She lives

I am surviving life as a first year teacher. I am always busy, overwhelmed, exhausted, and in love. I have the sweetest students and if it weren't for my room having no a/c I would have no complaints. I think my students think I have an overly shimmery upper lip because it is always sweating. I have 10th-12th graders and they are lovely. They make me laugh every single day, all day. I cannot explain how much I love my job and the super helpful coworkers. I'm still figuring out how I feel about living where I work but I do know that I love Floyd County High School. How I feel about living in Floyd is yet to be determined.

This is a review game I did a couple of weeks ago

If I do anything besides school work it is this: 

Picking, freezing, picking, canning. We have LOADS of zucchini in the fridge: shredded, slices, spears, casseroles. And all of those cans are either tomatoes, spaghetti sauce, salsa, apple butter or apple sauce. I am very proud of us for jumping right in with the preservation (or prepping as our friends Sarah and Ben say). I promise we're not preppers. We just like to grow things and because we aren't a family of 12 we can't eat it as quickly as it comes in so we are prepping (in a sense) but just for winter not for an apocalypse.  

The only thing outside of canning and teaching we have done is travel home for Labor day weekend. My sister's wedding shower was on Saturday and Drew spent the weekend camping with my uncle and other family members who came and went (like myself). The shower was lovely and the hiking and camping were just what I needed on my weekend off. 

Drew is hiking this weekend and I'm trying to get ahead on some lesson planning for next week. Football has started so that will fill all free moments of our weekends. Fantasy football, college football, FCHS football, thank God it's fall. Here's hoping this heat ends soon so I can't stop frightening my students with a glowing face.

The Hubbards are moving....again

I am going to be the new Social Studies teacher at Floyd County High School. Still in Virginia, I starting to doubt that we will ever leave this place. I think at some point on this blog I predicted us ending up in Floyd one day but I don't think either of us thought it would be so soon.


People have asked me if I ever really loved Roanoke and if I will miss it and the answer is "Nah." There were definitely perks of living within walking distance to most things. I very much enjoyed that. And I love our loft in Roanoke, I wish I could pick it up and take it with me because it is the perfect size for us right now. However, we paid a lot of money to be downtown for 2 people who come home and read every night. But, I certainly have been grateful for the people we have met in Roanoke.

We are currently trying to find a place to live in Floyd County. For those of you unfamiliar with Floyd County allow me to paint you a picture: farms, no cell service, one red light (in the county), two-lane roads. Needless to say we are having no luck online so we are going to have to go straight to the horses mouth i.e. stumbling around Floyd hoping someone will feel sorry for us and let us rent their barn or something.


I could not be more excited. As for now, Ike and I are spending the week in Pound and we are leaving the house-hunting to Drew. Just wanted to share the update. Get ready for me to be back to my old ways: taking pictures of birds and gardens. I think I'll revert back just fine.


P.S. when you live in the city you have to improvise for s'mores.

Moving On

Past

Well first of all, we've been skunked again. Our poor Ikey still reeks from a skunking incident that happened a week ago tomorrow. It happened the morning of my meeting with my site supervisor at my blocking placement, I repeatedly apologized for the odor.

And worse than that I unknowingly gave my students suckers that both smelled and tasted like skunk on Friday. They had been innocently sitting on my kitchen counter the morning of the incident. However, when they asked me why they tasted/smelled like skunk I told them that the Dollar Tree must not keep their candy very fresh. Yes, I feel guilty. But it was much easier to lie to them knowing I'll never see them again. Friday was my last day in my high school placement.

Present

 I miss those kiddos. I had some sweet kids. I had some kids who were going through tougher situations than any 15 year old should ever have to go through and they made my days brighter. I think of them often and I hope they find their way. They are all so full of strength.

It's too early to tell how I feel about my middle school placement, suffice it to say it will be different. But I'm not yet sure if it's a good or a bad different.

Future

In more life-changing type news: Drew accepted a new position at a company in Salem, VA. We are so excited for him to begin this new job and for this to hopefully be the first step towards us moving where we feel pulled: Roanoke.

