High school teacher. Who knew?

Well I have another high school to add to my resume. First I went to Bingham, then I graduated from Riverton, now I am teaching at Alta!

As much as my family doesn't like the idea, I am a Hawk! Actually, not officially because I'm just student teaching, and who knows where I'll be teaching after that, but I do feel a small allegiance to the East side school already. After all, I live in the Alta boundaries, I will be going to the school for the next 4 months (with an Alta parking sticker on my car), I will be teaching over 100 Alta students, getting to know them pretty well I imagine, etc.

So yes, I have started my student teaching. I will be teaching 4 classes until December. Then I graduate!!! (from college not high school). I am really excited to teach and get to know the students in my classes. I haven't done much teaching yet because the teacher I'm working with is starting the classes and teaching the first week or so. But I have been helping out a little here and there. I'm teaching Finance, Entrepreneurship, and 2 Computer Tech classes.

It's awesome to talk to students and help them feel comfortable in class. I love that part of teaching. I want to help students enjoy school and be comfortable there. I'm confident that as I am honest and real with them and as I show that I care about them, they will be able to trust me and allow me to help them. I think it's awesome to think about helping a lot of young people in such a difficult time in life when they have a lot of important decisions.

One student that has been saying 'hi' to me in class and in the halls, came up to me at the end of class today and started asking me questions about a career he has been thinking about going into (He heard me mention that my brother, Jon, works for the government in DC and he had been thinking about doing that). We talked for 5 minutes or so. It made me really excited to be a good influence to students like him!

I'm sure I will have a lot of experiences to share soon. So this is the first post of many about my teaching experience. I hope I don't make our blog too lame by talking about school all the time!



I'll try to use pictures as much as I can. Like these pics that I made Kalli take of me yesterday. I just wanted a good picture that I could use for my profile pictures. I was kind of demanding of Kalli's artistic ability. I wanted a picture that was "cool, artistic, that makes me look mature, professional, and like a teacher." I think that's about what I said. I'm sure Kalli was a little bugged by me continually saying "that's not quite it", but she always does awesome. She's the best, I love you Kalli!!

Here are some good ones:

4th of July

Kalli has been preparing a new post of the last few weeks, but she is really busy with photography lately, so I don't know if she'll get it posted for a while. So in the mean-time, so we at least get something new up, I'll post a few pictures from the 4th of July weekend. My family did some fun things that weekend, like camp out in tents on my parents lawn, play water games, fireworks, etc.

Kalli took some awesome night shots!

Eric put himself in a ball of fire!

That's a beauty!

Jeni planned some water games for Saturday. This was a fun relay race.

The water hose limbo went from limbo...

To just getting wet...

To jumping over the water. That's when the "big boys" wanted to get involved.

Jeremy put up a good fight jumping off one foot because he got about 12 stitches in his foot a week earlier.

But I think Justin was the winner. He probably could've jumped over that swing set in the background if he wanted to!

Running through the sprinkler provides endless fun!

And of course, the games ended with a water fight. I found myself being ganged-up on. All the little kids against me. I'm pretty sure I won!

Confession

My family already knows that I like playing basketball on mini hoops and with a mini ball. My parents got a small indoor mini hoop one year for my little brother who was like 7 years old, but I think I played on that hoop in the family room more than anyone. I played on it through my high school years. I could hit any shot in the room :)

Another one of my favorite things, still, is to play on the real basketball hoop at my parents' house, but I like to lower it as far as it goes (7 1/2 ft.) and have a dunk-fest by myself.
When my family got together this Memorial Day, Kalli had her camera and I just happened to have a mini ball available, so we took some action shots.

I know this is lame to post pictures of myself dunking the ball, but I figured I would finally confess my childish hobby/talent.

Kalli knows how to make anything look good and she worked her magic making the hoop actually look pretty high (it's not). However, I have to say, if I was a foot taller, I would be getting paid to do this right now!

The REAL Good Green

If anyone told me 6 months ago that I'd be mixing up vegetables and fruit in a blender and drinking it (by choice) I would NOT have believed them! Well, now I am, on an almost daily basis (and so is Joel which is pretty remarkable for him too) and I am really liking it!
I heard about the Green Smoothie Girl from my friend Natalie's blog a while back. The first time I saw this lady's site I think I was up till 2am reading her posts on her blog and reading what she had to say on her website. A few weeks later I braved up and made our first green smoothie. We were pretty grossed out after my first attempt, but I'm glad I kept at it. After a few tweaks to her recipe I finally had my own version of a "green smoothie" that I liked and even craved after a while! I made my first one out of a little bit of fruit, water, and about 2 1/2 cups of packed spinach. I wasn't used to the taste or the green color so I had to ease my self into it by adding some healthy orange juice, and a few other naturally sweet things.
I didn't like the green color at first, but now I really like it and actually prefer my smoothies to be green (they turn a nasty brown color if you add blue or black berries)
I have never been one to happily eat veggetables or salads and when I do they usually aren't the dark green kind, so disguising them with fruit is perfect for me! Plus you can pack waaay more greens in than you'd eat in a salad at dinner or lunch, and it's already smooth and smashed up so your digestive system doesn't have to work as hard....it's genius I tell you!
I make a big blenderfull in the mornings now, half for my breakfast and I put the other half in the fridge for Joel's "pre-dinner snack". It's so nice being able to drink something yummy and easy to make and know it's so good for you. We've been trying to implement a few of the green smoothie girl's other suggestions and I've finally been realizing that what I put into my body really affects how I feel (and how I will feel down the road).
I've tried to make a few other different kind of smoothies, but the one that Joel and I like the most right now consists of water, orange juice, spinach, banana, frozen fruit, almonds, and a little raw honey (I'm trying to slowly get rid of the juice). I made one last week that was pretty good, it was made of almond milk, spinach, banana, organic peanut butter, and raw honey. A few weeks ago my friend Kristin and I spent quite a while gathering ingredients for a hot pink smoothie I was so excited to try it out the next morning, but much to my disappointment neither of us could handle the taste. Both of us were gaaging it down. It was vvveeerrrry pretty though, it really was the most beautiful color of pink, the picture doesn't do it justice.

