So I have been having problems with my brakes on my car for over 6 months now. I took my car to Brake Check, this brake place in Houston, near my school in December to get new pads and whatever else they felt like I needed. Apparently I needed a system overhaul because I ended up dropping $450 on new brake stuff. Well one month into my new brakes I began to get this different screeching sound from my back brakes. I eventually had enough time to go take them back in because they give you a lifetime warranty on all parts they install. I was basically told that the reason they screeched was my fault and that I needed to be more careful in how I braked. Nonetheless, they "fixed" my brakes and changed my oil and sent me on my way with $70 more dollars of mine. Well of course the exact same noise came back even though I did what they told me to do to make sure it does not happen again. As you can imagine I was not very happy about this. I do not really like, nor do I think many people do, taking my car in to get it fixed because I practically know nothing about cars. So today I decided that I had the time to take my car back in to Brake Check for a third time. I made sure I went to a very different location because I did not feel like the guys at the first location were being very honest. So I went to the location near my place right next to Ella on 610. Lately I have been trying to remember to pray before I go into any situation because I have been proven time and time again that prayers are answered. I prayed in my car on the way to this Brake Check that I would get an honest person and that things would work out smoothly. WELL! GUESS WHAT!?! Of course God answered that prayer pretty quickly. I went into the front office and noticed that the guy was a Christian by a ring he had on and a couple of things he had on the back wall. I was silently excited! I had just bought the book "Jesus for President" by Shane Claiborne and also had a Bible commentary with me because I was expecting to leave my car there and be brought home. Well after starting my story about my car and what has happened to it the guy noticed my books and we lightly talked about how it was nice to be dealing with like minded individuals. Ends up that he just bought his wife the same ring I got Danielle for our 1 year anniversary from the same place too! It was neat. Anyways I feel like he is going to take real good care of me and my business at this Brake Check location. Very excited that God answers our prayers all the time. I am blessed to have recognized it and recorded it for future reference. Jesus really is everywhere, even in your local car shop.
Peace,
Michael
Friday, June 13, 2008
Monday, January 7, 2008
First Day Back
I got a lot accomplished this weekend after coming back from Ohio. I cleaned up my place, went to the doctor, unpacked, read some, got my passport photos and application filled out, got groceries, a haircut, and I even went to school on Saturday and cleaned up my classroom so I would be ready for the students to come back. The one thing that I really didn't do was plan my lessons for today. For some reason whenever I try and plan the way I am going to teach I rack my brain about how there is something wrong with each and every one of my ideas and that I won't be able to accomplish it. I am pretty good at psyching myself out. I really need to listen to that saying that goes "Let go and let God". I'm am trying to do this. Hopefully the stubbornness in me will be broken down so that I can fully trust God to guide me. I know he is guiding me because I definitely would not have ended up here if I were after my own desires. What the problem is, is that I am resisting by thinking that I can control everything with my perfectionism. Anyways today was pretty good and I still have to plan for tomorrow but I am going to another teacher's place to watch Ohio State kick some LSU butt. Or so I hope so.
Peace,
Michael
Peace,
Michael
Sunday, January 6, 2008
Back to School
It is time to go back to school and begin teaching Algebra and Geometry again. Both classes are still new to me because they are just a continuation of the material I have already taught. I feel like I did the whole first semester. I ask myself "How am I going to do this?" Whenever I begin to think about the material I have to teach I get anxious about it all and in a way just fall apart and want to escape the worry by doing something easier and definitely more fun. I am looking forward to the day where I can think about how I taught something before and alter my lesson based on what I learned. Nonetheless, I will get through today and have something for my students to learn or more likely review tomorrow. God has to be my strength and my provider in my life. I know I must trust Him for all comfort, peace, and guidance.
On a somewhat happier note I had a fantastic 2 week break away from school. I went back to Ohio and visited friends and family. It was extremely good to see everyone and also good to see that I can still interact fine with my college friends even though we have been separated for about 6 months. That was the longest I have been away from Ohio in one shot. When I came to Houston for co-op during college I was actually only gone for closer to 5 months.
In Ohio, I was able to balance my time with family, friends, and Danielle. What was really nice is that most of the time when I was hanging out with my family and friends, Danielle was with me too so I was happy to have them get to know Danielle better and vice-versa. I came home on Saturday the 22nd and enjoyed time with my family for 5 days. During that time Danielle was able to meet my extended family on Christmas Eve and I was able to meet one side of hers on Christmas. Both went really well. At Danielle's family's get together we were introduced to the game "Rock Band". This was a really fun game where you get to play the guitar, drums, sing, and bass all at one time. The only thing we were missing was the bass but we had 3 people rocking out to each song. Once we finally got the microphone to work Danielle's family urged me on to be the VERY first one to sing. It was the song by Weezer called "Say it ain't so". It was fun and I think I really impressed them by having the courage to do it in front of a bunch of people I just met, especially since they were Danielle's family. Well Danielle and I decided that we should get this so that we could play with others in Houston when she comes and have something else social to do other than going out to eat and watching a movie. Last night I ordered a used XBox 360 with many extras on Ebay and the Rock Band game on Amazon. Everywhere else I looked it was sold out but for some reason Amazon had quite a few in stock and were selling many used ones too. I just hope and pray that both the XBox and game work without a hitch.
