Backlog

I don't even know where to start. 

I had a birthday. A winter birthday. Winter has shifted and taken over my birthday. I always thought I had a spring birthday but not anymore. We hiked Black Rock. Ash and Erik are at the top.

Ash had a birthday.

Ashlyn's birthday happened over spring break AGAIN. Our birthday spring break wouldn't be the same without a Ding Dong "birthday cake."

Spring break to Kanab. This trip was a little pricey. Bald tires + very bumpy road = BAD IDEA. BUT that slot canyon was worth the extra day delay and set of new tires. Buckskin Gulch was spectacular. Belly of the Dragon and Sand Caves were pretty cool too.

Ash got her wisdom teeth out. She's been the funniest so far coming off that anesthesia.

Nate is applying to BYU while on his mission. It hasn't been easy.

Alex had his early morning math competition.

I got to tour the new prison and brought my neighbors along.

I snagged tickets to the Sunday afternoon session of conference. Alex, Kiersten, and Jason tagged along.

Chickens hatched in my classroom, and this year we got to actually watch one hatch out. The other I had to help out after he struggled for more than a day.

This is basically what we did all day, every day for a few days. Watched chickens. My students were mesmerized.

I sent them home this past week and didn't realize the suffering that would cause to one student in particular. He had grown quite attached over the week and when the day came to give them away, he cried and cried and cried. His mom also moved out at the beginning of the school year, so it's been a rough year anyway. And then to "lose" his chicken. After school dad took him to the dollar store. That didn't help. Eventually they made it to Tractor Supply where he got his own little chick.

And that's a wrap for now. I'll sign off with one last photo of Ash and her prom date.

Good Things Happening

Well, it's officially March by about 6 days and this is how we got to spend our Sunday morning.

Church got cancelled which doesn't happen too often. Alex measured 14.5 inches in our backyard.

Kiersten and Jason
Kiersten and Jason have moved back to Utah and are living in Herriman. Jason is working for the Walmarts in Utah County being their maintenance guy. Kiersten has joined a research group at the University of Utah where she meets with them once in awhile but mainly does a lot of virtual conferencing. She is hoping to get into grad school in the next few years. Oliver is growing and learning lots of new words. He gets to hang with daycare kids at Great-Grandma Laura's. AND . . . there is a new baby coming to their family in August.

Erik
Erik is at Utah State majoring in marketing. He found himself cute Ally Moss to date who loves to play board games as much as he does. We've met her a couple of times. Once when a group of them came home to quarantine for a weekend and another time when they came for a Super Bowl party..

Nathan
Australia finally opened up to missionaries again but a tad bit late for Nate to make it there. He also was moved to new area after being in the Sloan Lake area for quite awhile. He's not one to call a lot or write a lot, but thankfully his Grandma Laura has a cousin serving as a senior missionary in the same mission. SHE keeps me updated on how Nate is doing and will make sure I get those pictures. Sister Diane Ladwig tells me, "He's been a zone leader since he was with Elder Roberts. He is a humble, very hard working missionary, and his previous comps love him. He is making a difference here!"

Ashlyn
Ashlyn is a junior and working to keep her head above water while she holds a job and completes school and has an extensive social life. She was working at Fiiz, a local drink shop, but quit to work at Cold Stone.

She pops into my classroom once in awhile which my students LOVE. They love when big people come.

She's been to another dance and got asked to prom.

Alex
Alex came home with a Student of the Month sign which I'm afraid is buried under some pretty deep snow. We'll recover it one day.

He's been attending early morning math since October and his competition is this Tuesday. One day I discovered a photo of him at his 6th grade Valentine dance all hooded and masked. That was the last day I allowed him to wear his mask to school or wear his hood in class. The poor teacher probably had no idea who he was. Covid has sure done some funny things to kids. I think he felt comfortable hiding behind that mask.

He also completed basketball where his little team only lost one game. Alex managed to score a few baskets every game and has progressively gotten better. 

He's passing the sacrament in church and attending young mens. Where did this baby of mine go?

And for the rest of us . . . my little blog has suffered at the hands of mandatory LETRS training. I'm getting paid to do it, but it doesn't leave me with a lot of time. Tyler completed his year as the Tooele County Master Gardeners Association president, and during that time they severed ties with the Utah State Extension. This means that little gardening group (which is growing bigger) is figuring out a new identity with new goals and projects.

Covid is finally winding down, our temple is making progress,

and Wordle has taken over the family group chat every morning.

The Data Doldrums

I began the school year with 24 students. 58% of those students were not reading on grade level and needing major interventions (my reds).

I had my work cut out for me before we tested again in January.

I made reading goals for each student and taped it to the corner of their desk. I created a form that went home to their parents outlining what they could do at home to help their students improve.

I knew together we were going to make some progress.

These students haven't known what a normal school year is like. Their kindergarten year got shut down. First grade was all about masks and really only a 4-day-in-person school week. Some of my students have HUGE learning gaps, and it's become my job to fill those gaps and get them reading on grade level.

Second grade is a crucial year. Data shows that if a student is not reading on grade level by the end of second grade, it is much harder for them to catch up. The reading just accelerates. 