This is what our "every day" smoothie looks like usually (in a frosty mug! haha yum!). Here's to health!

Kind of random, but kind of funny!

Kalli and I were taking some video for fun on Memorial Day at my parents' house and I was jumping on the tramp. I guess it had been a while since I had landed on my back, because I apparently forgot how. Kalli told me to jump on my back and before thinking about it at all, I went for it and it ended up being a little awkward, as you can see in the video. It's like when a little kid tries it for the first time. We laughed about this for a long time!

Fueling our inner Nerd

Joel heard about this website (makezine.com) on channel 11 a while back where they teach you how to make all kinds of cool/nerdy stuff. We watched a few of their "how to" videos online and made fun of how weird and nerdy they were, but after a while we were like "wow this is actually pretty sweet" and "haha....yeah, we definitely need to make that".
I think this magazine has officially made it onto my Christmas list. Yep, that's right.
I mean haven't you always wanted to make a TV be gone! or an atlatl? They have some things that are a little more practical like the macro lens on a budget, I could reeeeally use one of those babies.
This one is sweeeeeeet (Cymatics) It totally makes my inner nerd do that snort laugh thing.
So who wants to join our "sciencey/crafty nerd club"? I think we should make This first hehe.

Favorite Sports Memories

I have been to some pretty awesome sporting events in my life:

• BYU football team beat 5th ranked Texas A&M the first game of the year
• The NBA Finals, Jazz vs. Bulls game with Nick and his brother Jeremy outside in the parking lot of the Delta Center on a huge TV with thousands of other fans (I think they lost that game - still awesome!)
• A professional lacrosse game in the Denver Broncos stadium with Jeremy, Justin, and Breanne.
• A few MLB (pro baseball) games including some spring training games in Arizona (my favorite place to be in the spring).

But I think last Friday night topped them all. My Dad called me Friday morning and asked if I wanted to go to the Jazz playoff game against Denver. Of course I said yes since I haven't been to a Jazz game in like 7 years. He said they might be pretty good seats because his boss was offering them to him. He called back and said they were on the 8th row!! And they came with a VIP dinner before the game. I was pretty pumped all day waiting to go. I was just telling Kalli a couple weeks ago how much I would love to see a Jazz game from just a few rows up.
Well, as excited as I was to see the game, it was way more amazing than I had thought!! The whole game I was just taking it all in, hardly believing that I was there with such great seats. It was so fun to just sit there and watch, I wanted the game to last a lot longer (even though I had a headache from all the noise!). We were so close, it was like we were in the game. You don't know how big, fast, and athletic these guys are until you see them up close. It was awesome!


Check out that ticket! Pricey; however, I thought it would be more for those seats.


We had to check out the seats when we first got there. We were pretty excited about them at that point! (we watched Korver hit like 90% of his warm-up shots from all over the court)


We went up to the dinner buffet in a ritzy banquet room on the top floor of the Energy Solutions Arena. It was a pretty small room with an awesome view. There were about 20 other rich suckers eating some of the best food anywhere! (My Dad was pretty excited about the shrimp!) We felt a little awkward and out of place, but happy to be there none-the-less. Needless to say, we felt pretty rich that whole night.


Even watching them warm up was exciting.


Their layup drill was more like a dunk exhibition. I didn't get the best part of it, but for a while they were all just dunking it as hard as they could - Ronnie Price (UVU alum!!) was having his own dunk contest. He was doing some awesome stuff!




The noise was almost unbearable! The crowd was pretty rowdy from the start. My Dad and I were both hoarse by halftime just from trying to talk to each other. My Dad didn't say much the second half because he literally lost his voice.


This kid was hilarious. Every time-out he would get up and dance and try to get the crowd pumped up (not that we needed to be). He looks old, but he must have been in his 20's and a little handicapped (I hope).


The party at the end of the game! I think the only thing that would have made it a better experience is if the Nuggets would've at least put up a fight the last quarter or two.



Just chillin courtside! They let the fans come down on the court after the game. We didn't really want the night to end so we took advantage.


It's going to be hard to top this one. It kind of makes me think it would be worth it to just splurge every once in a while and spend $200 a pop for that experience! (Maybe not on a teacher salary)