Vote for our LEGO team: Or Mike Leach might lock you in a closet!

OK, I am going to do a shameless…maybe a shameful plug here.

The LEGO League Team that I have been volunteering with all semester has an opportunity to win a First LEGO League Global Award.

We need your vote. As I write this, we have 25 votes. We need 2,500 more to catch up to the leader.

I think it can be done. But, I need YOU to vote for our team.

You can click on the link below and vote for us.

http://fllinnovationaward.firstlegoleague.org/germ-rator

So, why should you vote for our kids?

Well, here are 10 reasons why.

1.       If our team wins, the kids will get a trip to Rhode Island to present their project. Out of our whole team, only 3 of our 10 kids have ever been on an airplane before. What an opportunity for our kids!

2.       People don’t even know we have a LEGO League Team at our school. Most of the schools in our district received grants to start teams, but because there was so much work involved, only 2 middle schools even have a team.

3.       Our kids learned a lot about UV lights and even performed a “real” science experiment that they are going to enter in our district science fair.

4.       Because we did more than just play with LEGO’s all semester.

5.       Our kids couldn’t come from more different backgrounds, but LEGO League has made them friends.

6.       We hold our practices in a closet—and while it is not a Mike Leach situation, it is not fun to be so cramped for space.

7.       I really have no other way to figure out how to get people to vote for our team.

8.       I can only vote for the team once every 24 hours, and even with all of my electronic devices, I am only one person.

9.       Because our kids are just awesome and deserve a little recognition.

10.   If I can spend 100+ hours of my time to volunteer with a group of kids—you can click on the link and vote for us to win this award!

Here is the link again.

http://fllinnovationaward.firstlegoleague.org/germ-rator

Vote early and vote often…well, vote once every 24 hours.

Don't be a nube--you, noob

So, we have officially been back in school for a week. I am starting to learn some of the new personalities in my Interactive Media (aka Game Design-- but the kids sign up for the class thinking they will get to play games all day) Classes.

 So far, so good.

After five days, I am happy to say that I have not had anyone argue with me. No one has talked back to me—in fact, I have heard more yes ma’ams than I did all last semester.  I know the honeymoon will end soon, but it makes my day go by a lot better.

Yesterday the question was posed to me, “Mrs. Campbell, do you know what a nube is?”

Automatically I am thinking to myself, nube, sounds a lot like pube ( the shortened form of a word that rhymes with rubric), but I don’t go there.

I say to my lovely 7^th grader, “Is that like a newbie?”

Tonight, as my husband and I are heading back from one of our favorite restaurants--No, not HEB Café Spoons, but rather Wingstop, I decided to ask him if he knows what a nube is.

He told me it was referenced from a Call of Duty commercial—which is the game that all 7^th and 8^th grade boys are obsessed with, and that, yes, it was similar to a newbie.

Just to check my sources, I decide to look it up on Urban Dictionary.

Apparently there are various spellings of nube/n00b/noob.

	The first definitinion I found of nube—spelling errors and all:
	Someone so pittiful and idiotic the they have not even the megar skills to be titled a noob, they are now a nube, derived from the word nub, dervied from stub. Yes they are nothing more than what remains of a dismembered p**is. -Urban Dictionary.com. Great. I can’t let them call each other nubes. That is so NOT appropriate. Hubby says he doesn’t think they call each other that because of the dismembering part. But, really, with middle schoolers anything goes. Moral of the story: Don’t be a nube.

A Taste of Home...Hotdogs for the Holidays

My mom and dad came to Texas over the holidays bearing gifts of Koegel's.

For those of you who don’t know what a Koegel is, it is a brand of hotdog that is made and sold in Michigan.

In my opinion, it is the best kind of hot dog.

(Disclaimer: I am not obsessed with hotdogs, but to me, a Koegel's hotdog is similar to prime rib. It is a rarity, something to be enjoyed from time to time.)

Koegel's logo is, “Serve the Curve.”

In the Flint area, where I am from, there are billboards all around town advertising Koegel's.

Anyway, my parents brought about 16 pounds of different types of Koegel's. They brought hot dogs and pickled bologna for all of the family here in Texas.

These Koegel's hotdogs aren’t just any type of hotdog—oh no, these are actually called Viennas--they have the natural casing and are fully cooked. They are 100 Delicious.  Seriously.

And then add in the pickled bologna. Truly, I am not a bologna fan. I gave up bologna when I was in 1^st grade.

But, pickled bologna is another story.

 I have never eaten any other type of pickled bologna and I truly don’t think I can. Add a Ritz cracker and a nice piece of cheddar cheese and…heaven.

Or as I like to think, it is a little taste of home.

Since my parents will be moving to Texas, I had a slight concern that my hotdog connection would be lost.

 BUT...I just checked online and Koegel's has a shipper.

I think that will be the new gift I will give to my Michigan-transplanted Texans.

Oh, and guess what is for dinner.

A Koegel hotdog!

My mouth is watering already.

Christmas Break in Review

Whew! The holiday break flew by--as it always does, but it really was an awesome vacation.

I am sitting on my couch and the Christmas tree is staring back at me. I am debating--should I take it down or not? I know, it has been up since the middle of November, but I hate to see it go.

I think it is one of the nicest trees we have put up in years. I convinced the Mr. that we needed a new tree this year.

Our old Christmas was six feet tall. I bought it at Wal-Mart for 30 bucks. I went to pull it out of the box this year and only 100 of the 300 lights would work. After five years and three moves, I think I got my money's worth!

