remember when...

i blogged everyday? 

life was stress free?

assignments were easy breezy? 

yeah thats all changed :)

a lot has happened since i last updated (sorry Grandma and Granddad!)

im going to try and catch you up as much as i can.. but fair warning, i already took my contacts out for the night and the glasses are on.. so ignore any mistakes :)

first off i am now in fifth grade! i absolutely love it, im pretty sure it is the grade level i want to teach. but i will take any job offered to me! a few things that scare me about fifth grade are:

1. the students are smart and will call you out in a heartbeat.

2. lunch is at 1pm.

3. the fifth grade class i am in is reading/language arts & social studies.

4. they want to be my friend, and i want them to like me. (i am quickly learning where to draw the line with this)

5. i have to relearn a lot of things for this rotation..

so yeah just a few scary things.. the whole friend thing is tricky, i want them to like me and feel comfortable around me, but i don't want them asking me what my tattoo means (which they did) kids...

i have found eating lunch at 1pm is hard but also a very good diet :) haha! i do snack just a little during the day. i usually eat my breakfast late so i do not get hungry early. the good thing about fifth grades schedule is the planning period is at 8:20am so i get to finish my red bull and clif bar (breakfast of champions)!! 

so one major milestone that happened during my hiatus was that i taught a lesson in fifth grade. it was over comparative and superlative adjectives. yeah 20 bucks you just asked yourself "what is that?" don't worry i did the same thing! i had to go home and teach myself and then prepare my lesson. luckily i got to teach it twice because we have two ELAR periods. it went very well and my mentor teacher said i did a great job!

as much as i love fifth grade i do miss my little second graders! last week i got to go back to second grade because the fifth graders went to camp (no i didn't get to go)! it was soo much fun! they welcomed me with a loud "MS. STANFORD! YOU'RE BACK!" im pretty sure they are very confused as to why i keep coming back...

now onto today.. whoo it was a crazy day. let me first start by saying, the past 4 years of college did not and could not prepare me for today. aren't you excited?!

an assignment that fifth grade does every week is to read a TIME for Kids magazine and answer questions over it. the magazine has one main article and lots of short articles. this week my mentor teacher read the main article to the class. it was about global warming and how the glaciers were melting and the water levels were rising and would rise even more. well one student mentioned that it was like the movie 2012 and only the people on the ark would survive. next thing i know i have a student coming up to me in tears trying to articulate something.. all i was able to catch was the 'f' sound. i immediately thought faint or vomit, oh my gosh! so i turned the student around trying to direct them towards the door (and away from my clothes). the student turned back around and said "i do not feel comfortable listening to this." let me just tell you it took everything in this students body to say that without crying even more. so i was paralyzed for a millisecond and then my gut told me to take the student out to discuss what was wrong (gold star). this student was very disturbed and frightened by the idea of global warming and the world flooding. i calmed the student down and explained that 'yes, the glaciers are melting. no the earth is not going to flood today, next week, or next month.' i tried to bring it down on the students level explaining that this article is educating them hoping to ignite some interest in the topic. i also mentioned that maybe a fellow classmate might become very involved in this topic and grow up to be the famous scientist that prevented or delayed the melting. the student seemed to think that was cool. yep, never learned that in college.

what happened today was just another reminder of why i am doing what im doing. it definitely made me forget all the negatives that are clouding my mind.

well on a more positive note i only have 4 more days left of student teaching! this also freaks me out because i have 3 assignments that i am required to implement during my rotations.. oops :)

that is about all i can remember.. im sure i am missing some stuff but it's late and 6am will be here soon!

now for the pictures :) if you have a facebook then you have most likely seen these pictures. sorry!

dads 21st birthday :) 

 sooo i joined a slowpitch softball league. when i told my dad, the first thing he said/thought of was my pinky. my junior year in hs i broke my pinky finger pretty bad and it's been ghetto ever since. well i got this beautiful bruise on the ghetto finger the night of my first game. funny story, it didn't happen at the softball game :) i ran into a door at dinner later that night.

ohh i can't help but laugh when i see this picture. this was during a science experiment.. not sure what the experiment was.

