FRES
school’s out! it was a fun day full of sugar and insanity. candy, cookies, and ice cream made the kids off-the-walls crazy. but it was a good day. we watched finding nemo and ice age, we had recess for two hours, we played bingo. oh, i got lots of handmade cards from the kids, complete with more bath and body works products than you could believe. so cute. it was so sad when the final bell rang, though. after several bone-crushing hugs, it was time to say goodbye.

okay, so when i went to FRES, the school year ended with the buses going around the bus loop three times and the teachers stand ing and waving as they past by. well, that was the tradition up until last year. now the buses stay in park and the teacher walk around them. i asked the principal why they stopped doing it and he said, “it’s an accident waiting to happen.” LAME. well anyway, i walked around the buses with all the other teachers and waved to everyone. passing the brighton rec bus was insane, lol.

BRIGHTON REC
the kids were really tired from school (can you say sugar crash?), so it was a pretty easy-going afternoon. we had more ice cream and popsicles, and spent even more time outside. it was kind of like a mini-version of my day at FRES. once again, it was sad to say goodbye to all the kids. most of them don’t go to the camp i work at, so i won’t see them again until i have my thanksgiving break in november (!). as for the staff, i’m not sad to say goodbye to them. i kid, i kid. orientation is monday, so i’ll see them again monday. lol.

tomorrow is the last day of school for brighton. this means it’s the last day at FRES, and the last day at after school. but camp orientation starts monday, so i really only have thursday and friday off. and then i’m working staright through until fall semester!

anyways, i’m so sad! i’m going to miss all my kidlets. today was the end of the year celebration at FRES, which was really fun, actually. they started off with an assembly and did staff recognition stuff, which the kids of course got really into (clapping, yelling, et cetera). i got to stand up when they got to teaching assistants, and suddenly i was surrounded by children shouting “LANNI!” even though i’m fairly sure they know they aren’t supposed to call me that. haha. after that they did a photo slideshow, which was really cute. the rest of the day was spent outside on a bunch of blow-up rides the school had rented, along with a dunk tank and a face painting booth. kinda like a mini carnival. the kids had a blast, and it was nice hanging out with the 4th and 5th graders that i never get to see because they’re on the other side of the building. all in all, a good second-to-last day.

brighton rec was swell, as usual. played some kickball, played some wallball, played some cards, played some cat’s cradle, played some “let’s all sit around lanni and rant about our lives.” good day.

today was aussie day at FRES. basically they just felt bad for the third graders (because the fourth and fifth graders all got to go on field trips), so they showed a movie about australia in the cafetorium, and voila, aussie day. some of the classes got to make rainsticks, but our class couldn’t be trusted with hammers (not kidding) so we instead did australian bingo. it’s really just regular bingo, except with words about australia written on the boards. super exciting.

brighton rec has been pretty good this week, actually. we only had 20 or so kids (we usually have 40+), due to the field trips, so it was an easygoing afternoon. the highlight was when i saw some kids playing monopoly with three dice, and when i asked them why, one kid responded, “they were in the box.” am i the only one that finds that unbearably hilarious? omg.

oh, and i saw get smart tonight. i was a little sad when i saw that the newspaper gave it a 4/10, but i really enjoyed it! i’ve never seen the tv show, but i still thought it was hilarious. plus steve carell is awesome. the movie isn’t overally remarkable, but it’s a good summer movie. which reminds me, i passed the halfway point of my 100 movies in 2008 goal. i’m at 56 : )

max: chief, are you thinking what i’m thinking?
chief: i don’t know, were you thinking “holy shit, holy shit, a swordfish almost went through my head!?”

well i have been stuck on “epic fail” for the past few days.

