Never too late

Except when it is.  Boom. Logic drop. That's all I wanted to say.
Nah, I'm clearly kidding. Tomorrow starts the MCAS testing window so obviously I had to at least get in a little bit of blogging.  Even though this has nothing to do with MCAS. Except for the fact that I hate how much of my job is determined by a test that has to be taken by kids who don't speak or read fluent English, have major home issues, and sometimes just don't know how to read at the appropriate grade level.  But that's been a topic of discussion for years already and I don't see it changing anytime soon, so really, what point is there in complaining. Instead, here's a recap of my weekend.
I sat through the first time home buyers class so I could get the certificate needed to process the loan.  The class was ultra boring because it covered all the parts that we've already done.  It's hard to say if it would have been helpful in the beginning, because now I don't know what I knew from before and what I learned during the process.  But, I went and got the certificate, so hopefully everything's fine and we'll be moving next weekend.  Which, if that is the case, means we need to get packing.  However, we have friends coming in for this weekend, so it looks like the packing is going to get done at the last minute the week of the closing.  Ah well, it's not like we haven't moved before. Plus, we can come back and get stuff whenever, it doesn't have to all be taken right now, so that's making it a bit easier. I would like to go order a new bed for delivery by the time we move, but I think we're going to wait.
Aside from the house activities, track is going well.  Today we did hill repeats.  Right now my main goal is to get the girls to be faster at their miles.  I'm not entirely sure what a good mile time is for a high school female, but I'm fairy certain it's lower than an 8:30 minute mile.  Part of me thinks it would be a good idea to offer a reward to anyone who can beat my fastest mile time, which right now is a 7:10. But, what to reward? Also, I don't want to push the girls too hard.  After all, I know what my body is capable of handling during a run, but that doesn't mean that a teenage girl will have the same capabilities.  Especially if she isn't in top shape or hasn't been working out consistently.  For now I'm sticking to hill repeats and sprint intervals, with leg workouts mixed in. Then, of course, we do a core workout for the last 10 minutes or so of practice. But it's been really fun.  Maybe I should have been a track coach or a gym teacher all along.  Except I probably don't want to do that forever.  Even though it would be nice to just workout all day and get paid for it.  I thought by this age you were supposed to know what you wanted to do with your life. How come I still feel like I have no idea if I'm in the right grade, position, subject etc? Where's the easy answer button here? Seriously, who are these people that have it all together and figured out?  Sometimes I think I do, but then I change my mind.  Maybe someday I'll actually have it together....
And now, a picture of whatever I have in my phone.

Nala. Good enough.

