Zoo Atlanta Teacher Day

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Educator Appreciation Day - If appropriate, share with your staff!

http://www.zooatlanta.org/home/article_content/educator_appreciation_day

Zoo Atlanta welcomes educators and their families at Educator Appreciation Day on Saturday, March 6 from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Educators enjoy FREE admission (educator identification required) and $3 OFF general admission for up to two guests. Pre-register and be entered to win a Teacher Workshop!

·         Attend a Wildlife Theater presentation at 10:00, 12:00, 1:00, 2:00 or 3:00 to learn more about Zoo programs <http://www.zooatlanta.org/home/book_a_program> .

·         Each includes a private animal encounter and raffle for exciting prizes, such as a Family Membership and admission tickets!

·         Handle some cool biofacts (skulls, bones, etc.)

·         chat with our talented Education Team to find out about other hands-on tools we use to enhance learning.

·         Round out your day with your own self-guided Zoo field trip

·         10 percent off in our gift shops and food outlets!





Rebecca Amerson, NBCT

Teacher on Special Assignment: Online Learning

Cherokee County Schools

Hip Hip Hooray!!!

Brooklyn's momma just posted to Facebook that the doctors took Brooklyn off the the ventilator today!!!!!

Please keep praying for continued improvement so that this precious little girl can come back home to Georgia where she belongs!!!

Please keep praying and sending positive thoughts to Brooklyn!

Because they are WORKING!!!!

DJ's teacher and a friend of mine has talked to Brooklyn's mom, who had the best news!

Brooklyn has started to respond to her family and doctors when they talk to her!

Plus the doctors are saying that they are planning on to take her off the ventilator in the next 24-48 hours!!!

I have to say that when I read this news, all three times today, I got tears in my eyes. This is the best news, now to get her all the way better so we can get her back home to Georgia, and just back home to her house!

I really think DJ might have a crush on Brooklyn. The other weekend he prayed directly to her. Then today he asked me to send her mom a message on "the puter" (facebook) to tell Brooklyn to feel better and come home and back to school soon!

Please keep praying for Little Brooklyn

Please my friends pray for DJ's friend Brooklyn. As I posted a couple of days ago, Brooklyn had a bad asthma attack about 2 weeks ago and is still in the hospital. The doctors put her in a medically induced coma and have her on a ventilator. This whole time she has been on the ventilator.
The other night Brooklyn took a turn for the worse, so the doctors have had her lifeflighted to a hospital in Alabama.

This is very expensive and very exhausting for her family. They have been with her every step of the way. Her older brother is a 4th grader at our school, and he is very protective of her, so this is hurting him to have her in the hospital, and I can only imagine what he is going through with the doctors moving her to Alabama. I am not sure if he will have stayed here with family and friends or if his parents will have taken him with them.

Please please pray for healing for Brooklyn, knowledge for her doctors to find the best way to help her, and strength for her family.

The man who occupies the first place seldom plays the principal part.
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

My thoughts on teaching

After having a rough couple of days, I decided that I needed to remind myself as to why I do what I do, what I have been doing since 1998.

I do not teach for the money, goodness knows I barely make a living wage considering the number of hours I work, and the education I have.

I do not teach for the glory, goodness knows that I am rarely appreciated by my students, or their parents. There are exceptions to this, as I know very well, but they are the exceptions, not the rule.

I do not teach for the fun of it, goodness knows there are days when I am definitely not having fun. I always try to have fun, but some days it just is impossible.

I do not teach for the summers off, goodness knows there is rarely a summer that I have not taken at least one class/workshop, or have not worked at all. As a matter of fact, I can think of two in 13 years, the year we moved from England to Florida, when my summer was all of one month, and the year before we moved from Florida to Georgia, because I resigned my teaching position knowing we were moving over the Christmas holiday.

I do not teach for the "breaks", you know, winter, fall, President's Day, etc. Because goodness knows on those "breaks", I am still making lesson plans, grading papers, or something similar.

I do not teach because it's "easy", goodness knows there are days when I do not feel like I reached any of the students, and wonder not what is wrong with them, but what is wrong with me.

I teach, because I care.

I teach, because I want to make a difference.

I teach, because I want to make the world a better place.

