Woo-hoo Education Buzz Life's A Carnival Submissions Now Open!

Woo-hoo! It seems that the handy, dandy carnival submission form is back working! So-o-o-o-o let's carnival! 

The next Education Buzz: Life's a Carnival will be right here on April 4. Please submit your posts no later than 5 p.m. Saturday, March 31. Use this handy, dandy form. If you encounter problems, please let me know at mybellringers@gmail.com.

Before you submit, please keep in mind our rules…

1. No spam
2. Must be education related
3. Since the carnival may be organized around themes, not all submissions may run.
4. Please remember to post and link back to the carnival.

If you would like to host a carnival, pah-leese let me know by emailing me at mybellringers@gmail.com. 

Spring Break, Yearbooks & Floods

Spring break provided no break from the unrelenting, unforgiving, unfortunate thing we call yearbook.

As I said in my exercise blog, if being a yearbook adviser were a diet or an exercise program, I would be one Skinny Minnie. Instead, I pretty much single-handedly polished off my stash of emergency chocolate in one sitting.

Naturally, I felt a bit queasy afterwards, but I'm not entirely certain that was from inhaling that tasty box of Caramel Chocolate Batons or the fact that I had a gazillion yearbook pages left to do, no photos to pop into those lovely lime-green boxes that denote where a photo is suppose to go, and no one on my current yearbook staff who appeared to give a chocolate baton flip whether we made our deadline.

Yes, it's been one of those years. Yep, a year for the record books, and not in a good way either. No siree, Missy.

So I spent at least half of my spring break working solo on the yearbook, so that the book could final and ensure delivery before the kiddos go home for the summer. 

And, when I finally sat on the couch to relax and drink some coffee with my husband and discuss how we could salvage the rest of my spring break and do something fun, I heard a noise (and not a good one either) and asked, "Do you hear that?" 

He didn't, but I still did, and it was coming from upstairs. I ran up there speedy quick and hot water was gushing out the upstairs bathroom and down the hallway. Although we shut it off pretty quick, well, the damage was done to the hallway, and the water had also seep below through the ceiling into the master bedroom.

Ceiling removed from water damage

Obviously, none of this was my idea of injecting fun into the remainder of my spring break.

Sadly, though, the water disaster and subsequent clean up was better than working 24/7 on the yearbook debacle from earlier in the week. And, I must say I'm not looking forward to the impending doom that awaits me next week in the form of a gazillion page proofs that have to be fixed and turned around speedy quick, or the 40 something photo projects and journalism ad projects I left there to be graded upon my return, or the newspaper deadline scheduled to kick off the week.

And for those of you wondering, Howard the Shelter Cat pretty much remained fairly lackadaisical through it all.

Jeepers Creepers, here's hoping your spring break was more like Howard's than mine.

The "I-can't-believe-we-finally-have-another-edition" of the Education Buzz: Life's a Carnival

The "I-can't-believe-we-finally-have-another-edition" of the Education Buzz: Life's a Carnival. Unbelievable because I've been swamped with a wide range of yearbook disasters that have required a gajillion hours squinting at a computer screen.

I'm surprised that I could see my way home much less actually read everyone's posts.

Now my vision may be a tad blurry, but education guru Joanne Jacobs  has a clear vision on The American Way to Self Control.

Pat over at Successful teachers offers up "Things That Should Kick The Bucket Before I do." There's some interesting things on that list. In fact, it made me think about what I would put on my list. I'd share my list with you, but I probably should just stash them in my "Things That Will Get You Fired" folder.

And speaking of things, Darren at Right on the Left Coast had a few interesting things happen before his school took a week off  for their  "President's Week."

If you've ever had kiddos manipulate you into writing part of their paper, check out Melete's post, "Loafers and Doofuses of the Scheming Kind." 

The Education Optimists gives us "Baking Bread Without the Yeast," but don't be fooled, this post has nothing to do with yummy bread but a lot to do with policies regarding teacher effectiveness.

While my vision remains a tad bit blurry, Jane Goodwin over at Scheiss Weekly has some sharp observations about Oscar night.

If you're a fan of science whiz Steve Spangler, then make sure you check out his appearance on the Ellen DeGeneres Show.

If you are into twitter, Sean gives us his list of the Top 10 twitter feeds for teachers and principals.

Emily over at A Word To The Educators provides strategies for struggling students. 

That's about it unless, of course, you haven't read my latest post,  "Early Release, Patience & Snipers."

