Williamsburg Day 1

So we were not able to get to Colonial Williamsburg (Park Area) until this afternoon. I will say that for one of the first times being a teacher paid off monetarily. Here teachers receive a 50% discount off the price of admission. That was pretty cool. We got to see just a few things in Colonial Williamsburg, but will do more tomorrow. Here are a few pics.

Vacation in Virginia

The view from our balcony

So this is the first night of my vacation in Virginia. I am going to try and post to the blog most days with pics of what we are doing. Tomorrow we will be touring around and getting to know the lay of the land. Hope that you will check the blog and hope that all are well.

Miracle Pennies

One of the things that I love about my school and school in general, is that students who get inspired can do anything. We have one particular young lady who loves to get involved in fund raisers. Her most recent being "Miracle Pennies" through the Children's Miracle Network. One thing that I have learned in my three years teaching is that if you the teacher put yourself up and challenge the students, they will generally rise to the occasion. For instance I challenged my kids that if they did well on the TAKS test they could shave my head. They met my expectations so I got my head shaved. This fundraiser however was whichever teacher received the most money in their jar would have to kiss a pig(in this case it was actually a lamb) or get a pie in the face. The money came solely from student donations, and I am proud to say that our students gave $190.82 to help others! That is awesome in my book. These are students in high school who are giving their money to help people they don't know. Well onto the good stuff. Mrs. Martin kissed the lamb and received a pie, however, I do not have a picture at this time. Mr. Felix and myself both received pies and it went something like this.

What an amazing job that we have. We get to watch young people grow up and realize that there are other people in this world besides themselves. If taking a pie in the face or shaving my head helps them realize that then sign me up for more.

Relaxing in the Wild

What could be better than sitting outside with friends by a lake? I can't think of many things off the top of my head. We had a lot of friends out on the camping trip who were able to get to know our girls and show them a good time. Most of the people that came are involved in education in some form or another. One of the benefits of the girls getting to see these people, including myself, at a camping trip is that they get to see how we are out of school. The girls had such a great time getting to know everyone in a new way. We all laughed until we hurt both from laughing and how much food we ate.

The next morning we were planning on doing a scavenger hunt with the girls. We awoke that morning with the wind still blowing as it had done all night and then suddenly the wind stopped. We were so excited because it was going to be good weather for the hike. Then as quickly as it stopped a Northern blew in and dropped the temperature about 15 degrees. The girls were looking for blankets, coats, or anything that would keep them warm. I must admit it was very chilly. We were able to get breakfast cooked while the girls huddled in the van. After breakfast we were all in the van talking when one of the girls told us to look on the picnic table.

If you can't tell that is a blue jay eating part of our breakfast. The girls got a big kick out of seeing this. The weather that morning would not cooperate with us so the scavenger hunt will be on a later date.

"The Food alone is worth the trip"

Well it has been a few days since I have sent out more pictures from the camping trip so here goes. One of the things that Dent and I wanted the kids to experience was good camp food. This did not mean a ham sandwich or cereal. We wanted them to have good home cooked meals so that they could really experience the great outdoors. The first trip that we took, we cooked Fajitas, and they were awesome. This time we decided to have BBQ Chicken and Sausage with all the fixins.

That is a good amount of chicken right there.

We're getting close here.

Let the Feast begin.

That's some serious eating.

Forget about the fork

Even Mrs. Martin and Mrs. Page are getting down to business.

Everyone ate until they were stuffed and then we broke out the smores. Some of our girls had never had a smore before. It did not take long for them to see why Dent and I had made a big deal about having smores. We also did campfire biscuits, but I will have to talk about that later.

Girls Camping Trip

This past weekend was the first Girls trip that was taken as part of the C.E.L.L. program. We had a great weekend and the girls did awesome. This is a picture of us getting ready to leave Saturday morning and come home. We had four girls go on the trip with us this time. We always want more to go, but we have a great time with the ones that do go. The girls participated well and were not afraid to get their hands dirty as you will see later.

This picture is at the school Friday afternoon when we were loading up the vans.

Everyone did a great job pitching in to get the tents set up

The girls had to show off their work. This is one of our three tents that was purchased with the original grant money that we received. These tents are big enough to fit 4 double airbeds comfortably.

Guys Camping Trip

I thought it important to share a little about the guys camping trip and what exactly we did while on the trip. The pictures up top are of the same tree on a gentleman's land that we went for a hike on. His land has had at least three known Indian villages on it at different times in history. We felt like it would be a great opportunity to take a picture under a tree that has had seen so many ceremonies. This was the starting point for the Geo cache activity that we did on Saturday morning. The gentleman that let us use his land was gracious enough to come out and get to know our guys. He was very knowledgeable and taught the guys many things about the Indians and their relationship to Perryton. He taught the guys how to use a metal detector and GPS units.

If you look at the picture of us under the tree, you will see an outcrop in the middle. Our hike ended on top of those rocks, and this was the view that we were looking at the morning.

The guys had a great time looking for our "buried treasure". The treasure was a Sacagawea gold dollar for every camper and student at our school. This was an awesome gift that I believe our students will cherish for years to come.

First Post

So blogging is something that I have not been into until recently. My sisters' blog is one that I follow very closely and have enjoyed seeing it change. Some of you may not know, but I teach Social Studies at an Alternative Campus. Now some may think that I work in a dangerous environment, but really it is an awesome opportunity to work with students who just need a little encouragement and direction. So onto the main reason that I am starting this blog; Camping. At the end of last year I was thinking about what it is that I do here. Do I just teach Social Studies, or am I here to help students become ready for there future? So I decided that I wanted to teach my students things that I learned when I was growing up about character and maturity. I learned about these things through camping with my family growing up. Long story short a co-teacher and I wrote a grant to create a camping trip and we received the money to do this. The picture you see here is one of the first trip ever taken with the money received. Now, we are getting ready to take our second trip this weekend, and this will be a girls camping trip. Before you freak out, we do have enough female sponsors to cover everything.

This is another picture from the first camping trip of all the guys working with the metal detector.

I guess I should explain the name C.E.L.L. That is the title of the camping program and it stands for Camp, Experience, Learn, and Live. That is what we want from our students, we want for these trips to introduce them to things that they may not have experienced before, and then take that knowledge and live.