I teach, because I can see the future in these student's eyes, if only they are given the opportunity to reach their potential.

I teach, because I know that this group of students has the ability to become future veterinarians, doctors, lawyers, musicians, actors, directors, statisticians, pilots, military members, and politicians, just as much as my former students are now doing, even the ones that we worried and lost sleep over 5 to 10 years ago (I love you guys! I know I didn't say it enough back then!)

I teach, because one day, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps 10 years from now I just might get that Facebook/Myspace message that says, you made a difference in my life, you always believed in me, thank you. And in that one message it makes all of the bad go away.

If you are reading this, thank a teacher, really, it's not just a saying, its the truth! I promise they will appreciate the gesture!

Partnership Quotes

Partnership Quotes: "If we are together nothing is impossible. If we are divided all will fail.
Winston Churchill"

Please keep DJ's classmate in your thoughts and prayers

Last week one of DJ's classmates had an asthma attack that landed her in the hospital.

She is now in a medically induced coma and on a ventilator.

Please keep Brooklyn and her family in your thoughts and prayers.

Matt's Band! If you are in California please check it out!

Album 01\31\10, by Patricia Cleveland

I'd like to share my Walmart Digital Photo Center photos with you. Once you have checked out my photos you can order prints and upload your own photos to share.

1 month down, 10 pounds down

One month ago today I stopped drinking sodas, any and all sodas (except 1 diet coke, and I didn't drink all of it).

About 2 months before that I stopped drinking sweet tea, but I didn't really drink it all that often anyway.

The sodas on the other hand, I was drinking at least 2 a day.

The first few weeks were bad. If I walked into Walmart or even PigglyWiggly, my brain started telling me that I needed a soda, perferably Pepsi or Dr. Pepper. However, I fought the good fight, and I won.

For giggles sake I weighed myself tonight, and I am down ten pounds since I stopped drinking sodas.

Pretty darn cool if I do say so myself.

OMG there are some really really stupid people out there in the world! Do they really think that teachers do not work at home? Do they really think that we do not pour our blood, sweat and tears into our classrooms 190, I mean 183 days a year (sorry forgot about the furlough days!) Telling me to work harder or else I wont get a pay raise because my students don't score well on a test that only tests how well they test on that given day, is just crap! And telling me that I can control every little thing that happens in my classroom is just an idiot! I would like to challenge anyone that thinks that way to come in and volunteer in my classroom several hours a week! Let's see how well you can handle it!

Don't you just love it when

You attempt to contact your local politicians and their email address is rejected as user unknown, and its the email address that you got off of the state website?

It's no wonder that our state is in the middle of a budget crisis!

Proposal for congressional and gubentorial reform

I saw this today as a friend's status update on Facebook, and I think its a great idea. It may be the only way to make sure that education is properly funded the way it needs to/should be.

We should make it a requirement for elected officials to have either a.) attended public school or my personal preference b.) have a child enrolled in public school, in the district you are running for.

I think that overall the world would be a better place if these elected officals saw what we had to deal with on a daily basis, and maybe they would care a bit more about the money that they are taking away from the children in their district!

Stress

My friend Renee had this posted on her blog http://www.myspecialks.com/

This is a letter that was sent into the Army Times and can be found here: http://www.armytimes.com/community/opinion/army_opinion_letters_120709/ Dai H. Salerno, you rock!