Overall I had a GREAT break and am really glad I got to see everyone back home. I look forward to coming back from March 14 - 24. Pray for me that I will be able to give my best to my students and give them all the opportunities I can possibly give.
I love you all and I truly mean that!
Peace,
Michael
On a somewhat happier note I had a fantastic 2 week break away from school. I went back to Ohio and visited friends and family. It was extremely good to see everyone and also good to see that I can still interact fine with my college friends even though we have been separated for about 6 months. That was the longest I have been away from Ohio in one shot. When I came to Houston for co-op during college I was actually only gone for closer to 5 months.
In Ohio, I was able to balance my time with family, friends, and Danielle. What was really nice is that most of the time when I was hanging out with my family and friends, Danielle was with me too so I was happy to have them get to know Danielle better and vice-versa. I came home on Saturday the 22nd and enjoyed time with my family for 5 days. During that time Danielle was able to meet my extended family on Christmas Eve and I was able to meet one side of hers on Christmas. Both went really well. At Danielle's family's get together we were introduced to the game "Rock Band". This was a really fun game where you get to play the guitar, drums, sing, and bass all at one time. The only thing we were missing was the bass but we had 3 people rocking out to each song. Once we finally got the microphone to work Danielle's family urged me on to be the VERY first one to sing. It was the song by Weezer called "Say it ain't so". It was fun and I think I really impressed them by having the courage to do it in front of a bunch of people I just met, especially since they were Danielle's family. Well Danielle and I decided that we should get this so that we could play with others in Houston when she comes and have something else social to do other than going out to eat and watching a movie. Last night I ordered a used XBox 360 with many extras on Ebay and the Rock Band game on Amazon. Everywhere else I looked it was sold out but for some reason Amazon had quite a few in stock and were selling many used ones too. I just hope and pray that both the XBox and game work without a hitch.
Overall I had a GREAT break and am really glad I got to see everyone back home. I look forward to coming back from March 14 - 24. Pray for me that I will be able to give my best to my students and give them all the opportunities I can possibly give.
I love you all and I truly mean that!
Peace,
Michael
Saturday, December 22, 2007
Teaching Math in 2007
So as you know I am really really bad at updating my blog. There are many reasons why but the main reason is just because I get so worried about everything else I tell myself I have no time to type up a post. BUT, no matter, I am writing now to inform you about my life the past 4 months. As many of you know I have been teaching Algebra 1 and Geometry at an inner city school in Houston. The biggest challenge this year has been and will continue to be the fact that most of my students are English Language Learners meaning that they really don't understand what I am saying all the time and have an even harder time understanding anything they read in English.
This experience has been the hardest most rewarding experience of my life. There have been many days I have asked myself "How am I going to teach these kids today?" Actually this was a common question every morning for the first 3 months. My daily routine was to wake up in the morning at 5:30 with anxiety filling my body, go to school and finish preparing for the day ahead, teach the best that I could, go home at 7 or 8 feeling confident that I could teach well. So I would start my day wondering how the heck I was going to do anything and doubting myself , then end my day excited about how the day went. The one thing I struggled with the most and I still struggle with now is knowing the best way to teach something. That I believe is the hardest thing about teaching is figuring out a good way to teach a topic and being able to make it exciting enough and connect it to the real world so that your students will want to learn. I definitely bored some students to death and I felt super bad about that because I want Math to be as exciting for them as it is for me. I never needed any special hi jinx to convince me that Math was awesome. I just always enjoyed it because there is only one specific answer to each problem.
As you can imagine living this way affected my social life along with my physical body. My social life basically didn't exist up until about Thanksgiving. I pretty much only cared about my life as a teacher and figuring out how the heck I was going to survive. The only people I would talk to were my mom, my girlfriend Danielle, and my roommates when I saw them around the house. I was a pretty big loser and I knew it. I think at this time I was either slightly in or getting really close to depression. I was definitely lonely because I am good at cutting myself off from the rest of the world. As far as my physical body goes, before I came to Houston in June I weighed close to 200 pounds. Now I weigh 165 and I have not been exercising, though I believe I do eat much healthier and smaller portions than I used to. I believe the anxiety has something to do with my appetite and always worrying gave me less time to think about eating or snacking.