YES we (dad and i) went to the State Fair! last time we went i was in grade school :) i had the time of my life! we looked at the same things just like old times, but somehow it seemed all new again. just like when my dad starts telling me his pig stories like i have never heard them before.. but i love to hear them :)

we decided to take the dart train :)

yes i had to take a picture with the astronaut.

red ribbon week: mix/match day! yes i know, im not mixed matched at all. i tried.

red ribbon week: run away from drugs!! oh this is Annie by the way!

and let me just add, Annie and i made the school website! click the link below and scroll down just a bit. yes i am a little isolated. ha!

http://www.friscoisd.org/ly/schools/elementary/curtsinger/

alright now onto some funnies! back story behind the next 3 photos. in social studies we had an economic fair where we brought our own goods and services. i did a photo booth with props! 

i hope this made at least one person laugh :) 

have a fantastic week! 

goodbye ms. stanford

sadly today was my last day in 2nd grade for this semester. i will return to my young grasshoppers in january. i had a hard time explaining to them that i won't be back next week. they were a little confused. bless them.

on a more positive note i had a fantastic day. i am finally feeling teachery (i made that up) it only took 7 weeks. ha. you have those days where you know you made the right decision in your profession. and then you have the days where you're like, what did i get myself into. the good days definitely outweigh the bad :)

today was a good day. during math, my students blew me away with their smartness. we have been working on part-part-whole word problems. some students have struggled, but for the most part they all get it. my mentor teacher always makes time for students to share the strategies they use to solve problems. well this one student straight up amazed me. the first part, the students had to add 6 + 7,

easy breezy. but my mentor teacher still likes to check their strategies. 

well she called on this student and this is basically how he solved it. 

listening to the student explain the strategy was absolutely impressive. i mean 6 + 7 is simple, but you can not tell me y'all immediately thought to solve it like this?! It was very moving to see how these 7 and 8 year old's think.

that same student gave me the biggest hug after school and told me goodbye! *tear*

now if you asked me how yesterday went, well i couldn't tell you. seriously my brain is mush. but i do have a picture :)

as sad as i am about leaving 2nd grade, i am just as excited to be going to 5th grade! one thing i am nervous about is lunch. see 2nd grade has lunch at 11am and 5th grade is at 1pm. HOLY COW. i am just hoping and praying 5th grade has a mini snack time or something.

if i don't survive, my parrot goes to Lucy.

this post is dedicated to all PDS 1 students.

we will survive.

so everyday at lunch we vent about our classes. lately it seems like we might not survive. so one day, Liz started listing who gets what in her family. obviously Lucy is getting her parrot.

to cheer us up during lunch we take funny pictures. it keeps our spirits high. 

enjoy.

well the assignments are getting crazier and crazier, it seems like the professors are just giving us busy work. ironically they teach us NOT to do this in the classroom. hmm.

one assignment in social studies, we had to bring 3 items that describe who we are. 

here are my 3 items :)

my autographed book from Jim Lovell. if you're reading this and you do not know who Jim Lovell is, well we just can't be friends anymore. Jim Lovell is my hero. he was the commander of Apollo 13 (Tom Hanks played him in the movie). a few years ago i flew down to florida to meet him!

my family :) i love them.

im not adopted, in case you're wondering. 

last but certainly not least. my patrick doll. i am OBSESSED with greys anatomy and patrick dempsey. no i do not collect dolls.

since we were all stressed on thursday, a few of us decided to catch a movie and dinner friday night.

these are just a few of the amazing girls i am surrounded by on wednesdays and thursdays! i am so blessed to have them as friends.

that night we saw contagion. a little advice to future viewers: do not cough during the movie, unless you want the entire audience staring at you. epic fail.

the next morning i woke up bright and early for a mud run! this race consisted of 18 challenging obstacles. and when i say challenging, i mean challenging!! you should see the bruises on my legs! here a few pics from the race. thanks to Jennifer!!

the only time we were smiling.

i can just hear my dad yelling "drop your arms chelsea!!"

love you dad!

it is going to take me forever to clean these.

totally rocked the napoleon dynamite shirt :)

it's okay! i know where the fire blanket is!

no, PDS 1 didn't kill me. i'm still alive.

this past week has been the craziest week of my life (i say this every week)

but seriously it has. 

