BILLIE JEAN

Thank you Scott Tanner Clark for the drums.

Thank you "David" from YouTube for teaching us 5 different beats.

Thank you Les for being so good at the flute and learning the drums with me.

Thank you Jenni, Lani, Josh, Janet, and Jeff for acting as an audience.

Thank you for watching our first single, Billie Jean.

JUNIOR HIGH VALENTINE

You haven't really Valentined if you have never experienced a junior high Valentine's Day. Now it doesn't count if your only experience is when you were in junior high. V-Day is seriously my favorite day of the year and NOT because I love Valentines but because I love watching my students try and sort out this day of uber emotion. It is SO, SO great. It also doesn't hurt that I usually get candy and cookies from students (I just finished off the most delicious Valentine sugar cookie known to man plus Lindsay's boys just brought me the best Valentine presents EVER!).

Just this morning one student came in with a single long stem rose and all the girls in the class came up to her and started giggling, chit-chatting, and gossiping about it. One of her friends took the rose and held it up to her nose as she said, "I could sit here all day and smell the love from this rose." She begged the friend it belonged to, "can I please carry it in the hallway???"

Second period didn't disappoint either. I am pretty sure this class has more hormones than humanly possible. This is my most flirtatious class by far. I swear every boy and every girl just love each other. Case in point: note passing. I intercepted a Valentine love letter! It was adorable, awkward, misspelled, gushy, lovely, and awesome! The two students went bright red when I took it because they knew the love secrets that were inside.

My next class was 7th graders and they aren't as fun to watch as the 9th graders. They are still somewhat asexual. Does that make sense? They haven't quite figured out how to be awkwardly in love all while being so sly about who your crush is. For them we played 5 minutes of Valentine Hang Man and let them listen to sappy love songs until the bell rang. You would have thought I was giving them all $1,000,000 at their level of happiness with this "activity."

Fourth period is where the day is extremely worth it. This is when the items that students have sent to each other arrive. They can purchase a candy rose, a real rose, or a box of conversation hearts. During 4th hour the gifts arrive. It is the ultimate showcase of junior high. Who got what? How many did they get? Who was it from? All of this is REALLY important to them. I know most people think I am nuts for wanting to teach junior high but come one, when I get to see this kind of stuff why would I teach anybody but awkward teenagers??

J - I - M - M - M - E - R

I would be indeed ungrateful if I did not take this moment to publicly thank The Jimmer for all he has done for me. He makes me happier than I ever thought I could be. Without The Jimmer, I don't know where the I would be. Before I let Jimmer into my life I was walking this earth knowing something was missing but I didn't know what it was. Jimmer filled that void in my soul. He has changed me and all of mankind for the better. To Jimmer I am indebted. I owe him an eternity of cougar fight songs. In the honor of all that is Jimmer, Ah-Jimmer-men.

CHIVALRY

I make sure that my junior high boys learn the art of chivalry. In Miss Belnap's class there are just certain things that the gentlemen must do for the ladies, such as: 1) when we need a textbook, they get one for themselves and the ladies around them, 2) when something needs to be turned into the inbox during class, they take their own papers plus those of the ladies around them. It just works.

I am honestly amazed at the number of teenage boys who have never done a gentlemanly thing in their lives. I drill it into them all year that men are here to serve women (not in a chauvinistic way but in a very loving way). I also give the boys a promise at the beginning of the year that goes something like this, "If I ever see you fail to open any door for any lady at any time in your life, I will MAKE SURE YOU NEVER HAVE A GIRLFRIEND! EVER!" They actually do quite well at it. They always ask me why this is a requirement and my answer is simple WOMEN DESERVE IT! Women have babies. Men open doors. That's it.

THIS WILL BE THE BEDDING OF MY FUTURE DAUGHTER

Its called "Little Friends"
http://www.kukunest.com/bedding.php?theme=littlefriends

THE SECRET LIFE OF AN AMERICAN SCHOOL TEACHER

These are phrases that the civilian world has no idea can throw a teacher over the edge to suicide. Mind you these are just a FEW:

• What's my grade right now (remember I have 200 students so I obviously don't have all their grades scrolling through my head)
• My mom wants me to get an A
• What am I missing (the students get a print out of their grades everyday!!)
• Was I supposed to turn that in
• Is this for points
• Were we supposed to take notes on that
• Did we do anything important last time, I was gone
• What will this assignment do to my grade
• Are we doing anything important today
• Why do we have to learn this
• What can I do to pass this class (with literally 30 minutes left until term grades are due)
• This is boring
• I wasn't texting, I promise. I don't even have a phone (after some calm discussion they will finally bust their phone out of their pocket and hand it over)
• Wait, we can retake things in here (that has been the policy since August)
• Did you put in that assignment (seconds after they turned it in 3 weeks late so the answer is NO I haven't)
• I guessed on the test because I didn't study at all but I'm sure I aced it
• When does class get out
• Why do we have to take notes
• The countries in Asia - Europe, Middle East, any map we are working on - are too small
• This is too hard
  
• I am too tired to try and learn
• How can I get an A, I have an A- right now
• I didn't know we had a test today (then why did we spend last class period working on the review sheet??)
  

If you are a teacher and reading this, please tell me I am not the only one who gets crap like this EVERYDAY!!!!

RECLAMATION

And by reclamation you mean water reclamation?? Yes, I do. My brain got stuck on this topic when a) I went to Hoover Dam last week and b) Josh asked me if I hadn't grown up going to Lake Powell would I still love it.

Water reclamation history in the west is honestly one of my favorite things to study and read about. The "west" would not even be a thought without reclamation. This is good but mostly bad. As much as I love Lake Powell, I truly DO NOT believe in water reclamation. If John Wesley Powell knew that a man-made lake of stored up Colorado River water was named in his honor, he would be furious. If an area cannot naturally sustain itself, it shouldn't exist. This is the case for many western cities that guzzle water and electricity from dams in Utah, Arizona, Nevada, and California. I took an entire course in college on the history of water reclamation and it was probably my favorite class of all time. Weird, right?

I know you all get more than enough crap from my blog, facebook, in person, at school, etc. about Breast Cancer, the great state of Utah, or BYU. But one love that you probably didn't know I have is water reclamation. It is very seriously a passion of mine - not as a Sierra-club-loving-lefty but as an historian who is awed by the fact that a simple thing like water can change the fate of everything.

Whew, I feel like you all know me a little bit better. Kind of in a weird way....

SENIOR CITIZEN

This was my day (granted I have been sick but it is still no excuse)

• Woke up naturally at 7:15 am
• Couldn't get back to bed so I did a little reading
• Fell back asleep until 9 am
• Showered
• Ran errands
• Went to the post office
• Shoveled snow
• Went out to dinner at Red Robin at 4:00pm!!! This truly means there is no escaping my burgeoning senior citizen ways
• In my pajamas and in bed at 7:30pm

WHAT YOU REALLY WANT, YOU MUST GET FOR YOURSELF

I love diamonds. Like a lot. It's high time I did something about it so I bought this little lady for myself. It came in the mail today and I am more than pleased. I LOVE it!