is gone. It is so hard to lose one of our family members. I have lost three cats recently. Two due to old age, which I can accept, they were 14 years old. However, in June when I lost Diego, the beautiful cat that adopted me, my heart was broken and Diego was only with me for about a year. My friend losing his dog, brings to me the feelings that I am going to have when Squeak passes, hopefully a lot time from now, but she is 11 years old. I feel terrible for him and his puppy family and my heart hurts for them.
Saturday
On Saturday, I went to school to work with Rich Davis and get everything ready for the students to arrive on Monday. We have the lists hung in the office, we have the desks in the rooms, we have the computer cart set up for registration. We are ready to go on Monday morning. I spent the rest of the day getting set up and organized for the new work that I am about to take on at John W. North and whatever duties I am going to be asked to complete for the 2014-2015 school year. I am finally organized and cleaned up ready to start working again heavily on the next school year and PhD that needs to be finished. My office is moved and things are organized to a point where I can find them…so I figure it will only take a week or so to become unorganized. LOL - no, its good and will be fine.
I left school around 2:30 pm and ran a few errands. Now on Thursday on the way home, my check tire pressure light came on and I really thought it was just a change in temperature. However, on Friday and Saturday my check tire pressure light was still on so I went by the Volkswagon Dealership to see if they knew what it was. They checked it out and said at first there was nothing wrong and they just added air but then when they were about to give me my car back, one of the techs checked again and there was a nail in my tire. Anthony, the service guy, was kind enough to go ahead and Have it patched for me so I did not have to go elsewhere or bring it back. Needless to say, when I bought my car there, Scott Carter told me that he would be my car guy, just like I had a dentist, doctor and bank and at the time I kinda laughed to myself. However, he is my car guy. They were very helpful in getting my tire fixed and getting me back to my Saturday. They are also going to take out my dent that is left in my car from a acorn / branch / or whatever happened to the top of my roof on the driver side. I have no idea when it happened or what it was but somehow, I ended up with a dent that I cannot see from the driver's side. I don't get in on the passenger side so I would not have noticed it! I am a little bummed but the VW place is going to get that out for me as well in July when I have time to drop off my car.
Overall
My first year at John W. North High School has had its ups and downs. There has been positives and negatives at every step of the way. I have grown as an individual, an educator and assistant principal with every new task, situation and challenge I have experienced. I have also loved every second of it from the late nights, to the endless counting of tests, to the crazy excuses students give me for the odd things they do. I look forward to another year of learning with my Administrative Team at John W. North, my BFAW's at our dinners, my time on the High School Task Force, board meetings, a new superintendent, new assistant superintendents and all the new things I will learn this upcoming year with new responsibilities.
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