Since Thanksgiving when my friend Adam came down to visit my anxiety has diminished and my confidence in my abilities has increased. I have been hanging out with friends on the weekends to get away from the stress of the job and I have not been worrying as much about how I will get through this. God has blessed my life so much to be in the situation that I am and I am thankful to Him for all the people in my life and the opportunities He has provided.
Now since I didn't keep up with my blog over the last semester I am going to try and recall some of the exciting events that occurred over the past 4 months.
- My best class at the beginning of the year ended up being my worst class because of the addition of some rowdy students that did not want to cooperate. In that class I have 4 students that will never shut up. The most defiant one is SPED and has ADD but does not take his medicine because he doesn't like how it makes him feel. He likes to talk back and act big and bad. He is one of my two white students and was caught on campus high on drugs. He is being transferred to the alternative school where all the unruly students go. He is pretty scared about it because he knows it will be tough for him to survive there as a skinny white kid.
- Another student from that class that class that doesn't shut up is a 21 year guy who moved from Ghana and is one of my most immature students. I think a lot of his problem is that he is frustrated that he is 21 and still in high school with younger kids. He makes a lot of stupid comments on purpose and then gets mad at others for making fun of him. One day I mistakenly left 5 minutes of "free" time where we didn't do anything at the end of class. Apparently one of the other students said the wrong thing to this guy and he flipped out and wanted to fight. He threw down 2 of my desks and was prompting the other kid to fight. Of course neither was going to back down and I luckily was right there to get in between them both. That was the only time this semester that I feel things got too out of control in my classroom. Luckily it was at the end of class.
- The student that caused the 21 year old to fight gave me other problems too. This student is the type of person who is annoying and a troublemaker but is so charming that he gets out of a lot of things. Well , one day I decided that I was fed up with the crap of these 4 students and I needed to crack down on their behavior. I told each of them as they came in the door that I was only giving them one chance that day. Each of the other 3 responded fairly well and didn't give me much trouble. Well this one did not want to listen to me at all. At the end of the class I tried to hand him a detention slip and he just walked away disrespectfully. I wrote him up and my AP promptly suspended him for the next day. The next morning I see this student walking down the halls. I told my AP and they had him arrested. Apparently he ended up in jail for the whole weekend and then he has a court date and they are threatening him with 6 months in jail. He is 17. He comes in the next Monday and tries to tell me that he had to see people crap right in front of him because of me and that he was going to jail for 6 months because of me. I eventually had a heart to heart with him and things have cooled down with him.
- Last but not least is the 4th of these students. He actually is one of my most intelligent students and part of the reason why he is so disruptive is because he is bored in my class. Apparently though he used to be a bad kid in middle school and shaped up within the past year. His attitude was getting so bad in my class and he would never listen because he thought he didn't have to and then do bad on the tests. I setup a parent teacher conference with his mom with the help of my AP to translate and this has helped since. What is interesting now with him is that his girlfriend is pregnant and they are only freshmen. He has changed his mind from being a police officer to being an engineer and I hope I can help encourage him in that because I was an engineer.
- There have been many students that I have felt that I have made an impact on. I had one student's mother come in and tell me that she used to hate math and now she loves it and that she says good things about me to her mom. The reason she hated math before was because she didn't understand it. Now she understands it and really likes my class.
- There have been many students that I have referred to the counselor to set them up with mentors. I have noticed the benefit of this program even though every time the mentor lady comes to the door the students act like it is a joke. I have seen a positive difference in the students who are using it.
- Last week I took two of my seniors to the college resource center that we have at our school.
They were planning on either going back to their home countries of Mexico and Guatemala or working for a year before going back to school. After talking to the college director they have both changed their minds and are planning on going to school right after they graduate. It warms my heart to know that I am making a difference in these students lives. They have some of the hardest lives I have ever seen. It has opened my eyes to a whole new world within the United States. They have so many pressures from family, school, the country, their own desires, and friends. I cannot imagine the anxiety these students have.
I have many other stories I could probably tell but if you want to know more you can talk to me in person sometime. I have been so blessed to be put in this situation and given the opportunity to learn and grow so much while hopefully positively affecting the lives of about 100 students. No matter how hard this has been or how worried I have been I have never regretted doing this and it is the most rewarding experience I have ever had. I can honestly say that I love teaching! I look forward to improving and perfecting my teaching so that I can have a greater effect on these students.
I hope everyone has a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year. I hope to see many of you when I am in Ohio from Dec. 28th to January 3rd.