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

Friday,Friday, Getting Down on Friday

Actually it wasn't that exciting.  Lamest Friday in a long time.  Felt like a Monday.  It's the first day of Spring, so of course, it snowed.  But, we did get our Girl Scout cookies in the mail, so that's cool.  Because when you buy Girl Scout cookies, you obviously buy them from the family in Louisiana instead of anyone in Massachusetts.  They arrived in good condition, all things considered. Not smashed or really even broken.  Now all I have to do is avoid eating them all at once.
I'm trying to set good examples now, because I'm the assistant track coach at one of our high schools, and I feel like I should do more than just tell the girls what they should be doing.  I should probably be practicing it as well.  We've only had a few practices, but so far it's been fun.  The hardest part is not knowing anyone's name.  I'm hoping that will change soon, but there are a lot of girls on the team.  Right now our numbers are somewhere in the 60-70 range, so trying to remember those names, on top of all the 400 kids at my regular school is a little bit of a challenge. Pretty soon though, the hardest part is going to be coordinating my schedule to make time for practices! Right now since there's so much snow on the ground we're running the indoor track at a different high school in the city.  It's difficult because both teams are practicing and sometimes there are other sports practicing in there as well.  But this is what you get when you live in a city without a dedicated indoor track space.  Our outdoor track is still under snow and they hope to have HALF of it cleared off by next week.  Yes, half.  Not even the whole thing. That's cool though.  Who needs a track? Anyways, I'm covering the long distance girls with another assistant coach, so I'm hoping what I'm doing actually works.  So far I've been having them do my distance/speed workouts, so if anyone has any tips, feel free to leave them.  We also do core, which is super fun.  Well, not really, but I've been taking the workouts I do at the end of boxing and twisting them into my own, so it's been working out so far.
Still moving forward on that house buying process, and now we've signed the purchase and sale.  Unfortunately, no one informed us that we have to take the first time home buyer class, so we had to find one of those being offered in the next two weeks.  Luckily we found one in Newburyport.  Not so luckily, it's a two day course, Saturday and Sunday, 12 - 5.  I probably wouldn't have minded that if we were earlier in our process.  However, the first three sessions, of the four total, cover what to look for in a house, finding a realtor, and getting a loan.  Basically all the stuff we've already done! But whatever, you have to do what you have to do.  At this point though, I have started the hunt for boxes.  You can never have too many boxes when you're moving.
Ryan's sister is coming out to run the Run to Remember in May, with Ryan.  I'm still hoping that I can sign up, but I don't want to spend the $100 while we're buying a house.  Mostly because we need that money for a new bed.  And a new couch.  And a washer and dryer. So, we'll see what happens there.  If someone wants to, you know, buy my way into the half for me though, I certainly wouldn't say no.  Heck, I'd run under a sponsored outfit if someone was willing to pay my entry.  By that I mean I'd totally rock your company name/gear in exchange for entry and obviously, the gear.  So all you savvy business people out there, just keep that in mind.  Well, that's the end of this recap.  Catch you on the flip.

Cookies!

Oh yea, St. Patrick's day.  I made these hats with a 1st grade classroom.  Pretty simple, paper plate, construction paper, and glue. So much fun.

Cap't Ryan.  I love it when Ryan's dad sends the monthly photo stock.

Also, Stella.  She had to have her back tooth extracted the other day.  She's bounced back fine and is sitting pretty again.

Oww

My triceps are dead.  Seriously. 100% gone off the deep end dead.  At least for today.  I first noticed it when I woke up at 2:30 a.m. with a serious pain in my right arm.  It hurt to move my arm in any direction, so I just lay there hoping to fall back asleep.  Which I did.  Then I woke up again at a normal hour just to find out that it still hurt almost as much as before.  It was a serious struggle to brush my teeth, get dressed, or really do anything conducive to my morning routine.  But I pushed through and made it through the day.  You would not believe how hard it is to write/teach when your dominate arm does not want to work.  Around noon both arms started to hurt, so that was extra miserable.  I finally managed to ice them when I got home for work, but the ice ran out far more quickly than I would have liked.  Now they're both super sore, but I think the worst has passed.
"How did this happen?", you may be asking.  Well, I started the week with my usual 12 rounds of boxing, not a problem.  Then on Monday I did my usual 8 rounds plus 3 miles on the treadmill.  Tuesday was generally the same, except one noticeable difference.  On Tuesday I finished my treadmill run  just a bit earlier than usual and I wanted to keep my muscles warm. So I asked one of the trainers to give me an exercise to do in the meantime.  The challenge was 100 push-ups in under 10 minutes. Me being me, of course I took that challenge.  The first 50 went ok and I was able to do them in 3 minutes.  Then I took a break because my arms were sore.  I manged to get in the next 50 in the next 5 minutes, so I totally won that challenge.  Unfortunately, then I went on to do 8 rounds of boxing.  Since I like to take Thursday as my off day, I go boxing on Wednesdays so I don't feel bad taking two days off in a row.  That was another 8 rounds.  Plus I ran outside because it was so nice out! Anyways, that's the reason my arms are dead today.  36 rounds of boxing and 100 push-ups in the past 4 days, plus all the warm-ups and ab workouts.  Which involve lifting medicine balls. Lesson learned there.  Ice is your friend.  If you're going to do all that, ice those muscles and ice them good. Otherwise suffer the wrath of angry arms. I'm going to attempt another round of ice in a few minutes just to see if I can get some relief before bed.  That's about all I've got for today. Oh yea, poor Stella has a toothache that needs to be taken care of, so in the meantime she's got a puffy face. She's very lopsided at the moment.