Anyway, we traveled to Garden Ridge--the mecca of Christmas decor, and found a nice seven and a half foot tall tree (pre-lit). I knew I had to have it!

I kept the old tree and put it in the dining room, I bought a string of lights to put on the old tree so it didn't look super ghetto.

Druing the two weeks off, I got to see a lot of friends and family members I hadn't seen in months/years.

We ate way too much and put way too many miles on our car going back and forth from Austin and San Antonio--but it was worth it.

My sister and I went to help my parents pick out different optiions for their new house. They will be moving to Texas in June and it will be so nice not to have to say goodbye to them--and not know when we will see them again.

We went to Fado's, Waterloo, Austin Java, Highbowl for trivia (it really was fun ;), Third Base, the Alamo Drafthouse (twice), and the LBJ Presidential Museum.

We celebrated New Years Eve with a fondue party at my sister's house. The white chocolate fondue was my favorite!

Today, we dropped my parents off at the airport and now I really am going to take the tree down. I hope I don't break any ornaments.

I am kinda ready to go back to work. 46 days til' Spring Break. Yep, the countdown continues.

Goodbye 2011

2011...Eh, not a bad year.

It was a year that I got a new job. (But, that has been the norm for the last few years.)
I found a subject that I love to teach--engineering to middle schoolers. Thank you Project Lead the Way for making this possible.

We got a new car. (Love my Kia Sorento.)

I started a blog.

We traveled to Las Vegas twice (once for New Years and once for our anniversary) and decided that twice is one time too many.

I began visiting the library with regularity.

Those are the biggies that I can think of right now.

So, for 2012....

I am not one that is good at making New Year's Resolutions. But, I have a few things I would like to try to do.

1. Do a better job of keeping in touch with old friends. (Be it e-mail, facebook, letters/cards, or phone calls.)

2. Volunteer somewhere. (I don't know where, but somewhere and somehow.)

3. Blog at least 3 times a month.

I would add more but I want to actually do these things all year.

Yep, I am excited about 2012.

My mom and dad will be moving to Texas in the summer.

My husband will be graduating with his Masters Degree in Educational Leadership and he will be on his way to becoming an assistant principal.

I will take an additional training to learn part II of the engineering curriculum I teach.

You never know what can happen in the course of a year.

Hopefully I will be a better blogger, a volunteer, and a girl with a few more friends in 2012. :)

Thanks for reading.

Happy New Year. Be safe.

First year teaching...I almost didn't make it!

Six years ago I almost quit my first year teaching.

Yep, it was almost Christmas break and I truly thought I could not make it any more.

I was working in a Behavior Unit with Emotionally Disturbed (ED) high schoolers. I had a caseload of almost 20 kids. I was in a dilapidated old trailer/portable and my doors to the outside didn’t lock. Besides what I could find on Google, I had received no training on how to deal with ED kids.

 On any given day I had 8 kids in my room. This doesn’t seem like a large number until you start factoring in their other issues.  

These kids were not your average group. I had several (if not all) kids that had P.O.’s (Parole Officers) and records.

They would think nothing of “cussing out” a teacher.

 I had a 9^th grader that self medicated on drugs and alcohol before he came to school.

 I had a kid who would constantly make threats that he was going to kill someone—and his methods of killing were extremely descriptive and gruesome—like, “I am going to slice you up into little bits with a chainsaw and feed you to my pitbull.”

 I had kids who would think nothing of punching a wall.

 I had several “runners” who I had to be on the lookout for.  

I had a 16 year old ninth grader who over dosed on pain killers in October. His funeral was an open casket and the image of him lying in that coffin still haunts me to this day.  

All my kids in my portable had seen violence of some sort firsthand…rape, abuse, suicide, etc.

I didn’t get a conference period or a lunch. I was always in my portable.

I had a bow tie wearing principal that hated my guts and would send me emails that simply read, “See Me.” I dreaded those emails because they usually meant that I had messed up colossally—but I usually had no idea that I was messing up.

Oh, and I was the Girls Varsity Soccer Coach.

The worst part was, I had no idea how to make things any better. I didn’t know how to manage a group of kids with problems that I could never imagine.

So yeah, I almost quit my first year teaching. I simply could not deal with the drama and all the negativity that surrounded me.

But, I did stick it out and I really am glad that I did. 

I stayed for the kids—who, most of the time treated me with respect and kindness—even though they hated the world around them.

When people ask me about my first year teaching, sometimes I will tell them a short bit of the full story—but they usually think I am over exaggerating.

I wish I could make this stuff up.  

Semester Long Classes..TYJOW (Thank you Jesus! Or Whomever!)

Dear whomever decided it was a good idea to have semester long classes,

Thank you. I am very excited to get 3 new classes at semester.  I have a few students that I am kinda done with. I hope that my new kids will give me a few weeks of good behavior before I have to break out the big guns.

I wish you could do something about the subject matter that I teach. The title of the class is Interactive Media/Game Design, and the kids think they should just be able to play games all day.  In fact, when I told them they were going to write a research paper they almost revolted.  Sadly, that was only the second week of my class.

I am very glad to have a new group of kids, as this semester was a learning period for me, too. Not only was the subject matter new, I had to manage behaviors that I had never seen before. Now, I know what is, and is not allowed when it comes to the kinds of things middle schoolers will try to pull--especially, when they have access to a computer. 

I also like that our finals start on Wednesday--that means I only have 7 more instruction days with this group of Interactive Media kids...(when they start complaining I remind them, only X many more days.)

Please, only put good kids in my next semester of classes.

Thanks,

Me.