Peace,
Michael
This experience has been the hardest most rewarding experience of my life. There have been many days I have asked myself "How am I going to teach these kids today?" Actually this was a common question every morning for the first 3 months. My daily routine was to wake up in the morning at 5:30 with anxiety filling my body, go to school and finish preparing for the day ahead, teach the best that I could, go home at 7 or 8 feeling confident that I could teach well. So I would start my day wondering how the heck I was going to do anything and doubting myself , then end my day excited about how the day went. The one thing I struggled with the most and I still struggle with now is knowing the best way to teach something. That I believe is the hardest thing about teaching is figuring out a good way to teach a topic and being able to make it exciting enough and connect it to the real world so that your students will want to learn. I definitely bored some students to death and I felt super bad about that because I want Math to be as exciting for them as it is for me. I never needed any special hi jinx to convince me that Math was awesome. I just always enjoyed it because there is only one specific answer to each problem.
As you can imagine living this way affected my social life along with my physical body. My social life basically didn't exist up until about Thanksgiving. I pretty much only cared about my life as a teacher and figuring out how the heck I was going to survive. The only people I would talk to were my mom, my girlfriend Danielle, and my roommates when I saw them around the house. I was a pretty big loser and I knew it. I think at this time I was either slightly in or getting really close to depression. I was definitely lonely because I am good at cutting myself off from the rest of the world. As far as my physical body goes, before I came to Houston in June I weighed close to 200 pounds. Now I weigh 165 and I have not been exercising, though I believe I do eat much healthier and smaller portions than I used to. I believe the anxiety has something to do with my appetite and always worrying gave me less time to think about eating or snacking.
Since Thanksgiving when my friend Adam came down to visit my anxiety has diminished and my confidence in my abilities has increased. I have been hanging out with friends on the weekends to get away from the stress of the job and I have not been worrying as much about how I will get through this. God has blessed my life so much to be in the situation that I am and I am thankful to Him for all the people in my life and the opportunities He has provided.
Now since I didn't keep up with my blog over the last semester I am going to try and recall some of the exciting events that occurred over the past 4 months.
- My best class at the beginning of the year ended up being my worst class because of the addition of some rowdy students that did not want to cooperate. In that class I have 4 students that will never shut up. The most defiant one is SPED and has ADD but does not take his medicine because he doesn't like how it makes him feel. He likes to talk back and act big and bad. He is one of my two white students and was caught on campus high on drugs. He is being transferred to the alternative school where all the unruly students go. He is pretty scared about it because he knows it will be tough for him to survive there as a skinny white kid.
- Another student from that class that class that doesn't shut up is a 21 year guy who moved from Ghana and is one of my most immature students. I think a lot of his problem is that he is frustrated that he is 21 and still in high school with younger kids. He makes a lot of stupid comments on purpose and then gets mad at others for making fun of him. One day I mistakenly left 5 minutes of "free" time where we didn't do anything at the end of class. Apparently one of the other students said the wrong thing to this guy and he flipped out and wanted to fight. He threw down 2 of my desks and was prompting the other kid to fight. Of course neither was going to back down and I luckily was right there to get in between them both. That was the only time this semester that I feel things got too out of control in my classroom. Luckily it was at the end of class.
- The student that caused the 21 year old to fight gave me other problems too. This student is the type of person who is annoying and a troublemaker but is so charming that he gets out of a lot of things. Well , one day I decided that I was fed up with the crap of these 4 students and I needed to crack down on their behavior. I told each of them as they came in the door that I was only giving them one chance that day. Each of the other 3 responded fairly well and didn't give me much trouble. Well this one did not want to listen to me at all. At the end of the class I tried to hand him a detention slip and he just walked away disrespectfully. I wrote him up and my AP promptly suspended him for the next day. The next morning I see this student walking down the halls. I told my AP and they had him arrested. Apparently he ended up in jail for the whole weekend and then he has a court date and they are threatening him with 6 months in jail. He is 17. He comes in the next Monday and tries to tell me that he had to see people crap right in front of him because of me and that he was going to jail for 6 months because of me. I eventually had a heart to heart with him and things have cooled down with him.
- Last but not least is the 4th of these students. He actually is one of my most intelligent students and part of the reason why he is so disruptive is because he is bored in my class. Apparently though he used to be a bad kid in middle school and shaped up within the past year. His attitude was getting so bad in my class and he would never listen because he thought he didn't have to and then do bad on the tests. I setup a parent teacher conference with his mom with the help of my AP to translate and this has helped since. What is interesting now with him is that his girlfriend is pregnant and they are only freshmen. He has changed his mind from being a police officer to being an engineer and I hope I can help encourage him in that because I was an engineer.
- There have been many students that I have felt that I have made an impact on. I had one student's mother come in and tell me that she used to hate math and now she loves it and that she says good things about me to her mom. The reason she hated math before was because she didn't understand it. Now she understands it and really likes my class.