I knew this experience was going to be hard but i honestly did not expect it to be this exhausting. 

yesterday i slept from 5:30-8:30 and then went back to sleep at 11. a total of 10 hours of sleep...

now thats just crazy. 

since my last post a few things have occurred in my crazy busy life.

1. i had my first doctors appointment (made it 5 weeks without getting sick!)
2. i witnessed a 6 year old sing every word to Can You Feel The Love :)
   
3. i attended my 2nd and hopefully last T.A.I.R. conference.
4. i only completed 2 assignments. (i need to work on this)
5. i got to sit in on a staffing (pre meeting for an ARD)
6. i ate cafeteria food, again. it's still nasty.

since i was super busy this week, i failed to take pictures of myself (darn) so here are a few pics i managed to find on my phone. most of the pics are from class.

i have found that doodling wakes me up in the mornings :)

we always abuse the manipulatives in math. 

today in science, dave taught us about electric circuits.

from the picture you can tell we were making a closed circuit. the battery and wires were connected to an LED light. well, our battery was too strong and our light basically blew up. we tried our second light and this time we had ourselves a little firework show! (hint the title) needless to say it was a fun day in science!!

wednesdays are my favorite.

well the title speaks for itself! on wednesdays i have my two favorite classes, ELAR and Science!! today in ELAR we worked on two amazing assignments. 

the first assignment is a poem titled "I AM" 

we were given a template where we had to answer questions about ourselves. after we finished answering the questions, we have to make a poem out of it!

this is the template with my answers.

and here is my ROUGH DRAFT.

no judgements.

I AM

 I am beep beep,

As I speed to class.

I am a fat meaty cow,

Where the staff at McDonalds knows my order.

I am 22 going on 30 in a silver Hyundai accent.

A futuristic, living in 2014.

I am a loveseat

Waiting to be used.

I am a recorder playing in the cornfields in Germany.

I am the greenest grass in the middle of a drought,

With a giant oak tree to provide me with shade.

I am a future employee of NASA.

You’ll see me on the moon.

I am afraid of growing up, because that means I’m on my own.

I am someone like you.

Behind my eyes is a world full of possibilities.

I have actually enjoyed this assignment more than i thought i would!!

the second assignment is a Writing Life Map powerpoint. we have to present our positive and negative experience in writing from elementary to college. this assignment was a little difficult because i really cannot remember my writing experiences in elementary school (not sure if this is a good or bad thing). but here is a sneak peak. im sure y'all will enjoy this little story...

haha :)

mean green, horton, crazy socks, and flying solo.

fyi: this is going to be a looong post. 

MEAN GREEN!

saturday was our first home game in the brand spankin' new stadium. since i (mom and dad) totally paid for it, i decided to check it out :) first off, i was expecting the bathrooms to be super cool like the ones in the business building. negative. they were just plain toilets. parking was a nightmare. we had to walk from the old stadium to the new one. but i did get a weeks worth of exercise in that day! all in all it was a pretty neat experience!

HORTON!

hooray! its college week at school!! everyday the students and teachers wear something different. monday was hat day. first thought: BUST OUT HORTON! well i did not get the memo that it was 'college/ball cap hat day' so try to picture me walking into the cafeteria with this huge elephant on my head while everyone is starring. i was just waiting for the pigs blood to fall on me. thankfully i had lots of people tell me they loved it and asked me where i got it. during our morning assembly the principal even mentioned my hat :) so i guess it wasn't THAT bad! 

i also got the amazing opportunity to eat cafeteria food (really i left my lunch at home). it was, well, cafeteria food. growing up i always thought the teachers got a special lunch from the cafeteria. nope. it's the same frozen steak fingers. 

 lesson learned: set your lunch out before you leave. (thanks dad!) 

