20 semi-random reasons i heart portland (oregon)

20. it snows and we have all 4 seasons
19. no sales tax!
18. saburo's sushi house
17. MANY, MANY happy hour places
16. rose festival every june
15. sushiland
14. saturday market + elephant ears
13. zajiang mein
12. gas is $0.25 cheaper per gallon even though someone else pumps it for you
11. traffic isn't that bad
10. when traffic is bad, alternate/local routes exist to save time
9. fabric depot
8. breakfast places and interesting eateries
7. both the beach and the mountains are 1.5 hours away
6. street food carts/stalls all over the place
5. MAX lightrail system
4. watching blazers games on TV without forking over $168 for NBA league pass
3. going to the rose garden to see the blazers
2. awesome summer weather
1. family - i guess they kind of have to be #1, no? :)

near the end of another school year

i've almost finished my 4th year of teaching. if i get past 5 years, i'll have beaten the statistic that says most new teachers quit within 3-5 years. before i started working, i thought, "wow, that's such a short time! how come people quit so early on in their career?" during my first year, i'm pretty sure i thought about quitting every day for the first month. as the year progressed, it was every other day, and by the end, i was mostly ok. the second and third year were totally fine. nothing like year 1. enter my 4th year, where i switched from teaching 4th graders to 2nd graders. the jury is still out on whether this past year was worse than my first year. after this year, i'm not sure if i'll make it past the 5 year mark.

let me say that for the most part, it's really not the kids. though if you've heard my rants, you might be inclined to think i hate some of my kids. i really don't. i would like to shake some sense into 5 of them...and their parents. i know i'm not good with change, but this year was more change than i deal with. i switched to younger kids, so i wasn't prepared for them as an age group. there was a lot they didn't know yet, and yet so many things they wanted to talk about that there just wasn't time for. sigh.

i wasn't ready for how involved and hands-on (read: needy) their parents were. i'm all for parent involvement, but in healthy ways, where they help (not hinder) the kids and me. actually, the kids were more needy too. if you know me, you know i don't do well with needy - as a general rule of thumb. so, that was hard. the parent factor was REALLY BAD. as a school, we had a dictator as a principal and it took us half the year to get rid of him. he was all about micromanaging and he was incompetent. and, 12 of us were laid off again and we didn't find out if it would be rescinded until the end of may. so, that was stressful. good news, the lay offs were rescinded. we're all hoping this doesn't happen for a third year in a row next year.

summer vacation will be good for some reflection. TEP was all about self-reflection as an educator and i know i haven't done it much. to prevent a repeat of this meltdown year, i need to take time to figure out what went wrong, what went right, and how it can all be better. i'm looking forward to going back up to 4th grade, staying in the spanish dual language program, and teaching content in both languages by myself. and bonus, alicia is going back to 4th with me. our dream team is partially united. all we need is heidi and we're set. but since i have a smaller class and alicia only has 12 kids, we're thinking about combining them for a lot of the extras - science, PE, health, and social studies. even though i raged about this year and couldn't wait for the end of day bell to ring, i'm looking forward to next september already. teachers must be masochists; we yell, complain, cry, and can't wait for the year to end and then we can't wait to jump into the mess all over again. but only after a 2 month recovery time. :)