Here’s what stress is
Stress? President Obama suggests Maj. Nidal Hasan cracked under stress. That’s a slap in the face to the men and women who have deployed countless times and have yet to pick up a gun and start shooting their own. I don’t buy the stress defense.
Want to know what stress is? I will take it from the point of view of an Army wife:
Stress is:
• Knowing your husband leaves in a few weeks and making sure you have all legal documents in order in case he doesn’t come back, he’s taken POW or you need his signature to proceed with any number of legal, bank or personal dealings while he is deployed.
• Sitting in a gymnasium for a few hours knowing those are the final moments you will spend with him for 12 to 15 months.
• Keeping your chin up and telling him, “Goodbye” and “stay safe” and holding your tears back because he whispered, “Don’t cry, babe” in your ear.
• Watching the man you love march out with his unit and wave back at you one last time.
• Not hearing from your husband for a week or two until his unit is finally settled in whatever God-forsaken location they are assigned to.
• Coming home and continuing with your everyday life, work, school, children, family, home, pets, vehicles and any other daily activity by yourself and not having the luxury of being able to talk to your spouse about it.
• Living for the brief 10- to 15-minute phone call from him that may come once a week.
• Watching the news every day and seeing the politicians back home tie soldiers’ hands by bringing political correctness into the battlefield.
• Getting a phone call mid-tour telling you your husband is OK but being medevac’d to Germany.
• Calling your husband’s rear detachment and having them give you no further information about where your husband is or how badly he is hurt.
• Quitting the best job you ever had to pack up your stuff and move 18 hours back to the post he’s assigned to so you can have a place before he gets there.
• Having to feed, bathe and care for your husband because he cannot use his arms.
• Listening to his guilt for not being able to come back with his unit.
• Knowing another deployment is just another year and a half away.
• Repeating this cycle two or three or four more times.
I’ve yet to see an Army wife “crack” and go on an “act of violence that is inexplicable.”
— Dai H. Salerno, Fort Leonard Wood, Mo.

I was feeling left out

because I didn't have a clue what the buzz was this week about Pants On The Ground. This guy is great!

Now if only all the fools that have their pants on the ground would listen to him!



Go Mr. Platt!


By the way if you do not know his story, he is a bona fide American Hero. Not just some wanna be! He was a student of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. He also is still an an activist today.

An Open Letter to Govenor Perdue

Dear Governor Sonny Perdue,
I am writing to you today, because I am a third grade teacher in T. County Georgia.

I am extremely upset by the recent cuts in education funding, to include the teacher furlough days that the state of Georgia has had this year, and the proposed by you additional 4 to 5 days of furlough days for the coming months.

As a teacher I average $200 a month that I personally spend on my students, and put back into my classroom. The proposed furlough days will cost me over $600. If this happens my family and I will have to do without this money, which in turn means that my students will have to do without the supplies that I usually fund out of my own paycheck.

As I know you are aware our community and several surrounding communities are low income, rural districts, we have between 80 and 100% free and reduced lunch participation. If I don't buy these supplies for my students, who will? Certainly not their parents who are out of work and struggling to put food on the table at home.

I believe that you have forgotten how hard Mrs. Perdue worked as an employee of the public school system, or you would have never proposed these cuts! Most of us are at school 10 to 15 minutes before our contracted time and leave an hour after our contracted time. Most of us work on school work for an average of 30 minutes nightly at home, with an additional 2 to 3 hours over the weekends. Even on your "furlough" days we still are working, we are doing lesson plans, grading papers, and trying to find new and better ways to reach the children of this great state. In our school we do not even have a duty free lunch, because of your cuts in education funding, if we do not eat with the children, there will be no supervision of them.

I would like to personally extend an invitation to you to come and shadow me for a week while I do my job, educating the children of this great state. I would welcome the opportunity to show you how the money that you are planning on cutting from the education system is spent in my classroom. I would welcome to opportunity to introduce you to the people that you are planning on hurting the most with these cuts, my own children, and the children I love like my own, my students. I would welcome the opportunity to show you how hard my fellow educators work on a daily basis, as well as all of our support staff. Please contact me about coming and walking a day in my shoes, where none of the children are prepped that the Governor is coming and to be on their best behavior for the day, or where you are only shown the best of the best, the brightest of the brightest, but where you are shown a real classroom in a real district, with the real children.

You have said how important education is to the future of this great state, and nation, educators helped put you into office, and now you are stabbing us in the back!

I ask that you stop the cuts funding Georgia's education system.

Governor Perdue, what you are doing to our great state by cutting into the education of our children is despicable. There are better ways to make cuts in the state budget than by taking it out on our educators and our students. What is being proposed by you is going to drive the great teachers out of education, because we can not afford to teach any longer.



I promise that anyone that votes for these cuts in education will not have my vote in any coming election, and I will do my best to get the word out to all of my fellow voters as well to not vote for anyone that voted for cuts in education. I will vote for all non-incumbents, in an effort to vote out any incumbent that voted for budget cuts in education. I know that you can not run for office again, however, your party has many other incumbents and also will have someone running for your position and I will help vote them all out of office if I can.