(1) yesterday was obvs “let’s all do things that creep miss m out” day at FRES. it all started out when a boy walked into the room in the morning with a ginormous beetle on him. i almost jumped onto a table, i swear. a few minutes later, a girl walks in, her previously very long hair now cut short. i said, “cute haircut!” and she came over to me, pulled out a shoebox from her backback, and proceeded to show me a box full of her hair. A BOX FULL OF HER HAIR. soooooooo effing creepy. the teacher and i told her she had to put it in her locker, half for sanitary reasons, and half because we were so creeped out. and to top it all off a girl lost her tooth after recess. and we all know how much i hate seeing: a) loose teeth, b) teeth not inside mouths, c) places were teeth used to be but aren’t any longer, and d) blood. ew.

(2) i’ve been constantly worrying about money lately. like to extreme proportions. but i feel it’s justified. when i started high school i started saving my money. when i graduated high school, i had saved around $6,000. now that i have recently finished my first year of college, i have around $3,500. WTF WAS I DOING ALL YEAR? i’m really mad at myself right now. so mad that i bought $127 worth of shoes this morning.

(3) why are kids so keen to point out every single one of your faults CONSTANTLY? it’s seriously driving me insane. i know why i suck, guys! i don’t need to be reminded! ETA: although today the kids gave the counselors awards, and i got “most awesome pink haired counselor.” very cute : )

FRES:
i’m really having a super fun time, for reals. the kids are a handful and a half, but i’m really learning a lot. the kids call me the assistant teacher (makes me smile every time), and i think i’ve struck a balance between being a disciplinarian and being a friend, which is good. and i’m getting pretty good at reading books aloud. and i’m enjoying the grade school flashbacks that i’ve fallen victim to. oh, and did i mention that instead of doing 25 hours of service learning (the required amount), i’m doing around 150 hours? hahaha.

BRIGHTON REC:
nothing really special to write home here. it’s pretty much the same as always. i play games all day and get to hang out with my friends, and i get paid for it. plus the kids are awesome. duh.

MCC:
i got 100 on my first paper! i had another due today, and i have high hopes for that one too. the class itself is… odd. i expected a college-level course about writing, but it seems like i’m just relearning (not that i forgot) all the essay-writing skills that i developed in high school. we went over how to format an essay (paragraph one: introduction (hook + thesis), paragraph 2: body paragraph (topic sentence, information with examples, transition statement)…) for friggin’ an hour and a half. for serious?

as written in an essay by a 3rd grader:
After we finished griling the hambergers, I yelled to my brother “Let’s eat Randy!”

as written in an essay by a college student:
Fishing is my scapegoat away from life.

oh, and as overheard during indoor recess:
I could never drink Red Bull. I can’t believe people like the taste of bull urine.

that is all.

i’m officially a full-time employee of the brighton central school district. well, for the rest of the year at least. thirteen more days of telling kids to be quiet, grading papers while they’re at music or gym, reading countless dr. seuss books to the class, playing math “games,” being attacked by swarms of brighton rec kids, and just having fun.

and i now respond to more names than ever before.
- Lanni (preferred first name)
- Alanna (full first name)
- Lan (what my friends call me)
- Louise (what select brighton rec kids call me, jokingly)
- Miss M. (what i tell the students to call me)
- Mrs. M. (what the less observant ones call me)
- Miss Maszerowski (what it says on my school badge)
- Pinky (what several brighton rec kids call me, along with their parents)
- Pinky Tuscadero (what shawn from brighton rec and lisa from FRES call me)
- Lanster Monster (what alexa from geneseo calls me)
- Lanno (what sruthi from school calls me)
- Dr. Lan (my stage name)
- Lani (a mispronunciation of my name — a short a instead of a long a — that i hate)
- Punkin (what my mom calls me)

know any more? i pro’ly left a few off.

so i’ve been at FRES this week, in the same classroom as last week. it’s looking to be a long-term position. well, if a few weeks counts as being long term.

today was field day, which i vaguely recall from my elementary years as being the best friggin’ day ever. but it’s not really field “day” anymore, it’s now just field “hour and a half.” instead of each grade having an entire day to do fun stuff, all three grades do it on the same day. well whatever, it was still fun. and saying “do your work or you’ll have to sit out during field day” is a great motivation tool.