Ice arms

A Spring-like run surrounded by snow.

A puffy faced Stella

Springing Forward

Tonight, or tomorrow morning I guess, it's time to SPRING FORWARD! Wooo woooo! I love daylight savings because I no longer have to turn the lights on when I leave the house at 3:30 to make sure I can see when I get back home from boxing at 5:30.  In short, I hate when the day is dark except for the time when I'm at work and the hour or so I have to be out doing things before I have to get ready for dinner etc.  But I love the daylight.  I don't even care that we lose an hour.  You take that hour and enjoy it mother nature, because all I want is the sunshine and some snow melt.  On top of this wonderful phenomenon, it might actually be over 40 for TWO days next week.  That's right, TWO WHOLE DAYS! Everything's coming up Milhouse.
Mostly I'm looking forward to the snow to melt so I can get back outside and actually run.  Last weekend I did the 4 miler in Lawerence as part of the Wild Rover series.  There was supposed to be a 5 miler in Lowell this weekend, but it's been postponed due to the hulking snowbanks that are still taking over the streets.  So, now, the 3 miler and the 5 miler are not being held until mid-April. Which is fine and dandy, but it's severely impacting my actual running regime.  I've been using the tread at boxing, but only getting in 2 miles.  And, full disclosure, sometimes it's not even speed work.  I know it's my own fault for not getting myself moving faster, but it's just so hard to run on the treadmill when all I want is to run outside again.  I'm thinking that maybe I ought to check out the lake or the beach.  Those areas might be clean enough to run for a few miles/laps and at least it's something other than staring at a wall.
There hasn't been much else going on.  Since it's March, the MCAS are coming up, though for once, the state decided to push the test date back a week.  That's huge, because I was panicking a little bit about missing all those snow days and not having time to make up the lost curriculum.  So now the test is at the end of March and the first two weeks of April.  Along with that, we're in the midst of buying a house.  I haven't said much about it to anyone yet because I want to be sure that we're actually going to get the house.  The inspection is today and as long as that goes well, our closing date is April 10.  So, family members, if you're reading this, Ryan and I are probably moving out next month! (I'll be honest, I just remembered that the family reads this, so I probably should have told them before publishing this post, but, I didn't.)  There's also a  track coach job open at one of the high schools here, so I'm going to go ahead and apply for that.  Never hurts to try, right? I can't think of anything else of particular excitement right now, so I guess that's it.  Here are some pictures for fun.

I made this fantastic leprechaun as a door decoration

This is the medal from the 4 miler.  One piece of a three part medal.  The other two attach to either end.  What I'm saying is that this medal is going to be gigantic. Maybe a little too gigantic

Door

Making posters

I'm going to mail these to Disney and have them hang them up during their marathons.  I feel like that's a reasonable plan....

So much room for activities!