Please, help the children and educators of your state, and put a stop to these proposed cuts!
Sincerely,
Patricia L. Cleveland

An open letter to the members of Georgia's House of Representatives and State Senate

Dear Georgia State Representatives and Senators,
I am writing to you today, because I am a third grade teacher in T. County Georgia.

I am extremely upset by the recent cuts in education funding, to include the teacher furlough days that the state of Georgia has had this year, and the proposed additional 4 to 5 days of furlough days for the coming months.

As a teacher I average $200 a month that I personally spend on my students, and put back into my classroom. The proposed furlough days will cost me over $600. If this happens my family and I will have to do without this money, which in turn means that my students will have to do without the supplies that I usually fund out of my own paycheck.

As I know you are aware our community and several surrounding communities are low income, rural districts, we have between 80 and 100% free and reduced lunch participation.

As politic ans, you have said how important education is to the future of this great state, and nation, now I ask that you step up and defend the educators and the children in Georgia. I ask that you go to your fellow state Representatives, and state Senators and tell them to stop the cuts funding Georgia's education system.

I ask that you talk to Governor Perdue about what he is doing to our great state by cutting into the education of our children. There are better ways to make cuts in the budget than by taking it out on our educators and our students. What is being proposed by those in office is going to drive the great teachers out of education, because we can not afford to teach any longer.

Please, help the children and educators of your home district, and put a stop to these proposed cuts!

I promise that anyone that votes for these cuts in education will not have my vote in any coming election, and I will do my best to get the word out to all of my fellow voters as well to not vote for anyone that voted for cuts in education. I will vote for all non-incumbents, in an effort to vote out any incumbent that voted for budget cuts in education.

Sincerely,
Patricia L. Cleveland

Matt's band :-)

Warning, Matt's band is named Carnal Bliss, so take it at face value and realize that he is a metal rocker to the core. So the language isn't for the little ones, and probably not some of my normal readers either. ;)
I like it, but I am prejudiced, because he's my bubba!

Catch up post~cutting down the Christmas Tree

Thanksgiving day was a pretty day here in Middle Georgia. With a trip up to Rome planned for that Friday we went out on Thanksgiving and cut down our tree.

Catch up post~world map project for school

Just before the holidays I assigned my social studies classes a world map project. Third grade students in Georgia have to meet the following standards:
SS3G1 The student will locate major topographical features.
a. Identify major rivers of the United States of America: Mississippi, Ohio, Rio Grande, Colorado, Hudson.
b. Identify major mountain ranges of the United States of America: Appalachian, Rocky.
c. Locate the Equator, Prime Meridian, and lines of latitude and longitude on a globe.
d. Locate Greece on a world map.

I decided to have a bit of home fun with the project, and add a few elements. Basically I had them make a world map with all seven continents, identify the rivers listed, the equator, prime meridian, lines of longitude, lines of latitude, and Greece. I don't have the official letter that went home with the project here at the house, but if I can get to it I will add it. :-)

Here are just a few of the results.

Catch up post, last day of school before Christmas Break

Pictures from the last day of school before Christmas break. DJ with his class and Mrs. Beck.

DJ saw this outfit at the BX the night before and had to have it to wear for their party, and to the girls play on Sunday. He also wore it to children's services on Christmas eve (well with jeans that night lol)

Catch up post~Christmas

I squirreled away money over the last couple of months so the kids could get what they wanted for Christmas this year. DJ's only real wish was a "car with battery that he could ride", we combined the money I had set aside with some of the money from Jerry's mom and got him the "4-wheeler" of his dreams. lol The sad part is this is really the only pictures I took on Christmas. lol

Catch up post~Halloween Pumpkins

Another catch up post!

Catch up post Halloween

A few pictures from Halloween, I know, I know I am slacking...

Cameron, the zombie football player

Natalie the Vampire princess
Kelsey a vampire something (can you tell Twilight is a big movie at our house?)

Cassidi the troll

DJ the Bumblebee

The group

More detailed diaper bag pictures

Since the light was better this morning I took some more detailed pictures of the diaper bag.

Want a similar one? For a custom made one with your choices of fabric, ribbon, and buttons, will run $30. Totally made with love. :-) Send me an email.