- There have been many students that I have referred to the counselor to set them up with mentors. I have noticed the benefit of this program even though every time the mentor lady comes to the door the students act like it is a joke. I have seen a positive difference in the students who are using it.
- Last week I took two of my seniors to the college resource center that we have at our school.
They were planning on either going back to their home countries of Mexico and Guatemala or working for a year before going back to school. After talking to the college director they have both changed their minds and are planning on going to school right after they graduate. It warms my heart to know that I am making a difference in these students lives. They have some of the hardest lives I have ever seen. It has opened my eyes to a whole new world within the United States. They have so many pressures from family, school, the country, their own desires, and friends. I cannot imagine the anxiety these students have.
I have many other stories I could probably tell but if you want to know more you can talk to me in person sometime. I have been so blessed to be put in this situation and given the opportunity to learn and grow so much while hopefully positively affecting the lives of about 100 students. No matter how hard this has been or how worried I have been I have never regretted doing this and it is the most rewarding experience I have ever had. I can honestly say that I love teaching! I look forward to improving and perfecting my teaching so that I can have a greater effect on these students.
I hope everyone has a blessed Christmas and a wonderful New Year. I hope to see many of you when I am in Ohio from Dec. 28th to January 3rd.
Peace,
Michael
Sunday, September 2, 2007
First Week of Real School
So this past week was my very first week as a High School Math teacher. I must say it went pretty darn good. So far I have not had any big behavior problems which is something I really struggled with this summer teaching Chemistry. The biggest struggle I will be facing this year is the language barrier at my school. I just looked at my roster last night and figured out that I have 7 different languages spoken in one of my Algebra classes ( English, Spanish, French, Farsi, Somali, Urdu, and Other). Not sure what the Other means.... My Geometry class has 5 different languages spoken (English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, and Other) and I am not sure yet about my other Algebra class. And believe it or not some of these students do not understand anything that comes out of my mouth. As you can imagine it is really hard to teach someone anything in English if they do not understand English. I am working on finding ways to communicate with these students the best I can in hopes that they learn Algebra. Though this may seem like a discouraging situation I am confident that God will equip me with what I need to communicate with these students. I am excited to see how far we come by the end of the year.
My inspiration for the week and probably for the week is a girl named Vanessa. So on Thursday I was feeling really stressed and down. I was asking myself and God "How am I going to do this? Especially if no one comes in after or before school to get help." Then by the grace of God, Vanessa comes in to get some extra help on what we were learning in class. I help her with what she came for and then started talking to her. She began to tell me about what she wanted to do in life and about why she was in 11th grade and only in Algebra 1. Apparently she is considered "special education" (SPED) because she at one time had a hard time reading English. Now if this is the case I want to know why all my students are not classified "special education"? So because she is SPED she had been placed in Fundamentals of Math classes for her first two years of High School. Do you want to know what they teach in that class? They teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and they go all the way up to FRACTIONS!! From what she told me, they taught her the same stuff every year and she would fly through it with high A's. She told me that people at the school were telling her parents that she would be able to go to college with these Math classes but teachers were telling her that she wouldnt be able to with these classes. She began asking around more and finally found out that she would not be able to go to college if she continued taking the classes she was taking. So she got herself into Algebra 1 and now plans to take Geometry in the summer and Algebra 2 next school year so she can go to college and become a Math Teacher! She wants to help the students that are in situations like hers. She has so much motivation, passion, and determination. I told her I will help her with whatever she wants. So she came in on Friday morning 1 hour early to begin working out of the book, which is something we don't really do. I have her reading through the book and doing the problems and if she has any trouble she can ask me questions. EVEN BETTER she came in after school on Friday and spent 1.5 hours helping a student in my class that just moved here from Cuba and doesnt know a lick of English. Now he is also determined to learn Algebra and she is going to help him. I did tell him though that he is going to need to work really hard to learn English so that he can at least somewhat understand me in class. These are the students that make me love my job! I am so excited for this school year and working with students just like these. From the looks of it many of my students want to learn and are willing to work hard to overcome the language barrier, as am I. Please pray that we will be able to overcome all the obstacles that are ahead of us.
Sorry that this is the first post in almost a month. I feel like I need to continue to record these successes that I encounter and the struggles that I face. I miss you all and hope that you are enjoying the long weekend!