fun fact of the day:
ever wonder what continent new zealand is part of? i know i did. you see, on the 3rd grade atlas in my classroom, all the countries are colored to indicate the continent they belong to, all except new zealand. it was gray. so i asked my dad, and even he didn’t know.

the answer? it belongs to a continent called “zealandia.” turns out that there aren’t just 7 continents, there are other smaller ones too. this particular one seems very small because almost all of it is underwater. who knew?

P.S. OBAMA ‘08 FTW!

today i subbed at FRES. except it wasn’t really subbing, because i wasn’t filling in for anyone. i was instead a TA (teaching assistant) for a teacher with a difficult to manage class.

at 8:45am i had a short meeting with the principal, mr. hall, who happens to have been my vice principal for my four years of high school. then he took me down to the class, which i knew nothing about ’til i got there. turns out it was a 3rd grade class, and they were effing rowdy, let me just say that now.

i spent the entire day with the students, except for at lunch when i obvs ate in the teacher’s lounge. really i just walk around the room and either tell students to quiet down or to sit at their desk and such, or i help them with what they’re working on. i also graded papers, which was a new experience. and at recess i played on the playground with a group of boys (mr. hall recommended i get involved in recess, which i had no problem with).

like i said before, the kids are rowdy as hell, and i can totally understand why the teacher needs some help. she’s a great teacher, but these kids are out of control. and they just rile each other up. mr. hall told me if the teacher feels i’m helping out enough (i’m also working tomorrow), i will be a TA for the rest of the school year. how great would that be? but i won’t get my hopes up.

oh, and i saw like five billion brighton rec kids, especially when i dropped the class off at lunch. that was a mistake. i’ve never had that many kids surround me at once, i swear. and i constantly heard “lanni!” or “pinky!” or “louise!” as i walked down the hall. hahaha.

9am-3pm: subbed at CRPS
3pm-6pm: worked at ASP
6pm-9pm: class at MCC

subbing was super cool. i had a packet of responsibilities and spent a majority of the day moving from one side of the school to the other (man have they added on a lot since i went there!) to switch to helping a different teacher. what exactly did i do, you ask? the following:

- made some copies
- washed some dishes
- supervised a class during lunch (for the same teacher i had for 1st and 2nd grade!)
- took a class out to recess
- helped cut out shapes for animals heads and bodies
- made some more copies
- supervised a class when the teacher had to go to a meeting
- made even more copies
- got a class ready to leave and brought them to the buses

i was a celebrity there, with my pink hair and all. sometimes when i walked past classrooms, students would run out into the hallway to gawk at me, before their teachers yelled to them to get back in the room. plus i saw a lot of kids from after school. they were all like, “lanni!” and i was all like, “yo, it’s miss m!” not really, but you get the general idea.

oh, and i’m working at FRES tomorrow and friday too! the sub caller left me a voicemail saying they needed me to fill a spot in a new program that doesn’t even have staff yet. she mentioned something about seeing if i’m interested in the position. hmm?

i work for the brighton central school district now! for those who don’t know, that’s the school district that i went to for my whole K-12 education.

i’m a substitute paraprofessional. basically i fill in for anyone that’s out (besides teachers). andy from brighton rec recommended it to me, and i’m really excited to start. the substitute caller calls me around 6am when they need me, and i either go to council rock primary school (aka CRPS) or french road elementary school (aka FRES). so far i have gotten one call, but it was canceled an hour later. that kind of sucked, but the caller promised she’d put me at the top of the list for next time.

and yes, it’s only for a month until school lets out. but i’d be on the list to work any day of any break that i have off next year at geneseo. plus i’m now on the payroll for the school district that i’d eventually like to work at when i get my education degree. and for now they’re okay with my pink hair : )