Wallace Family

Today marks the 3/4 point of the school year. I can hardly believe how fast time has gone by so far (I know that is terribly cliche but it is true). I haven't really written about how the year has gone so far so I thought I would do it now. As is common for all first-year teachers, the school year started out pretty tough. I had a large class with a several individuals that liked to keep me on my toes. I am very fortunate though; I work at a very small middle school and teach a one semester long Spanish course. Since the course is only one semester long, I got to take everything I learned halfway through the year and start anew with the 7th graders. So halfway through the year I got a fresh start with a new group of students -- what a blessing! I learned a ton in that first semester. I learned how to be firm, how to be tough, how to handle all kinds of distractions and disruptions, and I was prepared for just about anything. Luckily, my new class (the 7th graders) is significantly smaller and their overall behavior is outstanding. This class that I have now is amazing. I know that I will not always have such a well-behaved group of kids so I know I can't let my guard down forever, but I am certainly enjoying teaching this group of students.

Overall I love teaching. It is a great job and I feel lucky to be where I am. I love working with people and getting to know so many people. I love the school I work at as well. Like I said before, it is a small school so I only teach one middle school class. I do other things around the school though to help in other grade levels. I also do a Spanish exposure type of class with different elementary school grades where I see them once a week. I think it is really great that I get to work with almost every kid in the whole school (because of being a middles school teacher and doing the exposure class to the elementary school classes). I am enjoying being at this school so much that I actually decided to become an assistant coach for our track and field team this semester. I don't really know anything about this sport but I help out as much as I can. Some of the kids call me 'Coach Wallace' now, which sounds funny to me.

Some other exciting news is that yesterday I found out that an anonymous donor funded a proposal I made online at a website called donorschoose.org. I made a proposal and explained why having an LCD projector would significantly enhance my teaching. I have lots of pictures and videos and stuff I would love to be able to show my kids, and now I am going to be able to. The projector will be mine so I am very grateful for that. Thanks to that anonymous donor, whoever you are! Another exciting thing about being a teacher is that we get a week off for Spring Break. Michelle and I are traveling to Florida tonight; I hope to come back to DC tanner after having spent some time on the beach. Michelle and I are trying to decide what to do with our time off this summer. Since we are both teachers for DCPS, we have the same exact work schedules. This is nice. We have the same days off, get done at the same time, etc. Other than these two years we that we will both be teachers, we don't think we will ever both have so much (paid) time off. We kind off feel like we should take advantage of this time and travel the world or something. On the other hand, we could both work summer school, make some extra money to pay off student loans and save for the future. It is a tough decision.

Michelle and I visited our cousins in NYC this past weekend. We had really been looking forward to it for a long time. We took Friday off and took a bus up on Thursday so that made it even more fun. It rained almost the entire time we were there but we didn't let it slow us down, we just grabbed an umbrella and put on an extra coat and hit the city! We walked through Central Park and visited a couple amazing museums. The Museum of Modern Art had a huge exhibit on Tim Burton along with all the usual interesting stuff. We also visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This is hands down the most incredible museum I have ever been to. It is basically the best of all the Smithsonians here in D.C. all rolled into one. The first thing we saw when we went there was the Egyptian stuff and it blew us away. It was amazing seeing all this stuff in person. We also just had to see what all this cupcake craze is all about (we are always hearing about people in NYC going to gourmet cupcake shops). We went to Crumbs and got a couple cupcakes. They were delicious! We had a great time strolling through Times Square and also through parts of Brooklyn where my cousins live. There are some incredible views of the city and some bridges that we saw from Brooklyn. My cousins know a lot of really good restaurants so they took us to a Peruvian food restaurant (it had been way too long since I had a lomo saltado) and a Korean restaurant. We had a great time and look forward to our next trip to the city that never sleeps.