Weekly Summary 8/24/14

I'm participating in the #MTBoSChallenge to blog at least once a week for the rest of the year.  Today I am choosing the weekly summary prompt that you can read about at Teaching Statistics.

3 Things That Happened This Week

1. Finished decorating my room!  What a relief that is, I'm not really the most crafty person and I usually have the suckiest bulletin boards, but this year with the help of Pinterest I feel a little better about it.
2. Sat in on a bunch of interviews.  We are hiring a 7th Grade ELA teacher, World Language teacher, ELL teacher, Sped teacher and a multi-pupose aid!   Met some really good candidates so demos next week. Just wish we weren't cutting it so close, feel bad for our new hires. They all seemed really positive and up for the challenge though!
3. Learned that we are going to start using Achievement Network Inc. for our benchmark assessments.  I am pretty excited about this and nervous at the same time.  In the past the whole process of creating and grading the benchmarks has been very stressful and time consuming.  If this service works the way its described we can spend more time on actually analyzing the data and using it to reteach.  There is also coaching involved. One of our pd's this week will be on it so I will learn more then.

2 Things I'm Nervous About This Year

1. The big grade level change.  But more specifically the test scores.  I've improved my test scores every year that I've been teaching, but the are still pretty bad.  (Went from 34% to 67% over the last 4 years.)  While the 5/6 scores were 80% this year!  Exciting for our school, but now I have to make sure they don't drop!
2. I want this to be the year I finally get back on track with my diet and workouts.  I say it every single year and I can't get it together.  So I'm nervous as I sit here facing the school year with the thought of adding another 10-15 pounds to my already overweight body, which has been the trend for the past four years. Scared to death is more like it.  I'm already seeing some of the effects of aging and I know that being overweight makes it worse.  Time to take my health seriously!

1 Thing I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Mani/Pedi and haircut today!!!  I never splurge on myself, so since I earned some extra cash at the bodybuilding show yesterday I am treating myself to a spa day!