Peace,
MO
My inspiration for the week and probably for the week is a girl named Vanessa. So on Thursday I was feeling really stressed and down. I was asking myself and God "How am I going to do this? Especially if no one comes in after or before school to get help." Then by the grace of God, Vanessa comes in to get some extra help on what we were learning in class. I help her with what she came for and then started talking to her. She began to tell me about what she wanted to do in life and about why she was in 11th grade and only in Algebra 1. Apparently she is considered "special education" (SPED) because she at one time had a hard time reading English. Now if this is the case I want to know why all my students are not classified "special education"? So because she is SPED she had been placed in Fundamentals of Math classes for her first two years of High School. Do you want to know what they teach in that class? They teach addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and they go all the way up to FRACTIONS!! From what she told me, they taught her the same stuff every year and she would fly through it with high A's. She told me that people at the school were telling her parents that she would be able to go to college with these Math classes but teachers were telling her that she wouldnt be able to with these classes. She began asking around more and finally found out that she would not be able to go to college if she continued taking the classes she was taking. So she got herself into Algebra 1 and now plans to take Geometry in the summer and Algebra 2 next school year so she can go to college and become a Math Teacher! She wants to help the students that are in situations like hers. She has so much motivation, passion, and determination. I told her I will help her with whatever she wants. So she came in on Friday morning 1 hour early to begin working out of the book, which is something we don't really do. I have her reading through the book and doing the problems and if she has any trouble she can ask me questions. EVEN BETTER she came in after school on Friday and spent 1.5 hours helping a student in my class that just moved here from Cuba and doesnt know a lick of English. Now he is also determined to learn Algebra and she is going to help him. I did tell him though that he is going to need to work really hard to learn English so that he can at least somewhat understand me in class. These are the students that make me love my job! I am so excited for this school year and working with students just like these. From the looks of it many of my students want to learn and are willing to work hard to overcome the language barrier, as am I. Please pray that we will be able to overcome all the obstacles that are ahead of us.
Sorry that this is the first post in almost a month. I feel like I need to continue to record these successes that I encounter and the struggles that I face. I miss you all and hope that you are enjoying the long weekend!
Peace,
MO
Monday, August 6, 2007
Car Insurance
I'm trying to get car insurance because now that I moved to Texas I cannot be on my family's policy in Ohio. Yesterday I began looking online and getting quotes from places like Geico and Progressive. Based on what I knew about the different types of coverage you can get I chose what I thought would be appropriate for me to have on my policy, which ended up being less comprehensive than what I had on my family's policy. The quotes came out to be about the same as what I am paying now which is around $1200 per year. Well my grandpa told me it would be good to go to an independent agency and get quotes from them because they usually have more than one place they get insurance through. I randomly looked up one on the internet and went there today. Apparently this place doesn't usually get walk-ins and they do mostly commercial insurance not personal but they said they would get a quote for me. Part of the reason I went to the place and didn't call was because I wanted to meet with someone face to face. Well the lady that does the personal auto policies works from home so I had to talk to her on the receptionist's phone. There was a delay on the phone which made it really really annoying to talk to her. Well I told this lady the coverage I wanted, which matched my other quotes, and she gave me a quote. Let me tell you now that this independent insurance agency only uses ONE company to get policies unlike what I was hoping for to get multiple quotes. Well her quote was about $1200 as well. FOR 6 MONTHS!! So this place quoted me for double what the well known companies like Geico and Progressive quoted me. After talking with my aunt for 45 min about car insurance I find out that many companies do not give good rates to people my age even if they have a clean record. Another thing I tried to figure out from talking to my aunt was what the purpose of all the different coverages are. A few of them seemed repetitive and also seemed to overlap medical insurance. There is one coverage that will cover your bodily injury liability if an uninsured motorists causes an accident with you. I tried to argue that my medical insurance would cover that and that my passengers should all have medical insurance too. Well my aunt gave me a good scenario that made me realize that it would be good to have. She knew someone that had her car completely totaled by a drunk driver without insurance and she had the uninsured motorist insurance that covered up to $300,000 and she ended up having all her medical bills and such paid by this insurance. I argued that medical insurance should cover that. But what made her point so good was that the $300,000 goes towards compensation for time off work from the injuries. But then there is coverage called Medical Payments, one called Personal Injury Protection, and then the regular bodily liability coverage which to me seem like they all cover the same thing. Seems to me you would only need the regular liability insurance especially since the other two only go up to $10,000 each and that seems weak compared to what medical costs really are. To sum everything up, I don't have my own car insurance yet, I still don't know what all the different coverages do, and because of this issue it was hard to do really productive work today. I'm going to a Nationwide insurance agent tomorrow and will hopefully get everything figured out and then get some insurance for myself.
One more thing that makes this an irritating process is that in order for me to get insurance in Texas my car must be registered in Texas (it's registered in Ohio). AND in order for me to register in Texas I must have insurance in Texas. Figure out that one. Well after tomorrow I may or may not have my own car insurance in Texas and I may or may not have my car registered in Texas.
