Wake up call

Ever since we got back from Vermont, I've been trying to wake myself up earlier and earlier to prepare my body for my school schedule. It's a terrible goal, worse than exercise. Last week was the 6:30am alarm, and Monday started the 6am. Oy!

My school schedule is not a bad one at all, but since I'm determined to work at work and play at home, I must go "to the office" on time, even if I don't have a class until mid-morning. For those who are curious out there, here's my teaching schedule (not including meetings, tutoring, French club, and planning/grading):

Monday: 9am-3pm (long day)
Tuesday: 11am-3pm
Wednesday: 8am-10am (...must...stay...and...work!)
Thursday: 8am-2pm (long day)
Friday: 1pm-3pm
Saturday: 8am-10am (work-work-work!)
Sunday: SABBATH (which is all the more reason I have to work diligently on Saturday)

Besides gearing up my internal clock and forcing myself to stay awake in the mid-afternoon (lots of cups of tea/coffee), I've been playing around with technology (shocking, I know!). Here's the story:

I'm part of a women's Bible study and for the last few Thursdays, most of my prayer requests have had to do with my new job, the adjustment to teaching again, the 6 day work week, my new students and colleagues, the work load, and my frequent panic attacks that I'm trying to prevent. Well, as you can see, all of this is quite negative and that's exactly my problem. I know there's joy in my job (along with the teenage nonsense), but I'm not focusing on it because the stressers and the fears have bigger, uglier faces.

But recently, our prayers for joy were answered. [Explanation: I'm what you call an early bird. Or a-person-who-likes-to-get-everything-done-as-early-as-possible-to-avoid-future-stress-and-the-terrible-feeling-of-being-rushed-or-not-having-enough-time. Usually, staying ahead of the game can be stressful, but at least I know that I can always slow down or push things back because I'm early.] As I was saying, I had set up an appointment with the tech guys because I couldn't wait for orientation week to learn all about my new laptop and the Smartboard, and everything else I would be learning. Plus, this way I had individualized attention and a personalized session.

First, I got my new laptop WHICH IS SO COOL. It's a PC Toshiba (sorry Peter) and it weighs nothing, works really fast and has a long battery life. The coolest thing about it is that no one else (not even my jealous husband) can sign on, because it only recognizes MY fingerprints! How cool is that? I must remember never to burn my right index finger, or dip it in superglue or else my fingerprint will be ruined!

The next thing I learned was the Elmo, which is this awesome projector that connects to the Smartboard. With the Elmo, instead of passing a picture or your only French train ticket around the class, you can place it under the Elmo which can zoom in on it and project it to the Smartboard.

The Smartboard is even better: I can hook up my PC to it, and control my laptop from the board, which is a giant touch screen. I can go on the internet and bring up a French news site, or youtube or whatever! I can open up Smart-notebook and write all over it with cool electronic pens. Best teaching feature (besides the internet, which is most useful to upper levels): I can bring up my notes from a Word document, project it on the Smartboard and then write on it with the cool pens! On top of that, I can save it and send it to absent kids as a PDF file! It's a great way to save paper and motivate kids--let's face it, they love coming up to this touch-screen board and writing on it! If a lot of my worksheets and notes are typed up (which most are), that will save on time from me writing everything out on the regular white board, and it will allow me NOT to have my back to those sneaky teenagers so often!

So great. God is good.