CRAZY SOCKS & FLYING SOLO!!

today was crazy sock day! my favorite by far, mostly because i couldn't mess this one up and i got to wear my sparkly toms!

so i bet you're wondering about this 'flying solo' thing... well this morning i was greeted with "im leaving early for a doctors appointment and you're going to watch the class"

i can't even describe the emotions i was experiencing this morning. i was mostly scared, but a part of me was very excited. i felt like i was ready, the kids really know me by now and respect me. one student finally learned my name just last week!

well 12:30 came and the kids were all mine :) i had a blast flying solo, the kids behaved well. we had share time, where the kids read their stories. and then we read lots of books! it was a fantastic day :)

although i will say, car pick up scares me.

we're not in kansas anymore.

i gave in and joined the rest of the students and put a basket on my bike. 

thanks to ashley and paige for installing it for me & lizzy for the tools :)

i must add that during the installation we were serenaded by a guy playing his guitar.

it was quite lovely. i think.

my bike ride today was amazing! i applied all the new things i learned last week and it made for a smooth ride. im hoping by december i will be able to make it up oak without dying. i loved that i walked into matthews (education building) this morning and my friend liz looked at me and said "you rode your bike today!" im usually out of breath and looking rough at this point.

meet midnight the salamander :)

annie 'petting' midnight.

midnight was a quick lil' salamander.

today in science we got to play with salamanders :) our group named our salamander 'midnight' she was a beauty! that was about the best thing that happened today. for the past two years i have heard every horror story of PDS 1. since then, i have told myself 'wait and see, make your own judgements about it when you get there'. well the stories are true. i don't think i have ever been this stressed in my life! the assignments aren't hard, it just seems like the structure and communication are missing in our classes. i need due dates and rubrics. thankfully this past summer a very sweet friend taught me how to find the positives in every situation. 

so the positives of this crazy, stressful, and chaotic semester are...

1. this is preparing me for a crazy, stressful, and chaotic first year of teaching.

2. i am able to see how i don't want to teach.

3. this will only make me a stronger student, educator, and person.

4. i am learning how to manage my time. 

5. i get a whole hour off for lunch

as crazy as this semester will be, i am so thankful to get to experience with some of my best friends!

enjoy ;)

where am i going today?

i woke up this morning asking myself this question. i honestly didn't know if i was going to denton or frisco. pathetic, i know. im feeling a tad bit bipolar. 2 days a week im a teacher and then a student for 2 more days.

today was an absolute blur. not sure if it was because my privileges as a student teacher increased or because i wasn't sure which city i was supposed to be in. lets go with the increase of privileges.

things i did today:

1. gave the spelling test and graded them. (moving on up. whoop whoop)
2. picked the munchkins up from P.E. (by myself)
3. ate my HEALTHY lunch slowly.
4. worked a math problem with the class. 
5. finished 3 homework assignments. (praise Jesus)

the spelling test was somewhat scary because my examples of the words were horrible. for the life of me i could not think of sentences to use the words in... im still in the "i don't want the kids to think im weird" phase. i need to work on this area of my life. ha.

the math problem was pretty neat because my mentor teacher just handed it to me and said here ya go! no pressure chelsea. i didn't have to repeat math 1351 or anything. surprisingly the problem was fairly simple and was mostly review for the kids. i am starting to get to see how my students solve problems and it amazes me of all the different strategies they use.

i like to think big of my students, so i look at them as the future presidents, neil armstrongs, doctors, etc. it scares and excites me to know that they are capable of becoming something big in this world.

 yay for fall clothes.

so last week i did some very neat assignments but i purposely did not include them in my post. the adventure on my bike was long enough for one post. 

(front)

in my ELAR methods course we were given a blank composition and instructed to decorate it to describe us. i think i nailed the assignment perfectly.

(back)

this will be my writing journal for the year.

 

one of the first assignments in my journal was 'rambling writing' this is where we ramble for a minute about anything and everything. i absolutely loved this activity! here is an excerpt from my ramble..