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This concludes our "I-can't-believe-we-finally-have-another-edition" of the Education Buzz: Life's a Carnival. Check back to see when the next edition will be posted. I'll have submission information and exactly date, but the plan is to have one in about two weeks. Hopefully, our handy, dandy form will be working by then.

The Carnival is Coming!

The next Education  Buzz--Life's a Carnival will be posted later today (probably in the early evening hours). I ran out of time this morning and I have just a tad bit more work to do to it. And, you know I can't do any tweeking or twittering at work. So check back a bit later!

Early Release, Snipers & Patience

A good five minutes have ticked on by, and I have sat here staring blankly, reviewing my week for funny, witty, inspiring anecdotes to post. Still, nothing comes to mind.

My yoga teacher advises us to meditate for at least five minutes a day, but something tells me this little slice of time doesn't fit her idea of meditation.

Somehow I have got to get my funnyback. The fact that I misplaced it somewhere is a bit disconcerting, and from hearing from quite a few of you out there, you're having that kind of year, too.  You know, the kind of year that makes you feel like you've been ridden hard and put up wet.

The start of my work week promises to be interesting. We have an early release day which means the kiddos only come for half a day. Then the rest of our day is supposed to be allotted for that fun-filled extravaganza we refer to as "teacher inservice"  or "professional development." (And, we all know how I feel about that.)

We actually have an interesting one planned. Former Navy Seal Chris Kyle is coming to talk to us. Called the "most lethal sniper" in American history, he penned the bestselling book called "American Sniper." He just happens to be a graduate of the school I teach at.  Thus, the invite to talk to us.

And, no, I was not teaching there when he was a student. And yes, I'm reading the book. And yes, I have the highest respect for our military soldiers. But no, I'm not quite sure what the correlation is between being a Navy SEAL and a high school teacher or being a sniper and a high school teacher.

I was hoping that perhaps the invite was some sort of precursor to a newfangled security system, and that maybe, just maybe, we'd all be issued tasers or something. 

But no siree, Missy, sadly, that apparently is not the case.

Naturally, all of this buzz about Mr. Kyle coming to our school got me to thinking a lot about his talk, and what--if any--similarities there are between the two jobs. Well, here are my best list of possibilities…

•Emotional Detachment… SEALs and snipers have to perform their duties without letting their feelings get in the way, and teachers can't very well call someone a big fat stupid head in their classrooms, now can they? Hmmmm, although now I'm thinking that Navy SEALs can pretty much call anyone anything they want at anytime, so maybe we should strike this similarity off our list.

•Paperwork… I don't need to explain the paper trails running through schools across our great land, but I certainly was surprised that even snipers, according to Mr. Kyle's book, must fill out paperwork justification. Really? How crazy is that?

•Danger… My hall buddy Rhonda recently got beaned in head by a wayward rubber eraser someone threw during a passing period and the art teacher injured her leg when some art stuff fell on top of her.  OK, OK, OK… so being a SEAL is way more dangerous, so that can't be it.

•Patience… Ah, now this might be the real correlation between being a sniper and a high school teacher. No one can argue that both require an inordinate amount of patience. I'm hoping Mr. Kyle can give me a few pointers there. 

I'm thinking this should be a pretty interesting talk after all.

Carnival Submissions

Several of you have emailed that you have been having trouble submitting to the Eduction Buzz--Life's A Carnival. I'm not quite sure what the problem is. I have tried using the submission form and have not been successful either. I have contacted the carnival people and we'll see what happens.

In the meantime, if you would like to submit to the carnival, please email me the link to your post at mybellringers@gmail.com

Submission deadline for the next carnival will be 5 p.m. CST Sunday, March 4. I hope to post the carnival on Wednesday, March 7. Thanks for your patience.

Bellringers Update

For those of you who follow this blog, I apologize for my lack of education posts. This year has been more than a tad difficult.

Between trying to whittle down my size (which has become a full time challenge in itself), I have also been beaten down by my newspaper and yearbook publication schedules. Let's just say it's been less than a stellar year. (We've all had those, I know.) So let's just say it's been a tad bit difficult to find the humor, or when I have found the humor, it usually falls into the category of "things that will get you fired" if I write about them.

Or, as one email I received noted, there would be "consequencies." Too bad I can't share the rest of that one with you.

Despite all of that, I hope to be back on track in a week or so with regular posts, and, of course, an education carnival. I'll post info this weekend on when the next education carnival will be.

In the meantime, you can still check out my weight loss updates on my fitness blog or over at technorati. Those posts have proven to be fairly popular. Who knew losing weight would garner attention?