Peace,
MO
One more thing that makes this an irritating process is that in order for me to get insurance in Texas my car must be registered in Texas (it's registered in Ohio). AND in order for me to register in Texas I must have insurance in Texas. Figure out that one. Well after tomorrow I may or may not have my own car insurance in Texas and I may or may not have my car registered in Texas.
Peace,
MO
Saturday, August 4, 2007
713-705-3617
THATS MY NEW CELL #. USE IT!
I just want to put out there that I know I suck at updating my blog and I apologize. As many bloggers know it is hard to keep a blog updated regularly for some reason. So without further ado let me update you on what has been going on in my life. Warning: This may not be logically ordered and random.
Here is a short update on what I am teaching. I am still teaching two different subjects, Algebra 1 and Geometry, but I will only have 4 sets of students instead of 6 as I originally thought. Let me explain our daily school schedule to give you a better idea of what I am talking about. We have periods and blocks. On Mondays we have all 8 periods of class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have double periods, also called blocks, with 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th period classes. On Wednesdays and Fridays we have double periods with 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th period classes.
I will be teaching 2 Algebra classes and 2 Geometry classes. My 2 Algebra classes are double period classes everyday so I have those students everyday for 90 mins, even on Monday. My Geometry classes are single period classes so I have them on Monday for 45 min and every other day for 90 min. So I see my Geometry students 3 days a week and my Algebra students 5 days week. I know its complicated isnt it. This leaves me 90 min a day for personal planning or group planning with my learning community. This explanation turned out to be longer than I originally planned. BUT the one nice thing about having my Algebra classes double blocked is that I have less students, which will be helpful for grading, contacting parents, and getting to know my students more deeply. Instead of having 150 or so I will hopefully only have ~100.
My school is broken into 7 learning communities each having their own Assistant principal (AP). I have been told by many people that know my AP that he is a great AP and person. One thing that really excites me is that I found out that he is a Christian and started up a Bible study/Prayer group that meets on Wednesdays at 7:30 before school. I feel so blessed to have been placed in a community that has Christian leadership and so many people praising the work of my AP. God is definitely looking out for me. My learning community is called Health and Human Services (H&H) and has approximately 300 students enrolled. Im very excited to be a part of the H&H community.
General information about my school Lee High School. The school dropped the Robert E. in front of the school name about 5 years ago despite the outrage from certain alumni. The teacher dress code is very lax and requires that you wear at least jeans and a collared shirt or an LHS or any university T-shirt. This is a step up from last year when they didn't really have a dress code and you could come into work in sweats if you wanted to. I am guessing that was strongly discouraged though. We are the Lee High School Generals and our colors are Black and Gold. We do not have a football team but we have a killer soccer team. Our homecoming is in the Winter during the soccer season. Our other relatively big sports are wrestling (men's & women's) and basketball. There are not many extracurriculars, especially academic, and I hope to be a part of starting up a Math team sometime this year. There are roughly 40 different languages spoken at my school and apparently we are dubbed the UN school because we get most of the students that move to Houston from other countries. I would say this is also the biggest reason soccer is the biggest sport at our school. 95% of the students that go to Lee are eligible for Free or Reduced lunch and a majority of the students speak English as a second language.
The week of July 23rd - 27th I had TFA orientation everyday from 8 - 5:30. At this orientation we sat through sessions that taught us how to unpack our standards, set a Big Goal for our class, develop Long-Term plans, Unit Plans, Assessment Plans, and methods for tracking my students progress. So the past couple weeks I have been looking at the State standards for Algebra and Geometry and trying to figure out EXACTLY what they mean and what my students need to know to master them. I have also been thinking about what the Big Goals of my classes will be and how to word them just right so that I can motivate my students with them. This is really really hard to do as a first year teacher because you have no idea what to expect from your students and you have a hard time figuring out how all the standards fit together so you can plan your year so that it flows coherently from one topic to another.
I had my new employee orientation yesterday, August 3rd, with my new employer the Houston Independent School District (HISD). A lot of the stuff was pretty informative but there were some boring parts. The most pertinent information was the Benefits information. I now think I have most of my benefits figured out and they seem to be pretty good. It's good to understand that stuff now that I am finally moving into the real world. My mom also informed me that I must find car insurance down here so that I can get off of theirs. Im almost fully independent now. Actually I have just gotten a new phone with VERIZON and now have a HOUSTON number. This was the last thing that my mom was paying for me. So I think I am now officially an INDEPENDENT adult.
As you may or may not know, my girlfriend Danielle Hickle has been doing some amazing work in Mexico the past 2 months and we have not seen each other since I left exactly 2 months ago. We have only been able to talk about once a week as well for the past 2 months. Well she is coming back to the U.S. today and has a 4 hour layover in Houston. So I am about to get ready to go see her and it's exciting. What is crazy is that she planned this long layover in Houston before we even met. Tell me God doesn't work in mysterious ways!!