I've requested to do my student teaching in Roanoke in the spring and if we can lease our house we could be moving as soon as December. It's been a bit of a whirlwind but it has been an awesome ride. We are so grateful for God's timing and are praying that we can immerse ourselves into the community He has for us.

Also, we are signed up to run the Color Me Rad 5K this weekend with Drew's parents and sister. I'm excited for them to come visit but in the interest of full disclosure, we have done no little training. It should be interesting (read: embarrassing).

 

I hope that fall wherever you are is as beautiful as it is here in the Appalachian mountains.

 

Student to Professional

I missed some program training back in May that I had to make up for this summer. One of the assignments involved me describing how I would make the transition from student to professional.

I don't suspect it will be too difficult, I have been a professional in a previous life and feel pretty certain I can pull it off again. However, this time is a little more sensitive. I'll have to be conscious of dressing appropriately while dealing with teenage boys. I'll have to hide my little wrist décor. I'll need to buy some more comfy shoes. And lastly, I'll have to adjust my social networking life which means doing away with my Facebook.

Obviously, I won't be able to talk about my experiences here or on any other social network but I can limit what my students will have access to and until I get a big girl job I've decided to do away with Facebook and make my twitter and Instagram private. I will still keep the blog public but will probably be a bit more candid.

I know many of my readers rely on Facebook links to reach my blog but I hope you can bookmark me or follow my blog a different way to keep reading. I'm so grateful for the readers I have and I'd hate to lose you all because I no longer have Facebook. If you have any questions for how to do that I'd be happy to help you out.

Classes start again in two weeks and I'm pumped to be back in the classroom but this time in both capacities as student and teacher.

I've also come up with the brilliant idea of taking pictures of myself in all of my different clothing options and cataloging them so I don't waste time worrying about what to wear. It will be a big task but Drew has agreed to help me. I can't wait to share with you how smoothly that goes.

If Facebook is my only means of contact with you please email me: meghanemh@gmail.com so we have a way to stay in touch!

Life in the Fast Lane

Only not really, it's kind of like life on foot around here lately. I'm down to one more week of my tough summer classes and my formerly rising at 8:00 a.m. to work all day self is back to her old ways. In fact I just got a 96 on a paper I wrote on a book I didn't read. That's classic under-grad Meg peeps. I'm not proud of it but it's summertime and when there's an afternoon thunderstorm like there is today I don't want to be reading about the judicial process in Virginia. I want to either be napping, watching one of the multiple documentaries suggested to me by you fine people or re-runs of The Office on Netflix, or reading something I'm interested in like this little pretty:

Finding the balance of light and heavy content on this blog has been something I've struggled with since starting My Own Yellow Wallpaper. Do I want to pull the serious political crowd whose views of Christianity are evolving like mine? Or do I want to talk about books, birds, and weekend activities. Let's be honest in all reality I'm pulling only one crowd and they are all blood-relatives so they'll read it no matter what I say.

So in keeping with the trend, how about something serious for a while? One of my classes this summer is Multiculturalism and I am riveted by it. We talk about equality for all types of people in our classrooms and how to love. No, we don't call it that in class but that's what we're learning. We're learning how to love children of all races, religions, SES's, abilities, genders, and sexual preferences. Sure we're learning how to teach them as well but the common theme is that we must care about them first and give a crap about where they come from and respect it before they will give a rip about what we have to say.

For some it is easy. I came in knowing which groups I held biases toward and I was ready to face them and move on from them. But I see other people fighting it, I see people who want to hold onto ideals of over-generalizations and stereotypes because they are so deeply ingrained.

I think every person currently in a career and every student should be required to take a multi-cultural class. As teachers, we are not the only ones who come in contact with all different culture types.The content I have learned in this class is more valuable than anything I have learned in school so far and that's not an exaggeration. I just wish I could carry all of you to class with me each week. Your soul would be moved.

My definition of helping has changed.
My belief in the "culture of poverty" has been diminished.
My awareness about white privilege has been raised.
And most importantly I'm once again shown my purpose in this life, to: