A: My husband and I are working on a summer production for our high school thespian troupe. We will be putting on "Almost, Maine." The show will be the first weekend after school starts, Aug. 25th and 26th, so it will be a busy time. The students really love this show, so it should be a
fantastic production!
B: I've read 19 books since January. My goal this year is to read 30 books. I am optimistic that I will surpass that because I don't have pages and pages of reading for graduate school to wade through. My favorites for this year so far are The Hate U Give and Strange Behavior: Tales of
C: My husband and I have seen one concert this summer, The Sword. They're not 100% my jam, but it was a pretty good show.
Evolutionary Neurology.
D: My husband Derek and I will be married 8 years in October. The years have been going by so quickly!
E: This will be my eleventh year of teaching, as well as being at the same school!
F: Falafel is a lovely food to eat. I have been fortunate with my traveling this summer to have eaten it three times this summer. I'm in a really small town and any restaurants in the near vicinity don't generally have it. I also really enjoy fennel, though I haven't found any this summer and I didn't get a garden in this year.
G: Geocaching is fun a thing to do, especially in the summer. My husband a I don't go a lot, but we were able to go a few weekends ago. We found two on our list, one in a park and one in a conservation area, but one geocache that is located at a favorite restaurant in the area, eluded us one more time. I really think we have been so close finding it, and I think it is more obvious than we think it is, but we've missed it twice now.
H: I love to drink hot tea with my breakfast in the morning. I have way too many flavors in my cupboard right now, but I like to have variety. My favorite flavor right now is Vanilla Caramel, but I also really like Sugar Cookie (only available during Christmas/Holiday season), Peppermint, and Mixed Berry. One season, an area grocery store had Girl Scout flavors and those were pretty good too.
I: I have lived in Iowa all of my life. I have lived in four towns, the largest was about 50,000 (technically half of those were college students, but they get counted) and the smallest is my current town of about 2200.
I: I have lived in Iowa all of my life. I have lived in four towns, the largest was about 50,000 (technically half of those were college students, but they get counted) and the smallest is my current town of about 2200.
J: I like to make jewelry. A lot of times I just buy chains and charms I like, but I have found patterns or pictures online and made a few necklaces. Lima Beads, Fusion Beads, Amazon, Michael's and Hobby Lobby are my favorite places to by the supplies that I need.
K: I like to collect things that might be considered kitschy. We have a few shelves in the house that are home to glass paperweights, funny mugs, and quite a few animal figurines.
L: I love lemons. I like to incorporate them into different recipes and it is my top flavor for candy, especially Skittles and Starburst.
M: I finished my M.A. in STEM education in May! I started in the summer of 2016, and it was a completely online program. It is a fairly new major at Loras College, which is fairly new to housing advanced degrees. I believe my cohort, just four students, was the second group to make it through the program. Loras included their advanced degrees in graduation for the first time this year. I actually was the second person to graduate, which is quite a change from high school and undergrad when I was one of the last with a surname starting with 'Y.'
N: The last two summers, professional development experiences have taken me to Nebraska. Last year, I went to the Arbor Day Farm in Nebraska City. We were able to walk trails, take a wagon ride, visit the mansion, and learn about the farm in general. We were able to stay in the Lied Lodge, which is beautiful. If you ever have a chance to go, you need to try their caramel apple slushie or ice cream, that was a real treat! This year, the International Thespian Festival took us to the capital, Lincoln. We stayed on the University of Nebraska campus. The campus was beautiful and definitely encourages getting steps in, as many buildings are quite spread out. I do have to say though, the dorm food is not on the top of my list of dorm food. However, the food workers were wonderful.
O: I will be piloting units for OpenSciEd this year. I am excited to implement the units into my classroom. There is a big emphasis on modeling, discourse, and sense-making.
P: This summer especially because of my extended painting project, I have really gotten into podcasts. My favorites are Radio Lab, Nancy, Ear Hustle, and Code Switch. I am waiting in anticipation the next season of Serial. This past school year, I used Shabam!, which just has one season as part of bellwork for listening comprehension exercises.