Take care!
Peace,
MO
I just want to put out there that I know I suck at updating my blog and I apologize. As many bloggers know it is hard to keep a blog updated regularly for some reason. So without further ado let me update you on what has been going on in my life. Warning: This may not be logically ordered and random.
Here is a short update on what I am teaching. I am still teaching two different subjects, Algebra 1 and Geometry, but I will only have 4 sets of students instead of 6 as I originally thought. Let me explain our daily school schedule to give you a better idea of what I am talking about. We have periods and blocks. On Mondays we have all 8 periods of class. On Tuesdays and Thursdays we have double periods, also called blocks, with 1st, 3rd, 5th, and 7th period classes. On Wednesdays and Fridays we have double periods with 2nd, 4th, 6th, and 8th period classes.
I will be teaching 2 Algebra classes and 2 Geometry classes. My 2 Algebra classes are double period classes everyday so I have those students everyday for 90 mins, even on Monday. My Geometry classes are single period classes so I have them on Monday for 45 min and every other day for 90 min. So I see my Geometry students 3 days a week and my Algebra students 5 days week. I know its complicated isnt it. This leaves me 90 min a day for personal planning or group planning with my learning community. This explanation turned out to be longer than I originally planned. BUT the one nice thing about having my Algebra classes double blocked is that I have less students, which will be helpful for grading, contacting parents, and getting to know my students more deeply. Instead of having 150 or so I will hopefully only have ~100.
My school is broken into 7 learning communities each having their own Assistant principal (AP). I have been told by many people that know my AP that he is a great AP and person. One thing that really excites me is that I found out that he is a Christian and started up a Bible study/Prayer group that meets on Wednesdays at 7:30 before school. I feel so blessed to have been placed in a community that has Christian leadership and so many people praising the work of my AP. God is definitely looking out for me. My learning community is called Health and Human Services (H&H) and has approximately 300 students enrolled. Im very excited to be a part of the H&H community.
General information about my school Lee High School. The school dropped the Robert E. in front of the school name about 5 years ago despite the outrage from certain alumni. The teacher dress code is very lax and requires that you wear at least jeans and a collared shirt or an LHS or any university T-shirt. This is a step up from last year when they didn't really have a dress code and you could come into work in sweats if you wanted to. I am guessing that was strongly discouraged though. We are the Lee High School Generals and our colors are Black and Gold. We do not have a football team but we have a killer soccer team. Our homecoming is in the Winter during the soccer season. Our other relatively big sports are wrestling (men's & women's) and basketball. There are not many extracurriculars, especially academic, and I hope to be a part of starting up a Math team sometime this year. There are roughly 40 different languages spoken at my school and apparently we are dubbed the UN school because we get most of the students that move to Houston from other countries. I would say this is also the biggest reason soccer is the biggest sport at our school. 95% of the students that go to Lee are eligible for Free or Reduced lunch and a majority of the students speak English as a second language.
The week of July 23rd - 27th I had TFA orientation everyday from 8 - 5:30. At this orientation we sat through sessions that taught us how to unpack our standards, set a Big Goal for our class, develop Long-Term plans, Unit Plans, Assessment Plans, and methods for tracking my students progress. So the past couple weeks I have been looking at the State standards for Algebra and Geometry and trying to figure out EXACTLY what they mean and what my students need to know to master them. I have also been thinking about what the Big Goals of my classes will be and how to word them just right so that I can motivate my students with them. This is really really hard to do as a first year teacher because you have no idea what to expect from your students and you have a hard time figuring out how all the standards fit together so you can plan your year so that it flows coherently from one topic to another.
I had my new employee orientation yesterday, August 3rd, with my new employer the Houston Independent School District (HISD). A lot of the stuff was pretty informative but there were some boring parts. The most pertinent information was the Benefits information. I now think I have most of my benefits figured out and they seem to be pretty good. It's good to understand that stuff now that I am finally moving into the real world. My mom also informed me that I must find car insurance down here so that I can get off of theirs. Im almost fully independent now. Actually I have just gotten a new phone with VERIZON and now have a HOUSTON number. This was the last thing that my mom was paying for me. So I think I am now officially an INDEPENDENT adult.
As you may or may not know, my girlfriend Danielle Hickle has been doing some amazing work in Mexico the past 2 months and we have not seen each other since I left exactly 2 months ago. We have only been able to talk about once a week as well for the past 2 months. Well she is coming back to the U.S. today and has a 4 hour layover in Houston. So I am about to get ready to go see her and it's exciting. What is crazy is that she planned this long layover in Houston before we even met. Tell me God doesn't work in mysterious ways!!
Take care!
Peace,
MO
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