Spring-ish

The past two days have been nice in the weather department.  I mean, nice enough to be outside without freezing your face off, so that's Spring in my book.  I've been taking the track team out for neighborhood runs when we're not at the actual track so I'm glad the weather is cooperating.  Today I tried to take the girls for a 2 mile run. Key word there is definitely tried.  Out of the 20 girls that are running long distance, 1 made it the entire 2 miles with me.  Yes. ONE.  She managed to come from behind in the middle of the first mile, catch up to the front, and keep up until the end.  What happened to the other 19 you ask?  Well. 3 said they got lost. (We ran in a full circle and then a straight out and back down the street by the high school, so you be judge of that excuse...) 10 stopped at the front of the school and eventually figured out that we were in the back and the other 4 straggled in sporadically with various excuses and two other girls must have missed the entire memo about the course because they ran the same 1.5 loop two times.  Good for them for that ambition, unfortunately, they weren't super fast at it.  At least they got in a good workout.  I was a little irritated at the girls who "didn't know what we were doing" because I felt like that was just an excuse because they didn't feel like working.  As far as I'm concerned, if you're not going to work hard at practice, don't bother wasting the time.  After all, we only have 30 uniforms available, so we're going to end up having to have a bunch of girls sit out anyways.  Just another joy of an urban school district. But, as irritating as it is to see them give up so easily, I will say this.  They keep coming back, they keep attempting the workouts, and they all did the core and the punishment workout without much complaining.  So at least they have that going for them!
Outside of track, day 2 of MCAS was today.  I think my fifth grade friends did fairly well.  It seemed like the entire fifth grade was working straight up to the end of the school day bell, so that's got to be a good sign, right? Before we started this morning I played the Rocky speech from the newest Rocky movie.  You know, the one where he talks about how "it's not how hard you hit, it's how hard you get hit and keep moving forward. That's how winning is done. How much you can take and keep moving forward...You have to be willing to take the hits..."  To the average reader it might not seem like it would have made a difference, but I am convinced it home with the one student who I was really aiming it for.  I've never seen him work as hard as he did today.  So, even if it only really inspired that one student, that's enough for me.  Tomorrow the 4th grade is doing their long write.  EEP.  But then there's no school Friday, so at leas there's that to look forward too.  I might try to get in a 6 mile run on Friday morning if possible, as long as it's not raining.  Supposedly it's going to be in the mid-50s, so that would be some ideal running weather.
Still looking for summer work, so if you or anyone you know needs a tutor, remember to stop by my website Gibbs Tutoring.  Right now I'm pretty open as far as scheduling goes, so get in while you still can!

And now some theme pictures.  This month's theme: The Haunted Mansion.  Special focus on forced perspective for buildings.  When I figure that out, I'll add the actual mansion to the background of the first picture.

Beware of hitchhiking ghosts - Phineas, Ezra, and Gus.

Haunted Mansion wall-paper design. So cool.

Fraction fiasco

As you might know, Common Core is taking over Massachusetts.  I'm okay with this, I like being able to have more than one way to learn a math problem.  But a lot of common core, and incidentally, MCAS, is fractions.  They start in the 1st grade and everything builds on that knowledge.   So you can probably imagine that if you don't get the foundation in 1st grade, you can't really build up in the higher grades.  For a first grader this year, that's not a huge problem.  We can catch those students who don't understand fractions and work to explain/show the concept in a way that makes sense.  Unfortunately, not all students are in 1st grade.  Many of these upper grades began school in the middle of the State Standards/Common Core crossover, and may have missed a key foundation in the lower grades that is now being built upon.  This is most glaringly obvious in the case of the fourth grade fraction fiasco.  I will say that most of the fourth graders have a basic understanding of what a fraction is and can at least use a fraction model, even if they are struggling to add and subtract the fractions.  But, most isn't all, as I discovered last Friday.  Seems I have a fourth grade student who has no concept of what a fraction is.  When I say no concept, I mean, seriously, no idea.  Couldn't tell a half from a fourth, doesn't even know how to recognize a half.  I'm not really sure how this has slipped past us for the past two years, but now that I know this gap exists, I'm doing everything I can to fill it.  Unfortunately for me, everything doesn't seem to be working.  We used fraction models, we made flip books, we cut, colored, and labeled pieces for the past three days.  Then, today, to see if the student was picking up on anything, I gave the 2nd grade end of the unit fraction test.  And, it was a failure.  I hate to say that, but it's the truth.  I'm talking every problem was wrong kind of failure.  No, you didn't read that wrong.  The student got every question wrong.  On a test that just asked to identify shapes with pieces colored in. You know, a basic fraction model.  So it looks like it's back to the drawing board for this one.  I can't have this student try to follow along with the new unit, which is multiplying fractions, if the student doesn't know what a fraction is.  I'm going to try a new approach to this whole situation tomorrow, but if anyone has any suggestions or ideas, I'm more than willing to try them at this point.  Anything to get this student to understand what a fraction is!

And now that my fraction fiasco is taken care of for the moment, onto running.  Yesterday it was a lovely 33 degrees, so I ran outside.  Ya, 33 = outdoor running now.  There was no wind so it felt super warm.  It was a nice run and I enjoyed almost all of it.  I'd say 3.98 miles were enjoyed. 0.02 were grossed out as I ran down the road and almost stepped on a disembodied deer leg, hoof and all.  Yes, in the middle of a fairly busy street, just lying around, was the lower half of a deer leg, muscle and bone sticking out of the top.  I have no idea what happened to the rest of the deer, but it's leg is hanging out in the middle of Sylvan St. Needless to say, I was completely grossed out for at least 2 seconds of my run.  Tomorrow it's supposed to be 56, but rainy.  However, I might just go out in the rain and run a little bit, because it will still be nicer than running on the treadmill. 

Track practice is going fine at this point.  Today I timed the girls on their miles, so now we at least have a starting point.  Since I know their general times, now we can work on getting faster.  That means more sprint and hill repeats.  If I can get a few of the girls to meet my mile time, I think we'll be in a good shape.  If I can get them past mine, that would be ideal. Besides the running, we do a lot of core and leg work.  The workout we have right now is ok, but I think tomorrow I'm going to add more stretching in after the mile warm-up, and another stretch at the end.  Some of the boxing trainers gave me some running specific ab workouts to do for core, so that's been helpful.  The girls seem to like the core more than the actual running, which makes me wonder if they're trying their hardest, but we'll work on that.  Our first meet is supposed to be in two weeks, so hopefully the snow is melted enough to make that actually happen.  I'm excited to see what the girls can do. Oh yea, and I registered for the Run to Remember today.  Ryan got a cool sticker in the mail and it made me super jealous that he was running and I wasn't, so I gave in and signed up. The only other two races I really want to do this year are the Lazy Lobster and the Seacoast Running Festival.  I'll definitely do the Lazy Lobster, because it's for Morty and it can be done as a virtual run.  I'll have to wait on the Festival for a bit and see how I feel about it come the summer.

Here's yesterday's run, and some extra pictures

It was so warm yesterday that I was able to run outside in this outfit! Minus the slippers of course.  

And I just really liked how cute Nala looked last night while she was sleeping.  Sometimes I wish I could just spend all day at home with my little buddy(ies).  *Stella not picture, obv