Q: The last few years I have had quotes hanging on my classroom door, close to eye level so that as students are leaving the room or even as they are sitting they might read it. I also have them their for me too. I have enough to change them out for each week of the school year. I'm actually getting close to having enough to change them out everyday. One of my new favorites for this year is "Being Negative Only Makes a Difficult Journey More Difficult. You May Be Given a Cactus, But You Don’t Have to Sit On It." ~Joyce Meyer
R: To help the speech team and thespian group be able to take part in different competitions or go to festivals, we have to do quite a bit of fundraising. The last three years, we have been able to partner with a local grocery chain to put on a Ribfest. The store provides pre-cooked ribs and we grill them and we get a portion of the sales. We actually were able to hold two Ribfests this summer and at the first one, we sold almost 320 racks of ribs! That was a new record! They end but the students really enjoy taking part in it.
S: I have been helping my husband in an unofficial capacity with the JH play since 2010 and started helping with speech when he was hired four years ago. The program has been growing and we are responsible for large-group and individual speech, so a pitch was made to add an assistant coach. I applied and this year, I completed my first year as an official assistant speech coach. I assisted with the high school students, but I was also able to coach one JH group in Reader's Theatre. They were a fun group of students to work with, and I hope that they will continue to go out for speech.
T: On Thursdays when we are free, my husband and I like to go to a trivia night. Right now, our team is just the two of us, while several other teams have an average of 10 people. However, we seem to do pretty good with just two brains, as we have come in second and third place.
U: I will be in the possession of two ukuleles. See information in 'X' about one of them. That one is a soprano ukulele. I just bought a concert ukulele, but that hasn't come in yet. I hope to learn how to play them, although, I have had a hard time with the guitar. My mom had wanted one for a while too, so I got her one for Mother's Day.
R: To help the speech team and thespian group be able to take part in different competitions or go to festivals, we have to do quite a bit of fundraising. The last three years, we have been able to partner with a local grocery chain to put on a Ribfest. The store provides pre-cooked ribs and we grill them and we get a portion of the sales. We actually were able to hold two Ribfests this summer and at the first one, we sold almost 320 racks of ribs! That was a new record! They end but the students really enjoy taking part in it.
S: I have been helping my husband in an unofficial capacity with the JH play since 2010 and started helping with speech when he was hired four years ago. The program has been growing and we are responsible for large-group and individual speech, so a pitch was made to add an assistant coach. I applied and this year, I completed my first year as an official assistant speech coach. I assisted with the high school students, but I was also able to coach one JH group in Reader's Theatre. They were a fun group of students to work with, and I hope that they will continue to go out for speech.
T: On Thursdays when we are free, my husband and I like to go to a trivia night. Right now, our team is just the two of us, while several other teams have an average of 10 people. However, we seem to do pretty good with just two brains, as we have come in second and third place.
U: I will be in the possession of two ukuleles. See information in 'X' about one of them. That one is a soprano ukulele. I just bought a concert ukulele, but that hasn't come in yet. I hope to learn how to play them, although, I have had a hard time with the guitar. My mom had wanted one for a while too, so I got her one for Mother's Day.
V: I have long been waiting to get They Might Be Giants album "Flood" on vinyl. It's one of my favorite albums of all time. I was finally able to get it this spring. I haven't listened to it yet.
W: I used to work in a water-quality lab, limnology, on campus. I worked in the biological lab and used regular microscopes and dissecting microscopes to examine phytoplankton and zooplankton. We would get counts of the various organisms and also make measurements. Certain plankton signaled higher or lower health of the water. There was also a chemistry lab that studied other qualities of the water such as, phosphorus, nitrogen, dissolved oxygen, or caffeine. If a high level of caffeine was found for example, that indicated that human sewage might be getting into the water.
X: I bought an X-acto knife this summer to trim wood on a DIY ukulele. I have part of it put together, but I have found a paint color or stain that I want to use on it. So, I haven't finished it yet because you need to have that part done before you string it. I think that this still is the hardest letter to complete.
Y: Yellow, more specifically mustard, is one of my favorite wardrobe colors.
Z: While I was out of town for one of my professional learning workshops, I was able to coordinate a meet-up with two of my very good friends from way back in elementary school. On Wednesdays during the summer, Blank Park Zoo has "Zoo Brew," in which you can have a drink or get some food and walk around the zoo. It had been about three years since I have seen my friends, so I am thankful that timing worked out.
I love this!! Thank you for sharing such fun facts!
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