"i had a pet dog for a week. my mom sent him away to a 'nice farm' because he destroyed a cat in our yard." 

 

true story, his name was shadow. random huh?! 

 

for my next assignment my professor read the book The Memory String by Eve Bunting. we had to recreate our very own memory string and describe each item on it. 

 

 isn't she lovely?

football helmet: the 15 years of being a coaches kid.

black/gold/white button: working at charming charlie where i met some of my best friends. 

pink dress: my mother dressing me in weird dresses. (love you mom) 

gold anchor button: the motto for my elementary school is 'anchored in excellence'.

blue honey bee: when Emma was born my mother officially became "Honey"

correction from 'it's a beautiful day' :

U2 sings Beautiful day, not Coldplay :)

sorry, my brain is mashed potatoes by 4pm.

so im apologizing in advance for any other errors you might come across :)

share the road.

where do i even start?

for the past two years while attending UNT i have purchased a premium parking pass. they are normally $180, but this year they bumped it up to $225. im only on campus two days a week for one semester, and i just couldn't bring myself to spend that much on parking. ever since i was little i have secretly wanted to ride my bike to school. well this is the year! the lovely lizzy has allowed me to park my car at her place and ride my bike to school! THANK YOU LIZZY!

now let me tell you i have only been on this bike a few times. and from what i have discovered in its short life is that it's very tall and heavy. so tall, i pretty much have to get a running start. you can only imagine how nervous i was thinking about the four lights i was going to come across. 

so i get my bike out, start running and jump on. *mistake #1* see i have never ridden my bike with a backpack. today it was unusually heavy. my adrenaline was pumping and i guess i jumped on too hard because my dang backpack about made me to fall over. i think only three people witnessed this event. thankfully i just laughed it off :)

after the backpack experience everything was going good, and then the dang light turns red. since my bike is so tall i really can't put my feet down on the ground and still sit on my seat. so i figured if i could keep one foot on the pedal and one tip toe on the ground i would be okay. *mistake #2* i couldn't keep one foot on the pedal, (at this point of my adventure i hadn't figured out that if you hold the breaks the pedals stop) so im basically practicing my ballet on the bike now. the light finally turns green and luckily there is no one behind me. so i struggle on up and BAM the next light turns red (at this point im considering calling my emergency buddy liz to come get me) i stopped and im still pulling ballet moves on the bike and all of sudden i hear this loud noise behind me. i turn around and what do you know, it's a UNT bus. i count to ten and breathe. i am now at the street that scares me the most, carroll street. the light turns green and i swear my legs have never pedaled so fast in my life. now it's only uphill to class (yes oak street is uphill) i finally make it to class after turning on the wrong street. i might have been drenched in sweat, out of breath, and experiencing a slight heart attack but i did make it in one piece...

the ride home was 100% better because a) it was all down hill, b) hickory street has a BIKE LANE! and c) i discovered that if you squeeze your breaks then your pedals stop!

so now when you are driving and you get stuck behind a biker/cyclist/redhead attempting to ride a bike please be kind and patient :) 

angela was my paparazzi today! 

it's hard to tell but im stuffing my bag. 

i will be investing in a basket soon.

 this is what we did is science today! we had to draw a scientist. of course i drew myself because we are all scientists :) my face really isn't that large.

so today our little lunch group ventured over to the new business building to eat lunch. (we really wanted to see where our tuition was going) liz went to the bathroom and said there was buttons on the toilet, of course i had to check this out! these super shiny commodes had 2 buttons, one with one drop of water and another with three drops of water. hopefully you can figure out on your own what they stand for ;)

they also had theses scary/powerful/cool hand dryers!

i can now sleep at night knowing the business majors are in hog heaven.

and now for the stressful part of my day. homework assignments have officially been assigned. sadly my planner isn't even halfway finished. see y'all in december!

SHOUT OUT TO AFGHANISTAN :)

love and miss you dave & the texas flag will be on it's way soon!