Sunday Post (August 17)

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimba @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer. It’s a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week on your blog, showcase books and things received, and share news about what is coming up on the blog for the week ahead. To get in on the Sunday funday, see the rules here: Sunday Post Meme.  ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I found out last week that I have to get another colposcopy (aka cervical biopsy.) 😦 This will be the third one I’ve had since I turned 23, and there’s little doubt in my mind that I will have to continue this for the rest of my life. Hopefully my cells stay abnormal and don’t go past the low grade status. In terms of cancer, I’m at the 1 out of 4 stage: abnormal, low grade, high grade, cancer. I have pretty much reconciled and made my peace with this entire thing when I was sent out of my university health center with a packet of paperwork and test results that had the words “cancer” and “pre-cancerous” EVERYWHERE. Talk about freaking out your patients. That was the summer I lost those 50 pounds I’ve talked about. There wouldn’t be a correlation there, eh? 😉

I had to take Baby to the vet to get all of her shots. When we came home she would not leave my side. She even crawled under my legs when I was on the toilet!! She was so upset she was shaking.

I started putting my classroom together and getting things rolling for the first week of school. After getting my key on the 5th, I checked out my room to make sure nothing of mine “disappeared” over the summer. I walked in and there was this absolutely disgusting smell. I went right to my principal and told her my room smelled like cat piss.  I’m sure that was a first for her, even with 20+ years in the education field. Our school is notorious for having live and dead mice in hiding places, including the A/C ducts and vents. Blyuck!

Teachers in my district officially went back on Friday. I was prepared for the worst when my principal released our agenda. First thing on the list: performance. We are constantly compared to our sister middle school, which has master teachers and few discipline issues, and thus scores better than my school has in the past. This year? In my grade level subject area we were tied equally in three subgroups, and my school did better than the sister school in the other two subgroups. We did better than the state scores (in my class). This was a BIG thing for me and my counterpart, as we were both first-year teachers last year, and our counterparts at our sister school had over 25 years of combined experience in our subject. The icing on the cake was that we did more than just meet the standard; we earned three distinctions (out of seven). Two of our distinctions were in math and language arts, and the third was for the top 25 student progress category. Only two (of seven other campuses) earned one distinction each. Our kids rocked it last year!

School is back in session, parents!

Here’s a picture of what my classroom looked like before:

I’ve worked two days in my room, but I still have a few things left to get finished. Hopefully by next week I’ll have finalized photos to share.

~ Last Week on G1000W ~

• Storms of Lazarus by Karen Kincy (review + giveaway)
• The Misadventures of Hobart Hucklebuck: Magic and Mayhem by Stan Swanson (review)
• Young Knights of the Round Table: The King’s Ransom by Cheryl Carpinello (blast + giveaway)
• WWW Wednesday
• Son of War, Daughter of Chaos by Janette Rallison (review + giveaway)
• Discussion: Blog Tour Organization
• Feature Follow Friday

~ This Week on G1000W ~

• The Girls of August by (review)
• An American Girl in Italy by (review + giveaway)
• WWW Wednesday
• Yefon: The Red Necklace by Sahndra Fon Dufe (review)
• Discussion: Minimizing
• Feature Follow Friday
• Guest Post by Madhvi Ramani (author of the Nina series)

~ Other Open Giveaways on G1000W ~

• Flight the Mite (Grayson Smith)
• Have You Seen My Tail? (Kathryn Harper)
• Son of War, Daughter of Chaos (Janette Rallison)
• The Pen Pieyu Adventures (Diane Mae Robinson)
• Caller 107 (Matthew S. Cox)
• Hero’s Sword Series (M.E. Sutton)
• Life Interrupted (Kristen Kehoe)
• WhipEye (Geoffrey Saign)
• The Secret of the Sacred Scarab (Fiona Ingram)
• Skies Like These (Tess Hilmo)

~ New Arrivals to Land of 1000 Wonders ~

I FINALLY got these two beauties in the mail!

~ Around Town in the Spotlight ~

The Annual Beat the Heat Read-A-Thon is under way! You have until August 24 to sign up, and it runs through the end of August. Here’s my challenge page for it. With school starting, we’ll see how successful I will be in meeting my goals!

How many of you went to see The Giver this weekend? Well, Lois Lowry has shared the one thing she would change about The Giver in this interview. Would you have wanted this change?

• Nuzaifa shares how to master the dying art of commenting
• Parjunkee is taking full advantage of SNARK WEEK!
• Laura wants to know your favorite type of ending
• Debby wants to shout from the rooftops that you don’t HAVE to go see that YA movie adaption
• Brittany puts the showdown on on novellas (I agree strongly with #2)
• Jennifer shares why she dislikes the growing fad of writing in present tense
• Rachel shares an update and other news about LitRate