We made a class goal: If 60% of my students could reach the goal on their desk, we'd have a rootbeer float party. That meant at least 16 of my students had to achieve it at testing time in January.

My district had a different goal in mind which was we would achieve 5% proficiency. That meant of the roughly 100 students we have between us, 5 of those students would move from below-grade level to on-grade level or above.

Our testing day came. I was super excited and super nervous. I wanted them all to do well. AND we did!! My number of reds went from 58% to 50% and 18 of my students made their goal. I chose to not include my new students because that wouldn't have been fair to throw them into the mix when they hadn't been with us all year. However, had my new RED students been taken out the data the district shared, I would have been at 46%. That's a 12% drop. That percentage drop means that some of those reds moved into yellow status which is not quite reading on grade level but making progress.

One student went from reading 4 words per minute (wpm) to 42. Another went from 14 to 52. And yet another read 34 at the beginning of the year and read 88 wpm on her test. I couldn't have been happier. All made growth. Some more than others, but no one went backwards.

We celebrated.

We partied.

And then the district people came to discuss our district goal and data.

I felt pretty confident going in to the meeting until they told me I had pretty much stayed the same. Two of my colleagues grew by 4% proficiency (this means they had 1 or 2 students move to on-grade level.). 

Here's the kicker. In that meeting they only seemed to care about who was and who was not on-grade level. I can go down my list and tell you that in 10 seconds. There were no deep dives into what the numbers really meant. There was no looking to see who was super close to moving over that threshold. AND it certainly did not take into account one of my high students who moved in October and the 3 extremely low students I had move in during those few months. Just that kind of movement is going to skew the numbers and disrupt the balance. My colleagues got lucky with their new move-ins.

My grievance is if you're going to use data for measurement, make sure you are looking at the numbers correctly. Don't just look at something and assume you know what is going on. Had my high student not moved and had I not had 3 low students move in, my numbers would have been on target.

I told myself that I need to remember that when we have these little data meetings, I know way more of what is going on with the numbers than they do. I can do math, and I can certainly play the numbers game to interpret what is really going on.

We set more goals for this next half of the year and taped them to our desk. This time we are working for a pizza party. I know they can do it.

They are going to make me proud again. I can feel it in my bones.

Florida COVIDcation

Erik has been home from his mission for just about 16 months now and finished up his first year at Utah State -- first semester was living at home doing school online and second semester was living in Logan doing school in person.

The original plan several years ago was for Erik to come home in September, head to a niece's wedding in Georgia in October and then continue on the Florida to see his mission sites. But COVID disrupted all those plans, including the wedding. March 2021 came around and Covid seemed to be doing okay. We thought for sure by October things would be even better. So we booked our trip to Florida, a year later than originally planned.

The Saturday before we left, Ash went to Homecoming and the next Monday we caught the red-eye to Orlando.

This was Alex's first time on a plane, and he was pretty excited. Our early morning arrival gave us the chance to rush to the beach to catch the sunrise, something Erik had done several times when he was serving in the area.

We enjoyed our beautiful morning, but our late flight also tuckered us out a bit. So after driving through one of Erik's areas and stopping for lunch at a Wawa gas station (one of his favorites), we found a park to have a snooze before checking into our hotel.

The next day was Sea World. And this is where things went a little south for Ash. Her date from Homecoming texted her to say he tested positive for Covid. And despite being vaccinated, later that day she began to feel very tired.

Thankfully our hotel was pretty central to most things we were doing. She ended up being okay for the first half of the day but then needing to go back to sleep.

Universal with Harry Potter World was on our agenda along with Gatorland and my favorite, the Kennedy Space Center.

I grew up watching Space Camp and the Challenger explosion. I would often play astronaut in our unfinished basement with my dad's motorcycle helmet on, pretending I was going to the moon. I spent one summer checking out books from our library (two blocks from my house) about space. I was going to be an astronaut one day. The Space Center was a dream come true for me. And an even bigger dream was seeing a rocket take off. They happen a couple of times a month and we happened to be in town the day one was launched. We set our alarms for 5:30am and got to see it from our hotel window against the dark, night sky. That was a pretty awesome experience.

On Sunday we went to one of Erik's last wards located in Sanford and afterwards visited the Orlando Temple site. We headed back to the beach with Ash (at this point she had missed several days of activities). The crowded Sunday afternoon beach was a much different beach than the quiet early morning beach we were used to.

Our last day was Disney's Animal Kingdom. Pure magical is all I can say. Disney definitely knows how to do things right. This park had such a different feel than Universal. While we were there, a park ranger (not sure what to call her) approached us to tell us that is was national Okapi day and would we like to go behind the scenes and meet one. Tyler and I both looked at each other like what was the catch. How much was it going to cost us? Was it really national Okapi day? There was no catch. She took us behind the gates to where they keep the animals and we got to meet an Okapi up close and personal. Unfortunately, they wouldn't allow us to take pictures, so you'll just have to take our word for it. We easily spent 45 minutes where no other tourists were talking to these keepers about Okapis and feeding him his lunch of leaves and tree branches. It was really quite an amazing experience.

And just like we began our trip with a beautiful sunrise, we ended our trip with a beautiful sunrise. Florida was an amazing trip. I'm so glad we were able to make it happen.