First Week of School

{My goal is to update my blog weekly.  Week one: accomplished!}

One week down!! Not sure how many to go. LOL! The first week was as busy as expected.  

I spent most of the week changing schedules. I was kind of surprised how many of my seniors did not want to take a 5th year English class. Texas only requires 4 years. I tried to convince them to stay in English (AP English Literature) because they will take an English class in college.  My principal and AP wanted them in it too, but approved them to drop AP Lit for another AP course, additional music period (if they are going to major in music in college) or another rigorous course.  

Thankfully, the deadline for students to request schedule changes was Thursday.  Counselors have until the 10th day of school to make changes. I have a few more changes to make Tuesday and then I'll be finished!---Hopefully! I'll probably have to balance some classes, but no more changes!! 

I am starting my senior meetings next week.  Classroom visits first and then individual meetings.  I want to meet with all 250+ of my seniors individually before Open House (October 15).  

Instagram Photo Challenge

Found this Instagram Photo Challenge on Pinterest. It's not my senior year, but I have seniors so it counts :)  Here is the challenge and my week 1 picture.  

Instagram Photo Challenge

Week 1 Photo: First day of school...Registration in the library

And just because it's National Bacon Day...

MMMMMMM.....Bacon!!!!!

2013-2014 Year In Review...In Pictures

Since I only made one blog post last school, here is my year in pictures.

12th Grade Counselor's Office

Acceleration Counselor's Office

Working on schedules on a Saturday before the first day of school.

The 10^th grade counselor put together a great and thorough safe room (crisis) kit.  Everything was ready to go when we needed to use it this year.  THE KIT HAS EVERYTHING!!

Parking Space Painting.  The 9^th grade counselor and I paid for the right to paint our parking spaces.  It’s one of the fundraisers the PTA has to raise money for the after prom lock-in.  We spent two Saturdays painting our spaces.

Homecoming Week: Superhero day…we joked about us being super counselors and decided to make it real.

9th Grade Counselor

10th Grade Counselor

11th Grade Counselor (ME!!!!)

12th Grade Counselor

Acceleration Counselor

Homecoming week: Tacky Tourist Day

Homecoming Week: Nerd/Geek Day

Those suspenders though! LOL!!!!

Homecoming Week: Hall Decorations.  The homecoming theme was Dr. Seuss.  These are pictures of 2 hallways

Homecoming week: Pep Rally Stage…This set was impressive!!  The students came out a door on the balcony

Gotta love the kindness of students.  We joke with our students that they need to have snacks to see us. Of course we let the students see us without snacks.  One of my students brought this for me because we would ask for twinkies. LOL!! We laughed so hard. 

Christmas Decorating.  Since we all love Christmas, we decided to decorate our doors and the counseling suite.  We even hung stockings, but no one left us candy. LOL!  We adopted an angel tree student from our feeder elementary school too.

9th Grade Counselor's Door

Close-up Picture

10th Grade Counselor's Door

Close-up Picture

My Door.  I know the penguin didn't match, but I liked it :) 

Close-up Picture

12th Grade Counselor's Door

Bulletin Board in Counseling Suite

Board with the lights on

File cabinet in counseling suite.  Our counseling clerk/administrative associate had us use leftover wrapping paper to make gifts.

With the lights on

Counseling Clerk/Administrative Associate's door 

Close-up Picture

Acceleration Counselor's Door

Close-up Picture

 Valentine Singing Telegram from The Choir

Teacher/Faculty/Staff Appreciation Week

Cup was filled with candy

Teacher/Faculty/Staff Appreciation Week: I had to spin the “wheel of fun” to win this Sonic gift card….it will come in handy next school year (14-15 year) during my late nights at the school.  (I rarely take work home.)

"Wheel of Fun"

Student “incentives” from me.  I only did it once.

Inspiration (from Pinterest, of course)

Bought mine (fruit roll-ups) from Sam’s…thought they were the kind like the picture above

My office…I will post updated pictures in August because I made some changes. My office theme was the Lotsa Dots collection from Mardel.

Inspiration

My version.  I only ended up using one set of the drawers: new/returning students, fax cover sheets, history update forms (transcript update forms)

Created my contact logs during the summer (using the documentation I had throughout the year) but didn't do a good job of completing them during the 13-14 school year.  That is one of my many areas of improvement.

And the highlight of my year....

This still makes me laugh!!!