Apparently I have a race on Sunday. We'll start there.  I signed up for the Wild Rover series again this year and didn't pay much attention to the dates.  I knew the first one was the weekend of Hyannis, and that the rest were the following weekends, but I didn't give it much thought.  Then they postponed the first one and I really forgot about the dates.  Until I got the email that it's Sunday.  Cool.  Don't get me wrong, it's only 4 miles, I'm ready to do it, I just don't particularly WANT to do it.  It's still fairly cold out and a lot snowy out.  Although the temperature for Sunday is looking pretty good, so that's a plus.  This will be my first run outside since the marathon though.  I think it's more the fact that the race is in Lowell, which is feeling kind of far at the moment.  At least it's a late start, 11:00 a.m., so I have plenty of time to get there.
Aside from the running, which is back on now that I don't have a choice, I just have miscellaneous subjects to talk about.  We'll start with motivation.  Usually I'm pretty good at going hard and fast during the 8 rounds of boxing, but I always, always get bored during abs and 9 times out of 10, don't put in my best effort.  Part of it is that it hurts and part of it is that looking at the lights on the ceiling is the most boring thing I can think of, outside of watching paint dry.  I got so sick and tired of looking at the ceiling and the black steel beams holding up the bag system that I decided to brighten up my little area.  Now, there's technically no assigned bags or anything like that, but generally the regulars have a favorite bag, myself included.  I've been using this bag for the past year or so now and it's really broken in to my specifications.  So when I go, this is my general area.  To brighten it up, I made some posters that I can look at while I'm doing abs.  This seemed like a good idea because it would distract me from the abs and maybe motivate the people around me too.  Plus, when I get bored with them, I can bring them to school and hang them up in the room to motivate the kids for MCAS. After all, it's all about reuseability.  Which is a word I just made up, so enjoy that.  I'll stick up some pictures of the posters after this next paragraph.
Speaking of MCAS, because that was the closest I could come to transitioning that paragraph smoothly, I've decided to offer tutoring services for MCAS/summer work.  Nothing fancy, but I figured I could help out the parents who want their students to get some extra help.  I'm also offering to teach the parents how to do Common Core math, which I feel is a service that should be utilized.  A lot of the math can be confusing if you're used to doing math the way we learned it in school, so this could help a lot of parents help their students! Right now I'm only really offering services on the North Shore area of Massachusetts.  However, I do have teacher friends in other areas, so if you want a tutor but don't live on the North Shore, feel free to let me know and I'll pass your information onto those teachers. For more information on my tutoring services, visit Gibbs Tutoring. You can see pictures of my classroom and watch a short video clip of a first grade class in action.

And now for those pictures! If you're interested in my posters, but not in my tutoring, you can always contact me about these.  I love to draw and would be open to drawing/making personalized posters, for a small fee.  *These particular posters are not for sale, they are for personal use*

The great Muhammed Ali.

This is actually my favorite, I really like the way Huntress came out. This was made almost completely with oil based sharpie pens and I really like the effect they made.

Hercules, Hercules!

Wonder Woman hanging out between the bags. 

Punchies

Ahh vacation week.  Nothing like it when you've already had 7 days worth of snow days in the past two weeks.  All I've really accomplished so far is, baking brownies, making a lasagne, watching some old Disney animated classics, and eating a bunch of junk food.  Right now I'm catching up on Gotham and assuming that Jerome is going to be the future Joker. Because look at those lips. Chap city. 

But anyways, basically all the road races for the next month have been cancelled.  Hyannis is flat out done, not even a reschedule.  The Frozen Shamrock, which was supposed to be on February 22, is rescheduled for April 12.  Hopefully we'll be able to see the ground by then. I've been really great at NOT running, but I should probably get back on that treadmill.  I tried to add my 100 punches to last week and I've managed to achieve that.  What I've learned is that there are two ways to count punches. The REAL way, which follows the instructors combos and makes you work hard, and the fake way.  The fake way is when you stand in real close to the bag and just fire off punches without fully extending your arms and pulling them back.  Imagine a T-rex with boxing gloves on. That's the fake way.  Not that I didn't try both, but I didn't really find a huge difference in either way.  Other than that, it's been more and more snow.  FUN!

These are the punches from Monday, regular full punches following the combos and taking some breaks. 1378 and 1223 for a total of 2601

These are punches from Tuesday, using T-rex arms and no breaks from punching.  I'm also fairly certain that the left didn't record all punches, they should be much more even.   1612 and 1915 for a total of 3527. So almost 1000 more.  Fine, maybe there is a bit of a difference.

It's snowy and it's cold.  Welcome to Alaskachusetts.  -25 yesterday. :(

This is what my street looks like now. 

Disney Movie Day